16 May

The empirical data-based historian Peter Turchin says one of the most dangerous things a society can do is educate most of its young to a high level. (A difficult truth for any educator to hear.) All revolutions in modern and even historical times weren’t generated by our beloved idea of ‘the people rising up’. They were generated by highly educated people with ideologies, who then co-opted ordinary people to their causes, which they then attributed to the people. Turchin identifies that you need two things to align, to bring the destruction and violence of revolution. First a proliferation of ‘elite rivals’, for the top positions in a society. That’s what giving millions of kids university education can do, because they will then mostly aspire to high-ranking positions in society. Most will fail at that, and then become angry and disillusioned. University education also creates a questioning of legitimacy itself, of all kinds - critical thinking. Which reinforces this ideological/revolutionary impulse. The other thing Turchin sees as the necessary co-ingredient is widespread immiseration of a population. Lots of people struggling. That makes them very receptive to revolutionaries of all kinds, promising salvation. The society then fractures into rival ideological gangs, fighting each other. As the saying goes, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A lethally dangerous thing. Best to leave scholarship to the relative handful of scholars with aptitude for it. Lawrence said the same.