Can you say a word on whether (and how) this phenomenon you describe (“populist hostility gets directed towards what is perceived to be the worldview of the elite”) is different from the past? It seems to me that this is a force that is always present, often led to “problems” (eg, the Luddite movement), but usually (though not always) the general population came around more in believing the same things as “the elites”.
The process is not different from what occurred in the past, and I think this was basically the catalyst for anti-semitism during the post industrial revolution era. You observe a characteristic of a group of people who seem to be doing a lot better than you, in that case a lot of them happened to be Jewish, and so you then associate their Jewish-ness with your lack of success and unhappiness.
The main difference is that society continues to modernize and technology improves. Bad ideas for why some people are better off than others become unpopular. Actual biases and unfairness in the system gradually disappear. But despite that, inequality remains and in fact seems to be rising. What happens is that the only thing left to blame is instrumental rationality. I imagine that people will look as hard as they can for bias and unfairness for as long as possible, and will want to see it in people who are instrumentally rational.
In a free society, (and even more so as a society becomes freer and true bigotry disappears) some people will be better off just because they are better at making themselves better off, and the degree to which people vary in that ability is quite staggering. But psychologically it is too difficult for many to accept this, because no one wants to believe in inherent differences. So it’s sort of a paradoxical result of our society actually improving.
(I thought the post was reasonably written.)
Can you say a word on whether (and how) this phenomenon you describe (“populist hostility gets directed towards what is perceived to be the worldview of the elite”) is different from the past? It seems to me that this is a force that is always present, often led to “problems” (eg, the Luddite movement), but usually (though not always) the general population came around more in believing the same things as “the elites”.
The process is not different from what occurred in the past, and I think this was basically the catalyst for anti-semitism during the post industrial revolution era. You observe a characteristic of a group of people who seem to be doing a lot better than you, in that case a lot of them happened to be Jewish, and so you then associate their Jewish-ness with your lack of success and unhappiness.
The main difference is that society continues to modernize and technology improves. Bad ideas for why some people are better off than others become unpopular. Actual biases and unfairness in the system gradually disappear. But despite that, inequality remains and in fact seems to be rising. What happens is that the only thing left to blame is instrumental rationality. I imagine that people will look as hard as they can for bias and unfairness for as long as possible, and will want to see it in people who are instrumentally rational.
In a free society, (and even more so as a society becomes freer and true bigotry disappears) some people will be better off just because they are better at making themselves better off, and the degree to which people vary in that ability is quite staggering. But psychologically it is too difficult for many to accept this, because no one wants to believe in inherent differences. So it’s sort of a paradoxical result of our society actually improving.