I work in tech. I like the work itself and my coworkers are all nice and polite people. But their views on politics, economics and the world in general is complete dogshit.

Elon Musk? The world's biggest brain genius. Demanding fees for healthcare? Very reasonable and necessary. Inheritance tax? An unspeakable injustice. Jordan Peterson? An insightful intellectual. Learning a second foreign language in school? Waste of time when you could have programming classes instead. Learning ancient history in high school? Stupid and useless when you already know you want to work in tech. STEM? The pinnacle of prestigious human knowledge. Humanities? A ridiculous and useless waste of time. Trades? Probably okay if you're too stupid to do something better. Unions? Outdated and useless. Arts? Does not compute.

All they seem to care about is learning how to code, getting a job or starting a business and succeeding at that by being a lone Randian superman. They have no sense of broader solidarity or for the existence of something of value beyond the hamster wheel of the grindset.

I think these people are a product of an educational system that is set up to produce good employees rather than good citizens. University level education will include a few token classes on broader subjects like history or philosophy but staff and students treats them like something to get over with so you can do the important stuff rather than something of importance. And you can hardly blame them, the dog eat dog world of capitalism doesn't reward an engineer for writing sonnets or knowing labour history and consequently students focus their attention on learning stuff that will make them less likely to end up on the bottom of the hierarchy.

In essence generations has been raised to be very skilled in a few practical technical fields while being completely illiterate about everything else.

How do you deal with these people in daily life? With their idiotic reactionary beliefs and their stubborn refusal to acknowledge any form of culture beyond the handful of IP rights white western cishet males are expected to enjoy?

And how do we prevent STEM lord bullshit under socialism?

  • nabana [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    As a former STEM lord who quit Aero eng in their third year because I didn't wanna make weapons for capitalists, they're 100000000% a symptom of our society (but one we will still have to eliminate in a socialist one, but not nearly the same way/magnitude) rather than a something endemic to all societies.

    STEM lords as we have them are a result of the same shit that makes incels, that makes reply guys, that makes debate bros, that makes twitter wine moms, etc.

    There's a reason most of those things have huge overlaps with each other, and it's the crossroads of what America enshrines as it's values. Ignorance coupled with arrogance. These are problems every society faces but America in particular goes out of it's way to nourish them in it's population in order to fuel it's culture war and consumerism, and as a result it's uniquely effective at educating those traits into it's population, especially in unison.

    It's also why even the most educated of them feels confident enough to "share it's expertise" on shit it has absolutely no education or involvement with, etc etc. It's not just the ignorance, it's not just the arrogance, it's the combination and the fact that we naturally select FOR it. It's even celebrated when it fits in the current cultural product, like twitch "celebs" and blue check marks opinions somehow being relevant, conducting interviews, the existence of youtubers, etc etc. The audacity to think that anyone even should hear their take let alone anyone actually wanting to.

    It's a uniquely individualist mindset fostered by generations of imperial core cultural reform, as you alluded to in the education/general literacy points.

    If you keep those things in mind and look back at scientists like Carl Sagan(a socialist) and listen to the way speak about our society, or look at how soviet scientists and astronauts etc were treated and treated their accomplishments (as done by and for the people, etc) even when they were being celebrated they always fostered the view that it was an accomplishment struggled for by all, that it was shared by them all, and that they were all responsible for it's risks and rewards. That a rich society had to be rich in huge and varying fields and specialties and that the same was true of people to understand each other, even (perhaps even especially) when they hyper-specialized in the thing they did best or enjoyed or did the most good for "the team".