• CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Carlin:

      You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your f**kin’ retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.

      Very prescient, except for the fact that they’ll soon be skipping over the worker part right to automation all up and down the line and there will not be any UBI for the “useless eaters”.

    • They want their own children to be educated in private schools and by tutors not available to common people, and everyone else just educated enough to do their jobs and work for them.

      Maybe a few scholarships especially targeted at a few poor “gifted” children, that produce false hope and additional shame if you can’t be “good” enough for one of those scholarships.

      • LupusBlackfur@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        No…

        They don’t want anyone actually educated…

        They want their kids groomed in the appropriate cult thinking and they want everyone else’s kids groomed in the appropriate fealty to their chosen/anointed/deserving cult members.

        🤦‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️ 🙄

        • Hm, I get the sentiment, and while I think that can be a dynamic to consider, I know authoritarian systems often have this dynamic, where the upper class believes themselves to be worthy of “forbidden” knowledge. Take Kim Jong-un having been sent to school in Switzerland, the Nazi top brass collecting and enjoying otherwise censored/forbidden media, many early modern philosophers staying alive by tutoring the children of aristocrats and later industrialists, with knowledge that wouldn’t be allowed for the “common rabble”.

          Now, they indeed are in the conflict of wanting their children to be obedient extensions of themselves and at the same time wanting them to be competent enough to carry on and be useful to their own legacy. That has been a pretty inherent conflict to patriarchical systems, including those in contemporary capitalism, basically ever since class society has been a thing. But overall, they do want at least the children they expect to take their place one day, to be competent enough to withstand the “dog-eat-dog”-world they favour, which often includes education on “alternative thinking”.

          You are right, though, of course, that all those things will still be viewed through their ideological lens. Historical developments like class conflict has to be taught from their perspective, for example, and with the moral stance of the ruling class on it. Knowledge will often only be superficially understood, so they can feel superior in “knowing” it, without risking proper engagement. But those dynamics are also very old and widespread even today. I remain with my position of thinking, that they do want an “elite” education for themselves, including things otherwise deemed inappropriate or even forbidden. Hypocrisy is an integral part of authoritarian systems.

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Great point. But I think it’s even more than that. Not only do they want kids uneducated, they don’t want them to be happy or well-adjusted. They want an legion of angry, resentful, miserable, malleable subordinates.