Tuesday, November 16, 2010
RE DAVID BROOKS THE TWO CULTURES EDITORIAL SWAN SONG NYT
What an essay.
While any reader of this site can see that, to say the least, I have not been sympathetic to economics as a discipline,
Brooks' essay is not at all my kind of criticism of economics, except perhaps that it implies a criticism of economic compartmentalization;
but disciplinary compartmentalization, in all fields, is after all one of our biggest problems, and invites journalistic sophistries, like Brooks', a journalistic pot shot across disciplines, eg here 'history' (Brooks' apparent college major) attacking 'economics', in every area of scientific or quasi-scientific endeavor, not just in economics.
It's hard to select, from among obvious angles, which one to use first to criticize this cynical and misleading diatribe of his; even from the point of view of conservative (non-economist) perspectives, were one so inclined.
The only reasonable explanation, for someone who, frankly, knows better, is that he is now having to show some patron(s), somewhere, who are both ignorant, suggestible, anti-intellectual, and angry, that Brooks is still 'on board'.
With so many well known economists, conservative or liberal, being coincidentally Jewish, and Brooks also, one wonders why he would have been chosen, or volunteered, to pen so implicitly divisive an essay, calling it The Two Cultures, on such a topic? It too readily plays into, or could be turned into, the themes that early 20th Century European antisemitism fomented: a Jewish economic conservative (Republican,capitalist, globalist) conspiracy, and a Jewish economic socialist (Democrat, liberal, globalist) conspiracy. Neither Hume nor Smith were Jews, however, and there are many non Jewish economists of either stripe, who may soon be forgotten.
One of the good questions, substantively, might be to ask how the US got into a position, to which Brooks himself refers, where several current economists (their intellectual backgrounds aside for the moment) have produced a study perhaps rightly showing that for a country like the US now, economics (stimulus spending) itself no longer works.
It is, after all, Brooks' and others', kind of globalism, which has resulted in this 'economics conundrum'. See e.g. prior posts, eg
RE GLOBALIZATION TRAP: DEFICIT SPENDING TARIFFS DEBT
Thus, Brooks, frustrated by the technical, exact, yet twilight, quasi-scientific, world of economics, (their models and entities like shadows, silhouettes, thrown up on the wall of Plato's cave from indirect light)
enters the world of common sense, and of art, in politics. (Seldom, however, have there been two more uncomfortable bedfellows than common sense and art, a fact which he also knows all too well.)
The harder fact remains, morality and art aside, that the globalization that now renders domestic economic 'Keynesian' efforts fruitless has been a profoundly bipartisan enterprise for decades now. Additionally, conservative economists have been even less taken with art and morality than the so-called liberal ones he criticizes.
We have also had a lot of conservative economists, Friedman school, in control of things now for decades, who largely hail from Chicago, the town where Mr. Brooks was also educated, with some of them I believe.
Perhaps this is a kind of 'swan's song' for 'intelligent' mainstream conservative journalism?
See also my comment on David Kaiser's blog post re Anti Intellectualism Again, referred to in my post entitled
RE LAZY FARE VERSUS PROTECTIONISM
Here is that comment:
"Professor
Great summation. Thanks for publishing this essay.
I also had read passages of Hofstadter myself, back in the 70s.
I was not so sympathetic to e.g. Allan Bloom's book, The Closing..., on more recent intellectual history.
I will refer to some things I have been noting re causes: there has long been an intellectual compartmentalization, with not just one or two causes, which has caused the discrediting of intellectuals of all kinds.
When the compartmentalized intellectual's pronouncements prove false, for various reasons, the field, or subfield, loses intellectual face.
It is also connected, just one cause, with a visceral turning away from all specialists, even though so many of us, not even intellectuals, are inevitably 'specialists' of one stripe or other.
Take, just one example, many medical doctors, their discipline itself based on exact science, dating of archaeological matter, etc., yet they sometimes embrace a creationist cosmogony beginning 12.5 thousand years ago, despite the exact science contradiction. They also embrace an anti intellectualism inconsistent with their very discipline's underlying tenets.
This is just one of the most glaring examples; there are many others, from all specialist fields, of specialists repudiating intellectual other specialists assertions or constructions.
Another aspect, to which I have alluded, has been the large extent to which liberal democratic politics, and its free market, have been allowed, and have thus been enabled, to overtake and control disciplinary criteria, and meritocratic principles, by money, influence, and progressive transformations in various industries and professions.
The big market players have tended to overpower the professions, the trades, farmers, and other specialists who might have exercised some meritocratic or professional or guild sense to the marketplace; this type of overbearing influence shows itself no more plainly than in such events as the mortgage-backed security debacle.
This is not at all a new thing. For example, I especially enjoyed Jonathan Steinberg's Teaching Company talk on Frederick The Great, his treatment of experts at his court.
There are various other causes to which one might advert, but can't monopolize another site with more of them. This even was perhaps too much of a 'comment'.
So many remarks here invite comment, but space is at a premium.
all the best,
Great summation. Thanks for publishing this essay.
I also had read passages of Hofstadter myself, back in the 70s.
I was not so sympathetic to e.g. Allan Bloom's book, The Closing..., on more recent intellectual history.
I will refer to some things I have been noting re causes: there has long been an intellectual compartmentalization, with not just one or two causes, which has caused the discrediting of intellectuals of all kinds.
When the compartmentalized intellectual's pronouncements prove false, for various reasons, the field, or subfield, loses intellectual face.
It is also connected, just one cause, with a visceral turning away from all specialists, even though so many of us, not even intellectuals, are inevitably 'specialists' of one stripe or other.
Take, just one example, many medical doctors, their discipline itself based on exact science, dating of archaeological matter, etc., yet they sometimes embrace a creationist cosmogony beginning 12.5 thousand years ago, despite the exact science contradiction. They also embrace an anti intellectualism inconsistent with their very discipline's underlying tenets.
This is just one of the most glaring examples; there are many others, from all specialist fields, of specialists repudiating intellectual other specialists assertions or constructions.
Another aspect, to which I have alluded, has been the large extent to which liberal democratic politics, and its free market, have been allowed, and have thus been enabled, to overtake and control disciplinary criteria, and meritocratic principles, by money, influence, and progressive transformations in various industries and professions.
The big market players have tended to overpower the professions, the trades, farmers, and other specialists who might have exercised some meritocratic or professional or guild sense to the marketplace; this type of overbearing influence shows itself no more plainly than in such events as the mortgage-backed security debacle.
This is not at all a new thing. For example, I especially enjoyed Jonathan Steinberg's Teaching Company talk on Frederick The Great, his treatment of experts at his court.
There are various other causes to which one might advert, but can't monopolize another site with more of them. This even was perhaps too much of a 'comment'.
So many remarks here invite comment, but space is at a premium.
all the best,
Perhaps we could get Brooks, say Krugman, and say, James Grant and Bob Herbert, all in a room, and they could, so to speak, fight it out? Tag team?
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