Do we need a new farm system for elitism?

coberst

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Do we need a new farm system for elitism?

Quickie from Wiki:
“In sports, a farm team, farm system, feeder team or nursery club, generally refers to a team or club whose role is to provide experience and training for young players, with an agreement that any successful players can move on to a higher level at a given point. This system can be implemented in many ways, both formally and informally.
The term is also used as a metaphor for any organization or activity that serves as a training ground for higher-level endeavors. For instance, sometimes business schools are referred to as "farm clubs" for the world of business.”

David Ignatius asked the question “why is an increasingly ‘connected’ world such a mess?” in a February article in the NY Times. More democracy and more Globalism seem to be leading to more chaos and confusion.

Thomas Friedman argues in his book The World is Flat]/i] that technology and more Globalism is driving the integration of the world and will lead to a better world.

Francis Fukuyama posted an essay in the New York Times Magazine, "More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and -- yes, unfortunately -- terrorism"?

The Middle East is turning into a cauldron of destruction and death. What the hell is going on? Where are our leaders? Are they out to lunch? Is this a beginning of a repeat of the twentieth century? Can humanity survive such a rebirth of such a century?

David Ignatius talked with a number of his contacts and formulated his answer to why is the world such a mess? His explanations are listed below:
1) As elites become connected in the world they lose their ‘home’ connection.
2) Connectedness produces local political disconnection.
3) I will add that our elites are now ‘following the money’ and the world is their ‘oyster’.
4) The Internet is a “rage enabler” and reinforcer.

Ignatius concludes that “The connected world is inescapable, like the global economy itself. But if we can begin to understand how it undermines political stability -- how it can separate elites from masses, and how it can enhance rage rather than reason -- then perhaps we will have a better chance of restabilizing a very disorderly world.”

Coberst concludes that we need to develop immediately a new ‘farm system’ for elite hood. There is a phrase from a popular post-WWI song that goes something like this “how ya goina keepem down on the farm after they’ve seen Parie”. If we manage to get a few people to “see Parie”, i.e. see what self-actualizing self-learning is about, we can develop a new farm system for elite hood.

Do we need a new ‘farm system’ for elite hood?
 
It would be nice if "the elite" could actually consist of elite people.
 
An oligarchy controls public policy in America. The oligarchy consists of those who manage the great wealth of American institutions. This oligarchy designs our educational system to graduate good producers and consumers and does not desire independent thinkers.

CA (Corporate America) has developed a well-honed expertise in motivating the population to behave in a desired manner. Citizens as consumers are ample manifestation of that expertise. CA has accomplished this ability by careful study and implementation of the knowledge of the ways of human behavior. I suspect this same structure applies to most Western democracies.

A democratic form of government is one wherein the citizens have some voice in some policy decisions. The greater the voice of the citizens the better the democracy.

In America we have policy makers, decision makers, and citizens. The decision makers are our elected representatives and are, thus, under some control by the voting citizen. The policy makers are the leaders of CA; less than ten thousand individuals, according to those who study such matters. Policy makers exercise significant control of decision makers by controlling the financing of elections.

Policy makers customize and maintain the dominant ideology in order to control the political behavior of the citizens. This dominant ideology exercises the political control of the citizens in the same fashion as the consuming citizen is controlled by the same dominant ideology.

An enlightened citizen is the only means to gain more voice in more policy decisions. An enlightened citizen is much more than an informed citizen. Critical thinking is the only practical means to develop a more enlightened citizen. If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost. This is why I think a massive effort must be made to convince today’s adults that they must train themselves in CT.


“Thomas R. Dye, Professor of Political Science at Florida State University, has published a series of books examining who and what institutions actually control and run America. to understand who is making the decisions that affect our lives, we also have to understand how societies structure themselves in general. Why the few always tend to share more power than the many and what this means in terms of both a society's evolution and our daily lives. they examined the other 11 institutions that exert just as powerful a shaping influence, although somewhat more subtle: The Industrial, Corporations, Utilities and Communications, Banking, Insurance Investment, Mass Media, Law, Education Foundation, Civic and Cultural Organizations, Government, and the Military.”
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/12-dye.html
 
If, however, we wait until our CT trained grade-schoolers become adults I suspect all will be lost.
You are assuming that we have not already gone beyond the point of no return.
This is naive.
We passed that point a long, long time ago.
 
"The laws of a country ought to be the standard of equity and calculated to impress on the minds of the people the moral as well as the legal obligations of political justice. But tender laws, of any kind, operate to destroy morality, and to dissolve by the pretense of law what ought to be the principle of law to support, reciprocal justice between man and man; and the punishment of a member who should move for such a law ought to be DEATH."
Thomas Paine
 
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