I love this insight from Matthew Arnold; it’s from his Culture and Anarchy.
This is the social idea; and the men of
culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are
those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying
from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas
of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth,
difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it to make it efficient
outside the clique of the cultivated and learned , yet still reaming the best knowledge and thoughts of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness
and light.
(HT to my close friend Lyle Albaugh.)



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{ 5 comments }
Just more "right wing Republian Christian" propaganda!
I like culture myself (I mean 'high' culture of the kind that Arnold advocated), but culture is the opposite of quality-promoting. Because one can only be cultured by immersion, especially at an early age – but by prolonged contact, so that one absorbs the correct manners, style, accent and attitudes. Therefore an emphasis on culture always (albeit often unwittingly) promotes class rigidities.
Re: my comment above – I intended to write equality-promoting, not quality-promoting…
Confusing, I expect…
God himself decreed inequality by allowing those to be born with differing intelligence, physical capabilities.
The cultured person is a curious person. He/she wants more knowledge.
Book for students who are curious about economics:
New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought
by Todd G Buchholz