Experts… my ass

I think that the biggest threat to democracy in Canada and rest of the world is something that most people aren’t aware of – to be precise, something that most people have been made unaware of. I’m talking about a pervasive intellectual culture, one that elevates privileged people to positions of “expertise” or “leadership,” whereby they are given a disproportionately large amount of power. An inherent effect of giving “experts” extra influence in the public sphere is a decrease the general public’s power, which clearly subverts elementary democratic principles. I see three broad categories of positions in society as benefitting from this erosion of democracy and thus continuing it: social “science” professors, religious scholars/leaders, and politicians – people whom the rest of society is encouraged to view as experts, entitling the elites in question to give advice to the masses and consequently to play an integral role in shaping public opinion. I’m not trying to demonize individual “experts,” though. To be honest, I have no doubt that most are honest people who believe in democracy, freedom, etc as much as the rest of us do. The problem that I want to raise public consciousness towards is the existing institutional structures in western society, that create incentives for “experts” to perpetuate their own roles, and thus to largely foresake honourable pursuits, such as genuine public education and empowerment, or meaningful democratization. “Experts” dont seek to maintain and expand on their power to the detriment of society because they are power-hungry assholes. Instead, they have been indoctrinated to the point where they believe that current institutional arrangements are legitimate and good for society, hence they act in accordance with their institutional incentives (the primary incentive is always maintaining and expanding upon one’s role). They serve to prevent the public from exerting meaningful influence over the political process, making democracy less participatory and more of a spectator sport.

A democratic society, which we aren’t, would facilitate mass public exposure to political information, ensuring that “expert opinion” wouldn’t be needed nearly as often. I have no doubt that a society without our paternalistic bureaucratic positions, one where the public is given easy access to key pieces of political information and one where the public is encouraged to participate actively in policy formation, would produce better policy outcomes than those resulting from the largely illegitimate institutional structure that we have now. The responsibility of “experts” in a democratic society would be to actively involve themselves in the education & empowerment of the public, and to question institutional arrangements that subvert democracy, instead of defending and fuelling them. True democratizaion requires institutional modifications – ones that will create incentives for democratic behaviour, public empowerment, questioning the legitimacy of all authority, etc. The word “democracy” must be defined and this definition must be used as a guideline (in my opinion, the supreme guideline) when evaluating policy recommendations. I think “the public exerting meaningful control over the political process” is a pretty good one.

Although I’ve liked all of my profs so far (based on the few classes that I actually went to), and I recognize the fact that these profs are pretty smart people with PhDs, I see their current functions in society as largely expendable and as important contributors to the dissuasion of normal citizens from getting involved in politics. Most of the concepts that I’ve learned so far in poli sci classes are fairly elementary – all citizens (in a democracy) should be taught these things in high school civics classes, and these concepts, which contain critical elements, should replace the regurgitated and propagandistic garbage that is presently in the civics curriculum (the current curriculum fuels many incorrect presuppositions: the word “democracy” left unquestioned and undefined, current institutional structures are, by fiat, assumed to be legitimate, communism is wrongly associated with authoritarian variants of it, etc). The easy concepts, however, in the world of scholars, are framed in a way that they seem complicated as a result of the use of big words, many unnecessary footnotes, lots of jargon, etc. Moreover, political literature and even basic facts that question institutionalized assumptions aren’t made available to the general public.

I find it to be a joke when any political “pundit,” or “expert” (sometimes a political science professor) is called on a TV show to evaluate policy, etc. Because of the proximity in terms of class between the experts and political leaders (and their disconnect from normal society), they usually repeat conventional thoughts and miss the obvious stuff, misinforming the public – for example, most scholarly opposition to the Iraq war contends that the war isn’t/wasn’t worth it and disregards the important role that the US played in establishing/bolstering Saddam’s power, while little is said about American violations of international law (this extends to Canada, as Harper advocated Canadian execution of a war crime… so did Ignatieff). With regards to the Israel-Palestine crisis, “experts” serve a vital role in keeping public knowledge grounded. The public is misled by the media and intellectuals, as a result of unquestioned assumptions that one must be a scholar on the issue with a suit, grey hair and a PhD to be able to argue about it. This is of course a view that’s full of shit, as with respect to the law (international law and the Geneva Conventions) the issue should be quite evident – one side is grossly violating multilateral norms and laws while causing the other to violate them, however to a much lesser extent. But since information on the issue is in the hands of elites who want to maintain that it is very complicated with lots of grey areas, the public is influenced to use words like, “disputed territories,” instead of rightfully calling them “occupied territories.”

I think the position of history professors, although not as pernicious to civil society as political science “scholars,” is still pretty useless and given too much respect nowadays. I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that a history professor’s job can easily be done by going on sparknotes or whatever, pasting its notes onto a powerpoint, and saying, “this happened.” Most historical events have been reviewed so extensively that the bulk of scholarly opinion is essentially monolithic, making this position pretty useless as rarely do new historical paradigms emerge. Even when new historical methods of analysis do emerge (which are pretty rare), there isn’t any indication that they require the funding of comprehensive history departments at universities.

Other departments that I find trivial and retarded are ones like, “northeast Australian cultural studies.” Bullshit. Most people with roots from that culture would know about as much or more than someone with a bachelor’s degree in the subject. Furthermore, professors and students who concentrate on these types of studies and plan to go abroad to help developing countries must realize that it was a bunch of foreign educated liberal elites who fucked up those post-colonial situations in the first place. I think its great that so many people want to volunteer abroad (I also hope to do that after graduation), but the arts degree in whatever bullshit that someone studied or taught isn’t going to make them any more prepared to help out in those areas – common sense and a belief in human solidarity will (two things that are far removed from the culture of expertise).

Rational people would agree that religion is obviously irrational and creates many problems, however it would be irresponsible to contend that religion causes nothing but problems. Religious leaders are often able to influence their communities into taking part in charitable activities, community work, etc (I find this admirable, in a delusional kind of way). But these leaders in some cases have diverted donation money from noble endeavours to their own religious initiatives, like Mother Teresa and many other frauds have done. Another problem with religious “experts” arises when one is debating the merits of a religion, and is made to believe by a religious leader that he/she can’t make a judgment on the validity of the particular faith without first having scholarly knowledge of it. This is of course a stupid argument, as it doesn’t matter if you call a supernatural actor allah or vishnu, or whether vishnu did so and so or allah did so and so, the probability of the existence of either fictional character is very low. I guess the bottom line here is that it’s bad enough when you have a self-appointed better with more knowledge telling you what to do – it becomes a whole lot worse when the “expert” is presumed to have god on his side.

I’m sure many of us have heard about the MMP debate in Ontario, over whether or not we should have a more proportional system of representation (meaning votes aren’t as distorted, thus representatives would mirror society better). And this is great, having more women/minorities in office would obviously allow for enhanced representation. But if we really want to get serious about accurate representation, we have to understand the structure of political parties. In order to get into a position of leadership within a party, one is pretty much required to have a university education and in most cases, be a lawyer or a professor. This unwritten requirement clearly subverts democracy, as it has created a bureaucratic class in politics, while leaving almost all other professions/fields out. So until we address this issue, of the political discrimination of people (most Canadians) who are not in the required fields (law/politics/social sciences), and the political discrimination of those who are too busy with work, kids, etc to participate in the political arena, anything we say about MMP being able to enhance democracy (by having representatives mirror society better) will be nothing but a joke. Having a bunch of rich, largely unaccountable people trained in the same fields at the same schools, who won’t actually feel most of the effects of their policies (the rest of Canada will) is the issue here. What needs to be eroded here is the notion that there is a “political class” in Canada, and that only certain “experts” in the required fields should be eligible to meaningfully impact the political process.

The difficulty that society will face in ridding itself of this illegitimate establishment of “experts” is that the primary institutional role of elites isn’t to make good policy for all of us or anything like that, it’s simply to maintain and expand upon their power. They have no incentive to give up the power that they hold now, and they don’t seem to know enough about what “democracy” actually means to do the right thing. In a democracy, a political/social science expert’s main objective would be precisely to rid himself or herself of that “expert” status, through public education and empowerment (religion, or at the very least, political religion, wouldn’t exist in this society, as the public would be educated and empowered). Ultimately, it looks as though the choice lies with those of us who have been fortunate enough to have access to education, money, etc. Do we want to grow up to be managers exploiting workers, and “experts” constraining public opinion and knowledge in order to perpetuate our own roles? Or do we want to live in a democratic society?