Smartocracy

It’s complicated, but much against my will, I didn’t get any sleep on Saturday night. I spent much of Sunday watching myself do things, and even today. my head (while clear) is certainly in a lower gear than usual. With luck I’ll be at my usual level of coherence by tomorrow.

This weekend Starr and I watched some television programs on high-technology of the ancient world, most of it lost forever because some dictator or another felt it didn’t fit in his grand scheme. We mused that those in power over the centuries have rarely been fond of the intelligentsia, sometimes going so far as active bloody purges.

We wondered, is the animosity due to perceived threat – worry that the next revolution will come from that sector – or an insecure need to prove that the dictator’s might is greater than the thinker’s knowledge? Or might other factors be involved?

The only nation Starr and I could think of in which an enduring government has been established by (part-time, at least) scholars and philosophers is the United States; even those folks didn’t get everything right, and some would debate how well those high-minded ideals have survived the centuries. What other societies of that stripe did we miss?

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One Comment

  • ptownhiker says:

    The United States has had geographic advantages that have allowed it to flourish that other states have not. By being in the New World, we didn’t have to worry about deposing a king that we lived with (such as in France), and we didn’t have any immediately threatening neighbors. Being separate from Europe, we also had the ability to establish something instead mostly new instead of going through the slow process of transformation (such as in England).

    You make an interesting point about leaders’ fear of the intelligentsia. I suspect that scientists and philosophers present new technologies and new ideas. Both of these are threats to power and business (I mention business because it is my observation at work that new ideas and technologies are threats to running things easily and cheaply).

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