|
The meaning of
‘mediocracy’ There is a new model of society. Let us call it mediocracy, as in: the rule
of the mediocre, the triumph of style over substance. In a mediocracy, real cultural progress is impossible because it
requires conditions that are incompatible with a commitment to
egalitarianism. There is no room for genuine cultural innovators, because one
cannot permit any individual to think they are special. Nevertheless,
mediocracy maintains a cultural elite, to validate
its ersatz culture and to protect it from criticism. A mediocracy lives off the cultural capital accumulated in the
past, perpetually recycling the old products, though with increasing mockery.
The illusion of cultural fitness is maintained by having institutions with
the same names as the old ones (‘universities’, ‘philosophy’, ‘theatre’) and
some resemblance to the originals. Mediocracy is not concerned with the quality or content of
culture, but it does care to some extent about appearances. It is not
interested in having genuine art, or real education, but it wants to be able
to say “we have art” and “there is lots of education”. Its aim is to redefine
existing activities to the point where it becomes impossible to complain that
they no longer exist. Mediocracy has two approaches to transforming culture. Dumbing down involves coarsening and
trivialising output to the point where it becomes stupefying rather than
enlightening. Sexing up involves wrapping up the trivial and vacuous
in jargon and technique, in order to render it sufficiently opaque for its
vacuity to be concealed. Often both qualities are combined, resulting in a
low-grade product with a veneer of esoteric complexity. * * *
* * The underlying ethic of mediocracy is not obvious,
because it is not the same as that which it professes. What mediocracy claims
to prize above all else is fairness, usually conceived in terms of
equality. But a mediocracy never becomes particularly equal, however much it
indulges in ostensibly equalising policies. A mediocratic
society is as hierarchical as any other. Mediocracy seeks socialisation rather than
equality. What it wants is not for everyone to be equal, but for everyone to
be equally answerable to the collective. It wishes to reinstate the social
group (tribe, nation, global village) to centre stage, after a hiatus during
which control was lost to the asocial individual. The world of mediocracy is one in which not much matters, except
asserting the primacy of ‘social’ values. This determination to put the
social first means that a number of things are sacrificed, e.g. liberties,
privacy, genuine diversity. Sometimes the sacrifices are acknowledged,
more often they are glossed over. The main reward for these sacrifices is the
supposed ‘niceness’ of mediocracy — a society that
is more caring and fair, and in which there is more cultural opportunity for
everyone. But in fact there is nothing caring or fair about a mediocratic society. Nor is there more genuine
opportunity. The selling points of mediocracy are illusory. The main distinguishing feature of the mediocratic
ethic is dishonesty. Mediocracy stresses the importance of one thing while
engendering its opposite. Some of the time this dishonesty is concealed. But,
as in Orwell’s 1984, mediocracy’s ability to
brandish contradictions is also part of its power. Integral to mediocracy is a new image of the individual. The
model of what it means to be human has become ‘emancipated’ — freed from the
myths of religion and enlightened by the discoveries of biology and
psychiatry. According to the new model, the individual is little more than a
bag of physiology, ruled by lust and greed. If he has qualities that are not
entirely captured by mechanical explanations, they are attributed to his
being a social animal, and to having a cultural heritage determined by his
upbringing. Ironically, this change in the image of the individual is linked
to what in a mediocracy is called individualism, an ethos supposedly
associated with a decline in respect for traditional sources of authority.
The term ‘individualism’ is misleading, since what actually declines is respect for all individuals. A mediocracy
‘knows’ that anyone with a potential claim to significance is merely human,
and therefore predictable and somewhat contemptible. This pseudo-individualism, a crucial feature of mediocracy, illustrates the mediocratic
tactic of appearing to support the opposite of its real agenda — a strategy
which helps to mislead potential critics. In fact, mediocracy is anti, not
pro, the individual. It encourages people to make choices only to the extent
those choices are trivial. * * *
* * A mediocracy appears to be post-everything. Its citizens have
seen it all and done it all. They know that everything is taped, that
everything has been explained and reduced. There are no important mysteries
left. There are no principles worth fighting for. All has been deconstructed
and demystified. This sense of total scepticism is however somewhat illusory.
Mediocracy may appear to favour debunking, but it is a highly selective
debunking. There are many things which the citizens of a mediocracy are not sceptical of, but
dogmatically accept. They believe that science explains rather than merely
predicts, and that it is the only thing that does; that state education is a
good idea; that everyone is driven by sex; that less inequality is better
than more; that redistribution is morally admirable; that belief in national
superiority is bad. On the other hand, there is a sense in which nothing is really
important enough in a mediocracy to be taken seriously. Everything is
flexible, contingent, subject to expediency. A moral injunction may seem
unshakeable — e.g. one must never be rude about other races, or treat women
like chattels — but one should not be surprised if blatant transgressions, in
a suitable context, are tolerated with equanimity. It is all part of the mediocratic message: society is free to forbid or allow
as arbitrarily as it pleases; the individual’s role is not to question but to
obey. The tolerance of double standards is crucial to mediocracy. Much
of its ideology conflicts so blatantly with common sense that the mass
cheerfully ignores it, or pays it no more than lip service. The fact that the
mass does not take up the received wisdom with the ideal level of enthusiasm
is accepted as unavoidable. Members of the intelligentsia, on the other hand,
are required to (and do) take mediocratic ideology
very seriously indeed. If they fail to, they are liable to find themselves
ejected from their positions and their livelihoods threatened. This suggests
that it is primarily the intelligentsia at whom the ideology is targeted. * * *
* * The key characteristics of culture in a mediocracy are grimness,
boredom and dishonesty. Mediocracy’s high culture
is depressing, vacuous and pretentious. Its popular culture is ugly,
aggressive and degraded. If cultural deterioration is acknowledged in a mediocracy, it is
blamed on marketisation. The implication is that
cultural products are somehow traded more than they used to be, which is
specious. Culture has always been bought and sold, and would not get produced
at all without someone to pay for it. What is different about a mediocratic
market for culture is that purchasing power is in the hands of the mass
consumer and the state, rather than those of a small
elite. The characteristics of the prevailing culture will therefore reflect
the tastes of the mass, and the ideological preferences of the political
class, rather than the tastes of the bourgeoisie. This point — that it is
empowerment of the mass and of the collective which drives cultural change in
a mediocracy — is ideologically unpalatable and therefore suppressed. It is
more convenient to blame the market, especially as this can be used to
justify intervention. One way to think about culture in a mediocracy is to consider
the mediocratic demand that everything should be
determined collectively. It is clear that much of the cultural landscape
society inherited was not the result of collective deliberations, but of
individual decisions facilitated by unequal distributions of resources. In
other words, from the collective’s point of view, our cultural progress was
accidental and unintentional. Once we move to a more egalitarian model, the question arises,
what is it that the collective wants? One could postulate that it simply
wants more of the cultural products it now takes for granted,
and only needs to make up its mind how to get them. (Do we need to have markets?
Must we allow inequality? How much inequality?) But mediocracy may be easier
to understand if we adopt the hypothesis that the collective does not care
particularly about culture, and is prepared to sacrifice it for the sake of
the ‘ethical’ goal of re-subordinating the individual to society. Fabian Tassano December
2007 |