Thread 17903547

any philosophical ideas that argue against mass literacy/education?
IIRC Evola's Revolt says that traditional societies were happier when people followed their roles, but I might be misremembering

>>17903547 (OP)
It's called obscurantism

Plato is the biggest one with his painstakingly elitist cave allegory. You need a philosopher king to tell you what a chair is, doing research on your own is worthless etc

>>17903547 (OP)
> Plato
In The Republic, Plato basically says most people can't handle thinking for themselves. He thought education should only go to the "philosopher-kings" and elites who run the state. If everyone got educated without the right philosophical training, he worried society would just end up with slick talkers (sophists) and manipulative leaders (demagogues) instead of real wisdom.

> Nietzsche
Nietzsche hated mass education... He saw it as a factory for churning out obedient, average people. He believed real genius and culture could only thrive if the exceptional few weren't dragged down by the "herd". In Twilight of the Idols, he roasts modern education for making people clever but not actually wise.

> Rousseau
Rousseau also warned that mass literacy and books could mess people up by forcing society's fake values on them. He thought too much book-learning would make people lose touch with their natural instincts and real-life experience.

> Old-School Conservative Takes
Some old-school conservatives (like Joseph de Maistre and even Edmund Burke in some ways) thought mass education would wreck tradition and social order. They believed literacy and schooling should be tightly controlled to keep culture and religion "pure".

> Marxist Critiques
Some (like Althusser) argue that under capitalism, schools are just brainwashing machines to keep workers in line. Radicals like Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society) say institutional education is more about control than actual freedom.

> Foucault
Foucault saw mass education as part of a bigger system of control... Schools, prisons, and factories all work the same way to make people obedient and easy to manage.

> Anti-Colonial Takes
Thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o called out how colonizers used mass literacy to wipe out native cultures and replace them with Western ideas. Education wasn’t about liberation... It was a tool for domination.

>>17903554
>>17903570
>>17903577
pretty based. Anyone who says that literacy destroyed the stability of society?
e.g. farmers were happy being farmers and didn't need to read or write, so literacy should be limited to a few

>>17903587
If you cannot read or write you cannot contact those who come after you, making assumptions about whether illiterate subsistence farmers were "happy" or not is speculation at best and agenda pushing propaganda at worst. The only people who actually wrote shit that later generations could read (like Plato) had a vested interest in keeping power within their clique, incentivizing them to lie.

>>17903547 (OP)
just look at america

>>1790358d
Even Aristotle thought that teaching the lower classes too much could make them unhappy with their place in life. He believed farmers and workers should stick to their jobs and leave thinking to the elites. He wasn't alone... Many others have argued that education breaks down social order or even ruins people's natural simplicity.

>>17903587
Even Aristotle thought that teaching the lower classes too much could make them unhappy with their place in life. He believed farmers and workers should stick to their jobs and leave thinking to the elites. He wasn't alone... Many others have argued that education breaks down social order or even ruins people's natural simplicity.

Ok but how do you handle normies chimping out when you drop this truthnuke??

>>17903547 (OP)
>Evola's Revolt says that traditional societies were happier when people followed their roles
Evola was overeducated retard. You can go to a poor shithole where clan politics rules right now and you will see firsthand that it sucks

>>17903577
>> Plato
>In The Republic, Plato basically says most people can't handle thinking for themselves. He thought education should only go to the "philosopher-kings" and elites
((elites))
this nigga was a proto kike

>>17903547 (OP)
There are plenty that argue against the educational structures and strictures required to actually manage such an endeavour, if that counts for you.

>>17903547 (OP)
>any philosophical ideas that argue against mass literacy/education?
A lot, and the funny thing is that they all make the same exact argument from completely opposite directions:
on one hand you got people arguing that teaching plebs is bad becausr it's gonna undermine the social order since they'll just get tricked
on the other hand you got people arguing that it's bad because it enforces social order by tricking people into behaving how the elites want
Pretty funny to me.
I think the latter stance is correct, education is inherently acculturation, and not only that's better than disunity, it's also pretty much unavoidable.
All the people supporting the former stance are traditionalists who don't realize the tradition and religion they shill was just proto-education.

>>17903547 (OP)
China invested shitloads into education and now they have a massively overqualified population with jack shit in terms of technically demanding jobs. This is more of an indictment on socialism and social engineering than education though.

>>17903577
i believe paul tillich has abit similar views as nietsche on this lul. to clarify: Tillich is not against the masses being educated, instead he is critiquing the methods and effects of mass education. i'm gonna paraphrase here, because i've only heard this from a secondary source and i cannot of this moment find any quotes to support this, but either way, this is something i've thought about:

Tillich points out that having kids spend their day only interacting with other kids their exact age is a very new phenomenon that has not happened en masse in any previous culture, wherefore it shouldn't be considered any normal state off social bonding, but rather one which could cause alot of side effects that might be invisible to us.

from this, he goes on to speak about ethics. before, kids had to adapt to the cultural ideals of their parents/family/village, but that now, it is much more important for the child to adapt to the cultural ideas of their classmates. consensus is the goal in both instances, but one could see how not only the morals of the individual, but the very mode which the individual interacts with- and interacts with morals would be very different.

>>17903547 (OP)
Forms of public education, when applied properly, are not really pursued by those who would misuse or misunderstand it. When it is used improperly; i.e a purpose other than education, it becomes an incredibly powerful and dangerous tool. Discerning when this line has been crossed is difficult but certainly can be done and we have most definitely crossed it in our times.