This is a comment over at BDN... responding to a bible thumping conservatives crying fowl and leaving after having his arguments summarily torn down based on facts... One of the board members called the group over there "elite" and that specifically rubbed the conservative wrong.
here's a few of the leading up statements in quotes followed by my comments (not in quotes)
I just received an email from an individual on this site. I will not mention his name. While he was kind, something in his message was disturbing. He mentioned how most of the people on this site were highly educated and that this site was a hangout for the "ELITE".
I am soooo thankful I am not "ELITE".
Warning lights are flashing and time to go. Consider me an advocate for Biodiesel but without the liberal strings. All of you will remain in my prayers. Be warned, God has a way of making the "Elite" realize how smart they really are.
God bless,
well i won't put the whole dialog leading up to or around the "elite" comment but here it is:
The group there is very bright and there really isn't much BS.
And when there is BS, we call each other on it. Most of us are
highly educated (several Ph.D.s--myself included) hang out there.
If you haven't figured it out yet, this is a hangout for the elite.
My reply...
I dunno about the elite statement... its something you can label someone else, maybe i'm too modest, but it doesn't seem right to label ones own group elite.
Soldiers that name themselves elite often come back in a body bag, a general naming a squad elite based on actions ensures success...
could be that modesty thing that kinda rubs me wrong... but WTF - its just a GD word.
Hell i just watched that clip and Mrs. 'W' can't speak any better words than her Husband the uncoordinated Mt Biker (who the hell is so uncoordinated to crash on a dry flat trail... must be that POC Chinese Mt. Bike he was riding, if he'd only bought it from a Bike shop that could set it up instead of Wally World).
Words, words, words, words...
Read them, consider the source, be intelligent enough to determine personal effect.
In GENERAL post graduate degrees, esp in the sciences do often mean a person has had significantly more training in examining bias, points of view, and more specifically reading and research. And even more importantly is the training to learn to ask questions. Find the "facts" and figure it out. Read a story (article, news bit...) and know what questions to ask, and ya learn to recognize patterns of omission. "facts" may not be the proper word. "Data" is what one faculty member here prefers (we had a big discussion during a masters thesis exam i was helping to administer). When your career is build around gathering data, raw data, and then putting that data together the only way it can be put together, well you look at the world differently. Soldiers are trained the opposite. Forget the data, follow the orders. Disregard any pattern of sense other than the specific mission. That's a good thing. If the mission is proper and correct, it relies on the superiors making proper evaluations of the data. When it was General Patton out in the field making the evaluations that was good. When its a bunch of draft dodging morons in the white house with no field knowledge... that is bad.
Many other "jobs" besides being a soldier require the ignoring of data, ignoring it with the specific intent to make personal gains, personal gains as a result of making gains for a company/institution/church. And when a human spends much of life ignoring a preponderance of data that person becomes... well how do you say... conditioned, conditioned to not even SEE the data, and conditioned to only make the data fit into the way they need it to fit.
A fantastic example are biblical archaeologists. I married an archaeologist, no she's not a biblical one, she's a historical one. And the most fundamental, the MOST critical aspect of that profession is tabula rasa. CLEAN SLATE. Go into a dig without a preconceived notion of what you are looking for. Obviously you must be looking for something, but... don't pre-label anything that is found until it is all found. Don't make a judgment that isn't true based on what you WANT to find. IE finding a piece of cloth and calling it Jesus's cloak, its a piece of fabric, without other supporting evidence in the ground its nothing more than an old piece of fabric.
Its a sad fact, and a example of the problems with education. Students are no longer taught to look at facts or data and then lay them out and decide for themselves what way to put them together. And they aren't taught that the facts and data might have more than one way to go together. That maybe there is more than one "answer." Also the most often omitted and sometimes critical awareness is that all the facts and data might not be there.
And maybe here is where the elite might apply. To people who are able to see the data. And are able to articulate and understand all ways to interpret it but feel strongly with supporting evidence that they way they see it is more correct.
To discuss facts it is often important to be apassionate. Lacking passion, analytical, critical, and skeptical.
It doesn't require a degree.
Socrates and the ancient masters have a lot to teach the modern world. If we'd just listen.
