David Mamet: The Secret Knowledge

5

Compare Thorstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts , 1914: “For the basis of settled habit goes to sustain the institutional fabric of received sophistications, and these sophistications are bound in such a network of give-and-take that a disturbance of the fabric at any point will involve more or less of a derangement throughout. This body of habitual principle and preconceptions is at the same time the medium through which experience receives those elements of information and insight on which workmanship is able to draw in contriving ways and means and turning them to account for the uses of life.”

6

See also the grand visions of Urban Planning, which destroyed the Black Neighborhood, Welfare, which destroyed the Black Family, and Affirmative Action, which is destroying the Black Youth.

7

Consider the congruent phenomenon of the response to the inevitable failure of Government Programs. These Good Ideas—the Great Society, the War on Poverty, etc.—as above, upon inevitable failure, spawn increased governmental programs to “complete” their “work”—their failure being, inevitable again, ascribed to underfunding.

8

The mastery of skills is, more basically, essential, as inculcating the practical approach to problems: that is, “What am I trying to accomplish, is it worthwhile, what are its probable costs, where might I go for guidance, what tools do I require, how may I judge my progress?” These tools are the necessary precondition of any success in the world, whether in changing a tire or in supporting a family. As obvious as it is to state, the test, “How will I know when I am done?” seems to have escaped the voters on the Left. “When,” they might be asked, “will there be enough ‘Social Justice’? When will there be enough redistributing of wealth? When will there be enough ‘equality’?” This inability, in the electorate, to frame actual, practicable goals is exploited, first by the demagogue, and then by the dictator he may become or who replaces him; for, in the totalitarian state, nothing is enough, and, so the “Programs” must always continue.

9

Liberal Arts colleges have also traditionally sold their wares on the claim that such will allow the students to “discover themselves.” It is no accident that decades of such advertising have attracted and produced graduates who are unfitted for society, who can survive only through parental or institutional subvention, as intellectuals, as soi-disant “artists” or as “drifters.” Who does not know the thirty-year-old described by his parents as “still searching for himself?” By forty this person is, by his parents, generally not described at all, for to do so would be either to skirt or to employ the term “bum+.” It is not the purpose of the university to allow or to help students “find themselves,” but to fit them to take a place in and contribute to their society. How may endorsing and prolonging the impenetrable solipsism of adolescence do so? It cannot and it has not.

10

The intellectual may dismiss their importance (confirmation, baptism, Bar Mitzvah, marriage) but, in so doing, he does not obviate, but merely postpones and camouflages their appearance.

The contemporary youth, pampered in perpetual adolescence through college and graduate school, is spared, or, it may be said, is unaware of the necessity that self-sufficiency is a prerequisite for marriage.

He lives in a serial nonpledged monogamy, in ad-lib cohabitation. This is preceded by no awe-provoking exchange of oaths, or reminder of his (now legal) duties.

When he tires, and eventually marries, the ceremony will be understood as supererogatory—has he not engaged in cohabitation several times before? He knows how to live with a woman, he has done it many times.

The awesomeness of an oath, and the meaning of his signature on a legal document

committing him to various responsibilities, will occur to him—though only at the end of his marriage. They, in their totality are known as “divorce,” which has, in our day, replaced marriage as the culturally determined ritual signifying “leaving home.”

The ceremony of beginning one’s new home, of separating from one’s parents, originally ending in marriage, with desire and joy, has been replaced and is now attended by rancor and shock: the community has finally insisted upon its rights.

11

In 1998 Daimler-Benz, and the Chrysler Corporation, of the U.S. were engaged in prolonged negotiations regarding their proposed merger. A sign appeared on the shop floor at Chrysler: “Culture will beat organization every time.” (Paul Ingrassia, Crash Course )

A guest comes to your house. He mentions that he collects and enjoys rare scotch.

It happens that you have just received a bottle of rare scotch, and it sits, unopened, on your sideboard. “I’m not a big scotch drinker,” you say. “I wouldn’t know one from another, but I just received this as a gift. It’s just going to sit there; please, why don’t you take it?”

The guest may accept or decline the gift. Should he accept he is likely to say: “Thank you, but only on the condition that you share it with me.” You open the bottle and the guest pours you both a shot, which you both enjoy with the appropriate comments. When the evening is over, it is not unlikely that the guest will leave without reference to the now-opened bottle. At this point you, the host, are likely to suggest that he take “his” bottle with him. He, again, may accept with thanks, or refuse gracefully. No social norms have been violated.

But consider a similar situation.

The guest arrives, and notes the rare bottle of scotch. You open it, and pour two drinks, and you both remark on its excellence. At the close of dinner you suggest that, as you are not a big scotch drinker, the guest should take the bottle home with him. This is now a gross breach of manners; the guest cannot accept without the taint of greed, he cannot decline without the risk of offense, and, indeed, he has been offended, for he has, now, not been offered a gift, but scraps from your table.

12

See the presumption of courts to award custody of small children to mothers; and California’s community property law, which, however much it presents itself as gender neutral, is, effectively, an acknowledgment that a woman’s period of nubility is limited and irreplaceable. In the above cases the cultural understanding that women and infants must be protected is so deep and ineradicable that even in a climate of supposed “gender neutrality” (see the absurdity of women paying alimony to men), the law assumes the coloration of gender-blindness in order to serve the underlying goal, which is the viability of the culture irrespective of those laws enacted for its supposed betterment.

13

Why is the MA in English literature, film, gender studies, and so on, bagging groceries? Because he is just too old to begin an apprenticeship. That door has closed, and his college career has ensured his fittedness only for the position it was advertised as obviating: a menial job.

14

Those on the Left, generally, do not understand that they are endorsing a position . They understand what, to the Right, would be arguable assumptions, as “beyond question,” or, to use a blunter but more accurate term, “taboo.”

15

Is it “a racist country,” because some television show was hawking as news a group of deranged skinheads posturing? Let’s note the fact that the broadcasters considered it a sufficient novelty to display it as newsworthy. And let us note further that there is no position closed to any African American because of his race. Our laws and our culture as a whole have conclusively rejected racism. Why does it delight the Left to claim the contrary?