It would be merely annoying if not for the fact that people develop a tolerance for it after a while and start seeing truly important issues as the next flavor of the week...but I'll stop there, lest I become guilty of my own sin.
At any rate, I found an interesting example of this sort of hysteria via...damn, I can't recall at this point, Sullivan or Yglesias, I think. Anyway, it's about "the Age of Commodified Intelligence"--essentially, as the writer puts it, "a time of conspicuously consumed high culture in which intellectual life is meticulously measured and branded." It's actually an interesting read, despite (because of?) such hilariously broad doozies as this:
Of course higher education has always meant a chance for greater economic success, and more careers now require such certification. But degrees are also more readily pursued as status symbols. We are not growing more intelligent, only more obsessed with its outward markers.
We engage in an elaborate credentials kabuki. Our graduate schools are filled with students forcing out narrow, irrelevant dissertations. They labour to be professors, not to spend lives devoted to their fields. Writers and librarians now seek graduate degrees to prepare for jobs that have existed for thousands of years without such hurdles. Even dogwalkers take classes for certification. We’ve become so reliant on checklists of accomplishment that we’ve lost our ability to make independent judgments. We no longer pursue passions or interests without quantifiable reward.
My first instinct would be to demand some kind of source for all of this doomsaying, especially the second two sentences of the second paragraph. Somehow, though, one senses that this was never meant to be taken as a measurable, provable, solvable phenomenon so much as savored in its all its elegant pessimism, given a pass for its stylish evocation of doom and gloom. After all, if it's bad news, it's probably true, right? Numbers? Proof? How dare you disturb my beautiful ennui!? Back off, my man, I have credentials kabuki! Credentials kabuki!
Perhaps the writer is intent on proving his point through example...
Is it really that bad, though? Dogwalker certification, huh? Sounds more like a growing service industry than the rotting of a society from within. Writers and librarians? Some jobs require certification, but the writer has conveniently neglected to mention just which ones you're talking about. Graduate schools? Perhaps you've been stuck in the humanities or social sciences cocoon a bit too long; I have a few aspiring scientist friends who would debate that point. Ah, but that's anecdotal, right. Lovely hiding places, anecdotes.
The writer ends thusly:
There is nothing innately wrong in gobbling up great art, important novels and educational credentials. Attending a performance of "The Rite of Spring" does no one harm. But if we fail to distinguish between attendance and appreciation, we may end up poorer for it, left with a corporate caricature of our cultural richness. The “intelligent” masses will work hard mining the store of culture artefacts, but will they read the texts and learn from them, or only use them as objects for trade?Eh, since when in history have the masses, "'intelligent'" or not, ever really improved themselves, ever truly changed, at least to the satisfaction of the elite of this or that cultural sphere? If they ever did, who would be the "masses"? Would we have only elites? Somehow I don't think it works that way, but I'm rambling.
If you ever feel that you have truly appreciated something or fully apprehend an experience like few others ever do, take a hint from that wording. For various reasons, you probably won't be able to spark a mass, deep--however you define that--appreciation for Rembrandt or Liszt. At least in ages past the elite didn't have to worry about hordes of unwashed poseurs pretending to appreciate...ah, but there I go again!
