Philosopher Eric Hoffer said:
“One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.”
It is true.
During my lifetime, I have witnessed Paul Ehrlich’s predictions of famines in the 1970’s, the various predictions of intellectuals and pseudo intellectuals issue Earth Day proclamations that the climate was going to be too cold, too hot, too dry, or too wet for humans to survive. There was the “Doomsday Clock” that predicted nuclear annihilation and Modern Monetary Theory that predicted we could print all the money we needed without consequence – and the crème de la crème of pronouncements, that biological sex is a social construct and men can get pregnant.
All ridiculous, all false and all considered valid intellectualism.
My wife and I don’t go to group gatherings often, but when we do, I am bound to a long-standing promise not to get into sociopolitical or ideological discussions with any of our acquaintances (or the acquaintances of those acquaintances). I therefore am limited to listening and observing so that we will be invited back.
Not long ago, we attended a function with a large percentage of younger, college educated people, many who were teachers or trainers of some sort (my wife was a public-school teacher for 36 years and now is the director of an in-house education program at one of the leading children’s hospitals in the intermountain west, if not the country). It was amazing the volume of Marxist rhetoric I heard, most not directly expressed, but most certainly was positively incorporated in many points of view. More than that, these collectivist concepts were being spoken as if they were natural laws and simply the normal way things worked.
Disturbed by this, I could not help myself, so I began to engage these good folks to understand from whence this favorable view of Marx had originated, being careful not to violate my promise not to get into rhetorical fistfights.
So, I did not fight, I simply asked open-ended questions that began with why, how, and what.
Why do you think that is possible? How would that work? What would you think the outcome would be?
When one takes that route, it is not seen as confrontational, it is invitational. People who have strong opinions always want to tell you why they are right, how it should work and what the outcomes should be.
And I gained a fair amount of information from those questions.
Thinking back over my entire nearly half a century of working career, whether as a line manager, a C-Suite occupant or a consultant, my forte has always been working to eliminate variations, errors, and inefficiencies in processes of one kind or another – all of which boils down to hunting down problems and solving them.
Gathering enough accurate, empirical data is always a challenge. Often, one is assailed with observational or anecdotal data, which may be factual – but also may not be.
One of the mathematical principles that I have found to be true in every case is the Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of the issue are the result of 20% of the causes (it also has a positive component - that 80% of the output comes from 20% of the inputs).
I am, like everyone on the planet, the sum of my education, intellect, and experiences, so I started putting the pieces together.
The lack of knowledge of the experienced endpoints of some of the very things these folks were so casual in expressing, the fact that they held such beliefs that somehow things are always different today, and things just need to be done “right” because they never have been drove me to the conclusion that 80% of these people who favorably thought and spoke of Marxist concepts probably had never read Marx.
It is likely that this 80% got their beliefs from the 20%, a professor somewhere during their collegiate career, some “intellectual” who carelessly taught them his or her view of Marxism rather than an honest, sober, and accurate historical account of the Marxism of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot.
Their views appeared to me to be remarkably once removed, third party as if they had all been involved in a four-year episode of the old party game of Chinese Whispers (aka “Telephone” here in the US).
Fifteen years before the turn of the Millennium, another great philosopher, George Michael, crooned:
“Time can never mend
The careless whispers
Of a good friend
To the heart and mind
Ignorance is kind
There's no comfort in the truth
Pain is all you'll find…”
Cheezy, I know, to quote Wham! - but I’m in a bit of a Deadpool mood this morning.
It might appear that your conversants have been influenced by teachers and professors. The question I suggest to be put forth to such educators is this. Have you ever held a job that required you to produce anything other than words either spoken or written? I suspect that responses would be "why would you ask that? Or maybe squirms.. My answer would be another query. How would you know the solution to a problem if you haven't successfully implemented a solution?