The Unconstrained Vision...and the Disadvantages of Being Educated

Atlanta, GA

June 6, 2021

Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don’t know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields. 

– Thomas Sowell

Finally…a year too late…the masks are coming off. 

That’s good. It’s time for the culprits to show their faces, to be led in shackled disgrace thru heckling crowds, and to be seated in the defendants’ dock so the tribunals can begin. 

During fifteen months when “free” Americans were ordered to keep apart, shut down, and cover up…as much has been revealed as concealed. And what we’ve seen is not particularly appealing, or auspicious.

But we also wonder how we got here. How we ever could get here. What type place, people, and mindset could permit…and in many cases actively defend or encourage…the outrages of the last year? 

I’d never thought such blatant over-reaches could be possible in the United States. I don’t think they would’ve been possible even thirty years ago. But the soil in which they germinated wasn’t tilled fifteen months ago. The gardeners have been busy much longer than that. Let’s dig around, and try to find the seeds. 

For decades, we’ve endured a rising contagion of certainty, and an epidemic of hubris. There has been a pandemic of delusion, left untamed by doubt. This righteous bug incubates in the halls of government, contaminates faculty lounges, and infects the corporate press. From there, it transmits to the rest of us.

It’s borne by airwaves, and spreads online. And it passes by casual contact, quickly poisoning friends and neighbors who robotically repeat their lines without even realizing they’re playing a part.

Symptoms include arrogance, condescension, and a haughty air of moral superiority. Almost all known cases produce spasmodic, heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all mandates that are inevitably revealed as catastrophic errors. A reflexive inability to acknowledge these “mistakes” is another notable feature of this horrible affliction.

Susceptibility to the ailment is positively correlated with college degrees, a cultish devotion to “science”, a reliance on collective “will”, and an excessive exposure to establishment echo-chambers, elite popular opinion, and the mainstream press. 

Among the antidotes are critical thinking, an ability to objectively observe verifiable data, a recognition of limits, an acknowledgment of trade-offs, and common sense. Like so much that has been disrupted over the last year, all these remedies are in short supply. Herd immunity to the pandemic of propaganda appears eternally elusive…particularly among the do-gooders, meddlers, and know-it-alls who are most vulnerable to (and responsible for) it.

The Disadvantages of Being Educated

In 1937, Albert J Nock wrote an essay called The Disadvantages of Being Educated. In it he recognized that in a world of increasing specialization and vocational emphasis, a classical education served more to isolate the scholar than to enhance his prospects. The educated man would learn to think of things and to speak in ways that most people wouldn’t understand. He’d become an isolated outcast in his own land.

As a recovering holder of two college degrees, I can assure that these days it’s even worse…but for different reasons. Americans are as “educated” (or at least as schooled) as ever. Yet they’ve never been so unread, close-minded, ill-informed, or…in some cases…just plain stupid. A century ago, kids studied Greek and Latin in high school. Now they require remedial English in college. But it’s more troublesome than that.

Most “educated” people today know less how to think than what to think. And they expect everyone else to think it too. Critical analysis and independent thinking among college graduates has dried to a trickle, yet know-it-all opinions overflow like toxic waste from an untended septic tank.

Those who spout them all seem to read the same papers, watch the same shows, eat at the same restaurants, and attend the same parties. The echo chamber is vast, yet narrow. The proper perspectives are pumped in like fat thru a feeding tube, till there is a visceral aversion to any variation in the diet. 

And it’s taken for granted that other educated people share the same taste. I see it in my own circles. At cocktail parties, over dinner with friends, or even at the office, the approved opinions are expressed unreservedly, with full expectation that everyone hearing them agrees (or should). Dissent is implicitly discouraged, and explicitly resented. 

I usually smile and find a way to change the subject. Yet I marvel at the certainty with which those with extensive education presume to pontificate on matters about which they have little understanding. They remind me of what Murray Rothbard once said of popular discussions of economics, and how casually and confidently people opine on topics about which they know nothing.

“It is no crime”, Rothbard asserted, “to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline, and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science’. But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in that state of ignorance”. 

This statement applies to every “expert” or acolyte who has used false pretenses to boss us around since last March. Yes, an epidemiologist is qualified to speak on the nature of infectious disease and how it might spread. But neither a medical degree nor elected office confers on someone any special expertise to prescribe specific medical treatments or mitigation measures for millions of people he’s never met, or to stipulate how any particular person should assess his safety or respond to relative risk. 

No amount of academic pedigree confers particular insight into how much “safety” is appropriate for any other person relative to the countless competing considerations in his life. These are subjective valuations for each individual to gauge for himself, not directives government commissars should impose on everyone else. They are philosophical questions, not medical ones. 

But over the last year, only one right answer was allowed. We must monomaniacally focus on a single virus, at the cost of anything (and everything) else. And that cost was rarely acknowledged. 

Only the officially prescribed “remedies” were permitted…no matter how many world-renowned immunologists, mental health experts, economists, or scientists might’ve disputed them. These contrary perspectives were not only discouraged, but scorned.

Eminent epidemiologists from such podunk backwaters as Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford were “de-platformed” for doubting the official narrative or crossing the party line. Notwithstanding that there was never any “science” behind masks or lockdowns (and to the extent there was it implied the opposite of what was intended), our “safety” was top priority, so we can’t have people questioning approaches based (allegedly) on such worthy intentions.

But even such platitudes as “your safety is top priority”, “safety first”, and “can’t be too safe”, are misplaced presumptions from a society that assumes too much. In actuality, you can be “too safe”. Safety isn’t always…or even often…the “top priority”. It certainly isn’t anytime I get in a car, eat a bowl of ice cream, go snow skiing, or set the thermostat at a temperature below the one preferred by my wife.

Among the wreckage of this ongoing societal experiment, the greatest casualties are perhaps respect, and humility. Till the “progressive” impulse captured the modern mind, the true mark of an educated man had always been a humble appreciation of his own ignorance. The more he learned, the less he knew. He understood that if one is unaware of his ignorance, he will be misled by his knowledge. 

These days, such modesty is muted…suffocated under the soft pressure of politically correct pillows.

Nowadays, when someone is “educated”…whether at school or at work…there are certain things he is instructed to think, and ordained opinions he is expected to hold. And, with little prodding or pressure, and with few exceptions, he usually does. In his circles, heresy is not permitted.

But outside large cities and elite universities, people use their eyes and ears. For a year, they’ve seen people in restaurants, in large crowds, and without masks, yet their states never became giant graveyards.

These rural hicks and country bumpkins are too aware of what’s happening in front of their face to fall for the scams concocted behind their backs. But, for whatever reason, the educated urbanites often insist on being told what to do, and regularly denigrate those who won’t comply.

The Cult of the Expert

The modern educated man is particularly susceptible to an appeal to authority. He waves heaps of emotional incense upon the altar of the “expert”, who in “public policy” is best defined as someone well-versed in what he is being paid to say. And he is not above saying things to invent or exaggerate perceived problems. To the contrary, that is often one of the job requirements.

He might conjure a crisis, or magnify a malady. Most of these supposed calamities pose little real risk, and many are flatly absurd. But that’s beside the point.

They provide opportunity for these enlightened “experts” to attract the cameras, flaunt their credentials, and apply their “cures”. And when these high-minded, “scientific” remedies inevitably flop, it is the educated mind that is least willing or able to admit its error. If the truth is acknowledged at all, it’s like a correction buried in a back section of the newspaper, whereas the original lies linger like mold on a bathroom wall.

The charade has played out repeatedly the last fifteen months, and has been astonishing to watch. It might even have been humorous were we not compelled to be lab rats in this grotesque experiment.

For over a year, reams of data revealed the general ineffectiveness of the recommended “containment measures”. They consistently showed that lockdowns are ineffective (or deadly), that masks are mostly meaningless (if not harmful), that coronavirus doesn’t spread on surfaces, that asymptomatic (i.e., “healthy”) people are unlikely to spread the virus, that kids are at virtually no risk of suffering from or spreading it, and that on any metric the “open” states and countries perform at least as well as restricted ones. 

Despite ample evidence that these dystopian measures don’t make a whit of difference, many educated adults persist in pretending that they do, and in shaming those who refuse to join their theatrics. 

Just yesterday, Jon Rahm, leading the Memorial Golf Tournament by six shots, was disqualified after a “positive test”. He had no symptoms, and even the CDC has admitted that the chance of outdoor spread…particularly among “asymptotic” people…is so negligible that they’ve yet to document a case. But despite the actual science, the farce continues, in deference to “the science”.

Remarkably, when even official agencies and health high priests are being forced by facts to drop false pretenses, their well-educated congregation (many of them young, healthy, and fully-vaccinated) are among the most reluctant to relinquish their rituals and trash their talismans. It’s as if fear has become their security blanket, and the face mask their MAGA hat. They simply can’t give it up.

To some degree, that makes sense. After all, no one wants to admit that he’s been had by his heroes, or that he wasted a year of his life for nothing. And the educated man, who puts such faith in “the science”, is least willing to acknowledge that “the experts” might lead him astray.

Yet they regularly do…sometimes unintentionally, but often deliberately. Moreover, many of the more “esteemed” ones are now being revealed to have been deeply disingenuous and clearly corrupt.

And they’ve had help…from the press, academia, and popular culture. Not that these groups huddle together and make specific plans to destroy our lives. They don’t need to. It’s not necessarily a conspiracy. It’s more like a hive. Each member knows his rôle without being told, as if by instinct.

A Conflict of Visions

But how do they know their rôle? And what drives that instinct? And why do the same people always seem to cluster toward the same side of any issue, even those that appear to be completely unrelated?

Why would people who support mandatory masks and compulsory vaccinations be the same who advocate against separate-sex bathrooms, for a high minimum wage, and that we should all band together to control the earth’s temperature? There’s no obvious reason they should, yet they generally do.

And why do the familiar opponents almost always fall on the other side of the argument? Why would the same people who oppose the Covid measures also tend to support such disparate issues as off-shore oil drilling, continuous tax cuts, or the unrestricted right to bear arms? But this seems most always to be the case. Rarely do we find a transgender activist lobbying for the coal industry.

Again, why not?

As has often happened the last several decades, Thomas Sowell supplies a hint. Years ago, I read his wonderful book, A Conflict of Visions. Last week, I read it again, seeking answers to many of the questions that plague us today…or at least to better understand those who are offering them.

Sowell describes two ways of seeing the world: the constrained vision, and the unconstrained vision. These aren’t comprehensive or mutually exclusive, but they are good heuristics for understanding why people think and act as they do.

As the name implies, the constrained vision recognizes limits. It thinks in terms of trade-offs rather than solutions. Justice, in the constrained vision, is based not on the desirability of results, but on removing restraints from the processes for obtaining them. It realizes that some things are unattainable no matter how much we want them, and that nothing comes without a cost. That is part of the tragedy of the human condition.

In the constrained vision, incentives matter. Societal benefit grows from the ground up, from individuals making millions of decisions to improve their own lives. Such a task is too complex to fall from the top down, and cannot be orchestrated by committees presuming knowledge it is impossible for them to have.

Conversely, the unconstrained vision is reflected in many college commencement addresses: we can do anything we put our mind to. 

Whereas the constrained vision is concerned with incentives, the unconstrained vision focuses on intentions. Results are paramount, and a solution is always possible…if only “we” have the will. “We’re all in this together!” is very much a slogan of the unconstrained vision.  

The unconstrained vision is less concerned about the individual than the group. It welcomes an intellectual elite to manage “society”, and to prescribe “public” affairs. This elite will not only identify “our” problems, but (most importantly) will never consider the possibility that there’s nothing “we” can do about them. It’s just a matter of banding together, and putting “our” mind to it. Trade-offs and costs are deemed irrelevant, if they are considered at all. 

The unconstrained vision focuses only on results, which must be attained no matter the cost. The process is immaterial, except as an obstacle. Whereas the constrained vision considers a foot race fair if all impediments are removed from each runner on the track, the unconstrained vision is only concerned with who wins…and that it not be the same person each time (even if that means creating targeted impediments or advantages to ensure the desired outcome).

Despite mountains of contrary evidence, this vision believes that the reason lockdowns, inconveniences, and disruptions continued as long as they did (and may still be necessary) is because irresponsible people wouldn’t behave, do as they’re told, and get with the program.

The notion that, broadly speaking, the virus was going to do what it does no matter what we did never crossed the unconstrained mind. The “experts” and their models are correct. If something goes wrong, it is people who are to blame for not conforming to them.

The constrained vision recognized the risks, but realized they could be addressed only on the personal level. They could be managed, but not eliminated. Life is always full of risks, but it must go on, in accordance with each person’s susceptibility to them.

In the constrained vision, man’s knowledge is often insufficient for social, or even personal, decision-making. He is generally better served by custom than understanding. 

Edmund Burke exemplified the constrained vision, and captured it when he said that we should attend to the defects of the social order with the same trepidation we’d treat the wounds of our father. Not to ignore them, but also not to experiment based on hasty inspiration.

In the unconstrained vision, there is always a solution. And it’s pertinent not only what someone does to attain it, but why he does it. Things must be done for the “right reason”, not simply for personal psychic or economic reward.

It’s not enough, as in the constrained vision, to note that people can do good things inadvertently, like a baker relieving hunger as a by-product of selling bread to support himself. To the unconstrained vision, intentions matter. If good things are done for the wrong reason, they aren’t worth talking about.

The constrained vision takes human nature as an immutable fact, a limitation that cannot be ignored. To the unconstrained vision, human nature is itself a variable…and the most important one to be changed. 

The unconstrained vision takes in a vast prospect in which each human is merely an incidental blur, like points on an impressionist painting. “Humanity” is their masterpiece, which must be perfected even if individual drops get smeared, or washed away.

The unconstrained vision condemns checks and balances as needless complications and impediments that cause inertia and weigh upon progress. For this reason, institutions and systems like federalism, the Electoral College, the Senate, and the filibuster are abhorrent to its way of thinking. These are all unnecessary inhibitions to “getting things done”.

But the unconstrained vision doesn’t recognize risks associated with brash action or brazen impulsivity. Albert J Nock used the analogy of society as an organism, moving instinctively toward some immediate benefit…much as a blind worm gravitates insensibly toward food. But this unthinking response may ultimately be detrimental, as the worm may be stepped on, run over, or picked up by an eager boy in need of bait.

William F Buckley, of whom I am generally not a fan, once famously…and justifiably…claimed that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty. I couldn’t agree more. 

Then again, I don’t want to be “governed” by anybody. Not that I mind authority; I just don’t like perfect strangers telling me what to do. And no one in any governmental position is qualified, or has the right, to do it anyway.

As Thomas Jefferson put it, if “man cannot be trusted with the government of himself, can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

As every educated man should know, the answer is obvious.

JD