The Smart Elites

A retired government officer once said that his son, who studied at exclusive institutions and is now a senior executive in a multinational, resents his middle-class attitude. The father thinks that his son has come up the hard way and deserves the position he holds but he can’t understand his son’s resentment of the middle class. The son occasionally visits the city where his parents live but prefers to stay in a five-star property. He invites his parents as well as his acquaintances, and more often than not becomes unavailable due to some ‘urgent work’, but makes sure that his guests are properly taken care of. The father doesn’t like his son’s attitude. That his son hates the social class he represents saddens the father.

The elite, a privileged group of wise people, wield considerable power and influence. They are important, being the so-called enlightened ruling class.

The aristocracy of the earlier times has now virtually vanished. The new class that emerged with political, intellectual, and monetary power has now replaced the aristocrats.

The elites are thought to be the smarter breed. Are elites as smart as they think they are? Elites often are drawn from a narrower class of extremely well-articulated people from a handful of cities. Due to their epistemic arrogance, they find it difficult to understand what it is like to be someone who is not an elite. They are less sensitive to the problems of others but understand very well when their autonomy is questioned.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s description suits them: They dress up their expertise in beautiful language, jargon, and mathematics, and often wear expensive suits, but have no differential abilities from the rest of the population, but for some reason are believed to be experts.

We are becoming more meritocratic, yet trust in the elites has never been lower.