As Nisbet argues in his book The Quest for Community, a social group cannot survive for long if its chief functional purpose is lost, and unless new institutional functions are adapted, the group’s “psychological influence will be minimal.” No doubt the state has succeeded in centralizing so much power due to its success in poaching the historical functions of the church and family.

An interesting read - basically, as anyone can see, the state has gradually been replacing families and religions functionally, and is now more aggressively replacing them.

Labels: politics, religion

I always thought it was very odd how focused people were on "graduating college" as a marker of success, as if the act of graduation somehow guaranteed success. Now to a certian extent historcially it did as employers were using the colleges as a screening mechanism for the best of the best, something that no longer holds true when something like 25-33% of people have college degrees. Regardless, I thought the title linked piece tying it to cargo cults was somewhat intersting:

There are a lot of things that set the groundwork for this, and I am not an expert on post-modernism and critical race theory. But one factor that is not often credited is a cargo cult mentality. Folks look at successful white people and observe they all went to college, and then infer that if we just get all the black kids into college, they will be successful too. Their resulting plan is to reduce or eliminate standards that are perceived to be keeping black kids out of college. The problem of course is that college is not the cause of prosperity, but a marker (with prosperity) of other traits -- focus on long-term goals, discipline, hard work, and yes knowing 2+2=4.

For those unaware, cargo cults are basically religions that formed on Pacific islands where people thought that dressing like soldiers and building fake airstrips would get airplanes to drop off valuable cargo.

Labels: education