The Plague of the Elite

Here’s a way that I like to look at the chaos of the last year (and the looming, gaseous-thick dread I think we’ve all felt about American culture and the economy since 2008). It’s through the lens of a book written by Peter Turchin called Ages of Discord.

The book predicted growing discord in the 2020s due to a phenomenon he dubbed “the overproduction of the elite”. He defines the elite as individuals who do not produce new goods or inventions, but instead act to maintain the current social hierarchy. People like lawyers, politicians, commentators, economists, and academics.

These elite are very savvy people who have a tendency to seek positions of power. In small doses, they provide extreme benefits to society, but a society that produces too many of them will see growing discord as these rich, savvy individuals seek to undermine one another to get into positions of power.

Those who fail to reach the top become disgruntled and vengeful. And an overproduction of disgruntled and vengeful elite is a dangerous cocktail.

The current war on American values is a war that was born within the elite’s field of academia. It’s an intellectual war that seeks to change the definition of words, to shame various socio-political groups into action, and to alter culture through corporate ad promotion and virtue signaling.

It’s not a war with physical weapons (yet), but a war weaponizing the way we think.

Our best way out is to go back to being a society of builders and doers. The elite don’t like to get their hands dirty, but a healthy future is going to require a bit of dirt on our sleeves.

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