David Goodhart; Somewhere Vs. Anywhere people; the conflict between classes

David Goodhart [00:00:00] I mean, in terms of the, the America story, we often, particularly in Europe, we often look at America and think of America as terribly individualistic. You know, you haven't had, you haven't had sort of traditional, you, you don't have welfare, well, you do have a welfare state, but perhaps not as generous as European ones. You haven't had a, a powerful labor movement, socialist movement. I mean, you, you've had both. But they, they, but by European Stan has been relatively weak.

Vance Crowe [00:00:25] I'm Jeremy Laak, a retirement community, CEO, living in Eureka, Illinois, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Well close listeners to the podcast, probably remember Alexandra Kda, the Romanian economist on the podcast, talking about a concept that I became enthralled with somewhere versus anywhere people. And I thought this was such an interesting idea that I did a great deal of research, read some books, ended up watching quite a few hours of video by the author of that idea, a man named David Goodheart on a lark. I decided I would go ahead and write him. It's sometimes hard to write those people that you think, Hey, this is a famous person. They're out putting things into the world. I don't want to interrupt him, but I decided to do it anyway. And David responded and agreed to do an interview in the new year. So that is what we have coming up. And he did not disappoint. He's an eloquent writer, he's an articulate thinker, and really just kind of fun to listen to a person that is a heretic in his own circle. So we're gonna get to that interview in just a second. But one of the things that you'll hear during this interview is I referenced that I've been doing private interviews during the Christmas holiday. I had some time off from giving speeches, and I decided that I would offer an ability for people to hire me to do a private interview with them. I did some with younger kids. I did one with a mom that had had cancer that wanted to make sure her children knew how she felt about them.

Vance Crowe [00:02:00] And then I started doing some with grandparents. People gave it to their grandparents as a gift to be able to get them to talk about all those family memories, those people that they don't want to forget the real story about how something came together or why something worked the way that it did. And I have found that those private interviews with a grandparent are absolutely fantastic. So I'll do any of those interviews. But if you're somebody that's been thinking, grandma and grandpa have been locked away because of COVID and I now realize that we're missing the stories that they have, or, I really wanna make sure we don't miss this opportunity, then go to my store and check this out. You can figure out if this is the right for you. We have a whole bunch of different ways that we can construct the interview. It can be a whole picture of their life map. It can be just stories about raising you as, as a parent or as a grandparent, or it could be about their achievements or problems that they had along the way. And some people just want to talk about family stories that actually came before the grandparents so that your family history can contain those. If you're interested in doing this, check out store Articulate Ventures and go to the private interviews where you can see how you can make a purchase of this for your grandparent or parent. Alright, we are gonna head to this interview with David Goodheart. I hope you enjoy the podcast, and thanks so much for being here. David Goodheart, welcome to the podcast.

David Goodhart [00:03:27] Thank you very much for inviting me.

Vance Crowe [00:03:29] Well, you're invited because a couple of weeks ago I had a fascinating interview with a Romanian economist named Alex Kta, and she's an envelope pusher. Like every single topic we brought up, it was like, woo, this is getting close to the edge. But she described a concept that she attributed to you, the somewhere versus anywhere people, which to me, as soon as I heard that, it solidified a very important concept that I myself had lived. And so as soon as I got off the interview, I started looking you up. I started reading things. You've written, you're a journalist, you've, you've been a provocative editor in different places and a and a book author. So I was delighted when we reached out and you agreed to come on.

David Goodhart [00:04:13] Well, thanks very much for that nice introduction. Yeah, perhaps I should, I'll, I'll just give a bit of background to the, to the anywhere, somewhere idea. I, I wrote a book called The Rotor somewhere back in early 2017. It was the, the original idea of the book had been to write a, a kind of broadly political sociological book about sort of beyond left and right. How those, how, how those old divisions didn't really fit the politics of my country, Britain or indeed Europe or, or indeed the us. And how value, value differences had started to become so much more important. And we've seen that very much, you know, in the last few years. Although it's, it's something that's been, it's been there perhaps slightly hidden in a way in in recent decades. But I I, I, I wrote this book. I, well, I, I started writing it just as the Brexit vote happened in Britain in 2016. And I finished writing it, it was kind of book ended by Brexit and then the election of Donald Trump in, at the end of 2016. And the book came out in March, 2017. And it was seen as rather, well, it, I mean, it, it was, it was far more successful than I expected. I mean, I'm, I'm a not terribly well known British journalist, but I just happened to get the timing absolutely right. And it could, because it offered a kind of explanation.

David Goodhart [00:05:45] It was a, it was a kind of sympathetic, an attempt at a sympathetic understanding of what what is loosely called populism. And, and partly by describing the value divergences that emerged, had emerged, have emerged particularly strongly in, in the last few years through the prism of education substantially that the, the huge expansion, I mean, this happened in the US of course, before most European countries, you know, you get, goes back to the GI Bill of 1944. You know, you had mass higher education, you had mass secondary education, first of all rich countries. And you had mass higher education, first of all rich countries. I mean, indeed in, in America, it started to tail off a bit in, in recent years. But you still have, what, 30 40% of, of, of high school graduates go on to college in one form or another. Europe has now caught up with that. And behind that figure is that there is, there is a, a, a big social gulf has been created, particularly in those countries. And this actually applies more to the uk, more to Britain than it does to most European countries, or indeed even the us, the, the creation of mass higher education and ma and mass residential higher education, meaning that people leave their, their, their town, their, their, where their family has been living, where they went to school, and they, and they travel halfway across the country to go to college. That is particularly true in the uk, which may account for the fact that some of these division value divisions are particularly strong here.

David Goodhart [00:07:24] It it, it applies particularly to the more elite universities in the us. I mean, I, Ivy League universities or liberal arts colleges tend to be residential, but I mean, but about half of, of university students in the US actually continue to live at home or, or, or certainly in their hometown. So you tend often, so, and, and, and, and, and that is a good thing in my view. I mean, there are all sorts of thing, good things to be said about residential universities too. I went to one, perhaps you did two, but it, it, it does mean that people, people create networks and groups that, that become very separate from each other. I mean, if, if you, if you stay in your hometown and go to college, you are still likely to know the people you went to secondary school with, went to high school with. So, you know, you will know plumbers and electricians, even if you have gone off into a more cognitive, you know, a a world of sort of cognitive professional jobs, you will still know people who do, you know, quote unquote ordinary jobs. And, and that that has been less true in the UK because of the, so, so it means that, you know, our entire sort of expanded, you know, the kind of expanded elite if you like, you know, and when I say elite, I don't mean the kind of top 2%. I mean, like the top 25 or 30% tend to meet only people like themselves after they have graduated from college. Anyway. So I mean, that, that is one of the reasons why these value divides. And, and one of the reasons, one of the other reasons the book did so well is because of those two labels that I, that I put on the, the, the two main groups that have emerged, as it were transcending the old class divides or left and right divides.

David Goodhart [00:09:07] Although they overlap, I mean, they, they, they, they, they have a relationship with those old, those old divisions too. But I talked about the people from anywhere as the a a as as that sort of 25, 30% of the population who have been to universities and, and in this country, as I say, mainly residential universities. And so, and so, they tend to value the kinds of things you would expect people who have, you know, they've done well at school, they've gone to, they've gone to decent colleges and they've got decent professional jobs. They tend to therefore, you know, be in favor of mobility. They tend to be in favor of openness. They tend to be in favor of kind of individual autonomy, even though they may often be quite left wing. They claim to be, you know, quite sort of socialistic in their views often. But actually their sense of themselves comes from their own achievements. Indeed. I mean, I borrowed from the American sociologist talk of Parsons, who when talk of Parsons is not, not a great read most of the time. I mean, he, he wrote great sort of chemistry textbooks of, of of functional sociology it was called. But he did come up with this very useful, very useful spectrum when it comes to talking about human identity. He talked about the spectrum between achieved and ascribed identities. Now we all have a bit of both, you know, ascribed being the things that, that are kind of inherent to you that you can't escape. You know, you are white male, you come from a certain place, you belong to a certain group, et cetera, et cetera.

David Goodhart [00:10:41] Achieved identities though, or the things that, you know, as, as the word suggests, things that you have achieved in your own life. So, you know, if you belong to the anywhere group, you know, you have a sense of yourself as, as having, you know, like I say, you've done well at school, you've gone to a good college, you have a more or less successful professional career. It means your sense of yourself is more, or it's autonomous and it's a, it's a reportable. You know, you can go and live in the edgy inner city and still feel perfectly comfortable. But, but many other people, particularly more rooted people, I mean, perhaps this goes for a lot of farming communities too. People who are rooted in particular places, their sense of themselves, their identity comes much more from the place they come from, the group they belong to, that they know that, that, that, you know, that that doesn't make them less, less good people than, than anyways. But it does mean that their sense themselves is more susceptible to being discomforted by rapid change. You know, if, if, if the suburbs start to eat into their, into their farming communities or whatever it is, or indeed the, the farming communities just decline that, that that is a kind of wrench or that that can often be a source of discomfort for people with who, whose identities are based on more ascribed things. And, and so the other group, the, the bigger but less influential group in our society, the, the group I I labeled as somewhere who constitute about about 50% in, in most, most rich democracies these days are probably still people who haven't moved very far from, from where they were born.

David Goodhart [00:12:18] I mean, I think about 60% of British people live within 10 or 15 miles of where they live when they were 14. I mean, America has historically been more mobile than most European countries, although that is actually ceasing to be the case. America indeed. Maybe one of the, one of the sort of, i i the one of the fun, one of the, one of the changes that has contributed to changes in your politics, you, you are actually becoming a less mobile society many ways. But, but, so the somewheres tend to be more rooted, as I say, in in particular places. They tend to be less well educated, not necessarily less clever, but you know, but less, you know, but they haven't gone to fancy universities on the whole, I mean, there are some people with sort of somewhere as values who, who do go to elite universities. I mean, it's not obviously the, I'm talking in sort of averages, but, you know, so somewhere people, people I I gave the label somewhere to tend to be, as I say, more rooted, less well educated. And so they, you know, they tend to value the things that, that we would expect people with that, that it, that sort of history to value. So they value more security familiarity, partly just, you know, partly as a protection to that, to that, to, to that identity. Because it is, it is more, it is more susceptible, as I say, to discomfort. But just to, just to finish briefly on this, so I mean, th those have, you know, obviously a lot of people criticize this, you know, that's very simplistic.

David Goodhart [00:13:52] It's very binary. And of course it is. I mean, I, but, but I mean, just to, just to make it clear, I invented the labels anywhere in somewhere, and they, and they, it was one of the reasons the book did so well, they kind of struck a chord. I didn't invent the, the, the, the value groups, the worldviews that these, these groups carry. Of course it doesn't apply to every single individual, but yeah. But I, I, I derived these, these worldviews from looking at objective data. I mean, to the extent that survey data what people say about their beliefs is objective. I mean, I looked at things that British attitude surveys, opinion surveys are something called the British Attitude Surveys, British social Attitude surveys been, it's been, we've been collecting data on people's values and attitudes for sort of 40 years going back now, you know, pretty large samples of people. And, you know, and, and the, these value groups really do exist. You know, I invented the labels. I didn't invent the value groups. And the other thing I wanna say is that final finally is that both of these value groups, and, and, and of course there are, there are subdivisions within them. Indeed there's a very big group I call the, the Inbetweeners who, who are almost equally share the, the two worldviews. But, but, but yeah, my final point is that both of these worldviews are perfectly decent and, and, and, and legitimate worldviews. It's just that on certain pretty fundamental things, they, they conflict and, and the, the kind of priorities that anywhere people have are very different to the kind of priorities that somewhere people have.

David Goodhart [00:15:24] And the task of our, of modern politics is to try and build bridges across these, these value divides and find common ground something we haven't been doing particularly well in the last few years. But I think, you know, I mean, hopefully, you know, as time passes we'll sort of get better at it.

Vance Crowe [00:15:39] I think there's somewhere anywhere people, the nomenclature captures an idea, at least very clear in my mind of something that I see all around me when I had a chance when I was younger to move to California. And there I was living on the rocky shores. It was absolutely gorgeous. The being in that place was fantastic, but I really disliked the people that made that place up. And the way that I describe it is that it was a bunch of individuals that didn't like where they were living before. Yeah. So they moved out to California imagining that everything would get better. And what you have then is a bunch of individuals. And if I were to compare that against a place like New Jersey, which I moved after California,

David Goodhart [00:16:18] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [00:16:19] I found this to be filled with families and gatherings and, and you know, suddenly I found myself going to Italian Sunday dinners and all, all kinds of like, community based things. And I realized people don't live in New Jersey 'cause they love the commutes or the, you know, industrial skyline. They live there because of their people. And and you can juxtapose those two communities. To me, that seems like you named something that was clear in front of everybody, but until you put a name to it, you couldn't really do anything with the idea.

David Goodhart [00:16:52] Hmm. Oh, well, well, that, well, well, I, I hope it did help people think through some of the, some of the new conflicts that we're living with. And I do think, I mean, I mean, in terms of the, the America story, we often, particularly in Europe, we often look at America and think of America as terribly individualistic. You know, you haven't had, you haven't had sort of traditional, you, you don't have welfare, well, you do have a welfare state, but perhaps not as generous as European ones. You haven't had a, a powerful labor movement, socialist movement. I mean, you, you've had both. But they, they, but by European standards been relatively weak. And so we think, we think of America as a very individualistic place, which I think is wrong. I mean, it's actually a very communitarian country made up, mainly of those, those communities that you were describing in New Jersey. I mean, that, that doesn't necessarily make it a, a, a kind of a necessarily a very happy place all the time because, you know, strong commitments to, to groups often creates conflict with other groups. But it's, but it's less individualistic in some ways in many European countries. I mean, indeed the apotheosis of individualism, you find, you know, in the most social democratic countries in the world in Scandinavia, where something like 40% of the population live in single person households. And you, and so your relationship is, it's the kind of individual in the state, and, and you don't have the kind of, you know, the stuff of life. Those intermediating intermediating sort of, you know, that like family and community and neighborhood are, obviously they exist too in Sweden, but they're kind of, they're, they're less significant hugely individualistic countries, partly because of, ironically, partly because of the power of the state or other, the, you know, the fact that that family is so much less important in a, in a country like Sweden or Finland or Norway, means that the state then takes, tends to take on more responsibility.

Vance Crowe [00:18:43] Do you think that that anywhere people or the, the personality traits that make somebody decide, Hey, I wanna get out of this place, I wanna move to another location and have these kind of transactional relationship. Is that something that happens as a matter of culture change? Or is that inborn in the people as a part of their personality set and they're just now able to activate on it?

David Goodhart [00:19:07] Yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting question. And, and I, I think, I mean, the basic answer is I don't really know, and I'm, I'm not, but you know, it'd be a really good subject of research. I mean, I mean, I think, you know, I think we're all divided souls in a way. I mean, I think, you know, we can all, you know, I mean, it's like the, the the kind of, you know, we all want both freedom and security and, but they sort of, they pull against each other. You could say translating in terms of modern political terms, you could say, you know, we all enjoy diversity. The, the, you know, the, you know, the freedom to enjoy different kinds of things and mix with different kinds of people. But we also, we also want solidarity and community. And the two things, again, are sort of intention. And, you know, politics is sometimes is often about trying to sort of balance those, those conflicting the human impulses that we have, you know, in, in most human hearts. But I, I mean, I, I don't know. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, the modern world has created many more anyways. I mean, I mean, my book was, was one of the reasons why it was seen as in a way quite sympathetic to modern populism, is that it was, it was kind of an argument against, part of my explanation for why populism had emerged is because anywheres had become overmighty without even necessarily recognizing it. They, you know, they had, you know, gradually in the last 30, 40 years in particular since, since the kind of decline of traditional industries, perhaps also, you know, the decline of traditional communities like farming communities, you know, with the, the movement into kind of post-industrial so-called knowledge economy, the, you know, changing relations between men and women, you know, moving into a, a, a much more fluid and uncertain world and what, which is often one in which more highly educated people can flourish, you know, for, for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, part partly because they have, they, they indeed have designed this world partly to fit in, to fit with their own, their, their own preferences and priorities.

David Goodhart [00:21:18] And, and, you know, often believing genuinely that, you know, that, that these preferences and priorities are, are something that, that everybody wants and everybody should share. And, and there, of course, there are some things that, that, that anyways have promoted that everybody does want. But there are also particular things, you know, like the, like just openness, you know, let's have open borders or semi-open borders. You know, this is something, you know, if you are a highly paid professional, this is not gonna undermine your income. This is not going to, and, and, and if you have that achieved identity, that portable achieved sense of yourself that I talked about earlier, you know, it is, you know, your, if your neighborhood suddenly fills up with, you know, people with who speak a different language to you or have very different norms to you, it's not gonna be particularly discombobulated. You, you know, you are, you are a mobile kind of person and you can, you know, if you don't like it, you can move on. So, you know, a a a lot of, a lot of the kind of public priorities of, of rich democracies in recent decades have been, have been driven forward by anyways. And, and, and populism is in part, you know, cer certainly the, the more kind of mainstream as it were, the sort of decent, the decent bits of populism. I mean, I'm not talking obviously about kind of the extreme right, or, but, but what I call decent populism is partly a reaction against anywhere over domination of our politics.

Vance Crowe [00:22:42] Yeah. You know, I was watching one of your BBC, it was like a two minute episode where you did on this somewhere, anywhere, people, and I'm watching it on my VR headset, which I, I, this is the way that I do research for people that I'm gonna interview because I can't look at anything else when you're watching a video in vr. So you do this closeup on you. And during the closeup you said it's not wrong for people to want to be around people that look and sound like them. And I genuinely winced. 'cause I was like, oh man, you are not allowed to say that. You're not like David just broke a big rule. And so did you get pushback on that? Was that something that you did, did you feel that when you were saying it well, that that was gonna get you in trouble?

David Goodhart [00:23:30] Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'd already, I'd already been through the mill on, on quite a lot of that stuff. I mean, I actually, I mean, I, I I, I mean I I I come from quite a privileged background. My dad was actually a politician. I went to a private school. I, I'm, I'm from a kind of upper, upper middle class background, actually. I'm actually half American. I've got two American grandfathers. I'm actually related to the Lehman family on my father's side. My grandfather, my great-grandmother was the daughter of Maya Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers. But unfortunately, most of the money ran out by the time it got down to our generation. But, but I, but I kind of, I, I kinda reacted against my, my dad was a conservative politician and I kinda reacted against that. I was a, I was a lefty when I was at college. And

Vance Crowe [00:24:23] How much of a lefty when you were at college? Oh,

David Goodhart [00:24:25] A pretty damn lefty. I mean, I,

Vance Crowe [00:24:26] Claire Fox, like socialist kind of, yeah.

David Goodhart [00:24:30] Oh yeah, very much so. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of flirted with the, with the Trotskyists, you know, I mean, I mean, I went, you know, I went, I went to a famous public school and my dad was a toy mp. I didn't really have very much choice, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:24:43] You had to rebel.

David Goodhart [00:24:44] Yeah. But I, I then spent the most of the next sort of 30 years coming back to somewhere closer to the center when I was still broadly, you know, in American terms, I was still broadly liberal. I set up a magazine called Prospect a monthly magazines, or based loosely on things like the Atlantic Monthly, you know, you've got this great, great magazine tradition that we don't really have, I mean, kind of essay based magazines, you know, longer pieces, five, six, 7,000 word essays. And I, I tried to, well, well, I did set up a magazine called Prospect. It's still going today. And, and it, but in, in the, I mean, one of the things we did at Prospect was kind of, even though we were, we were kind of part of the loosely kinda liberal, leftish liberal world. So, you know, we supported new labor when Tony Blair became Prime Minister in the late nineties. But I wrote an essay. I mean that, sorry, that, that, that's a detour to explain why I, I was quite used to being considered beyond the pale by a lot of liberals, is that I wrote an essay in 2004 called Too Diverse Question Mark. And it was directed very much at, at modern liberalism saying, look, there's a conflict here between your two most cherished ideas. The idea of diversity and the idea of solidarity, you know, and just taking a common sense view of human psychology that you are more likely to trust and, and be willing to share with people who you have something in common with. Now, you don't actually have to look like them or even pray to the same God as them, but you have to share norms or experiences or something.

David Goodhart [00:26:17] And, you know, and the people who are sort of thrusting diversity is the ultimate good down our throats the whole time. Don't seem to kind of get that, you know, if you want to. I mean, you know, you can have lots of diversity if you don't mind living in a hyper individualistic society where people don't share their, their, their, their, their tax income to, to have decent, you know, welfare services, decent pensions or, or, or, or health services or whatever. But, so, you know, you need to keep some sort of reign on the, or how fragmented and diverse your society is becoming, you know, if, if you want a high degree of sharing. And it seemed to me common sense in a way. Anyway, the, that essay, it was kind of 5,000 word essay, and it was printed the entire thing. Obviously with my permission, it was printed in the main sort of left liberal newspaper here, the Guardian. And that, that caused pushing

Vance Crowe [00:27:11] Back against the sacred words. You're not supposed to go against the sacred words.

David Goodhart [00:27:16] Anyway, that did cause, you know, so that was my first experience of being sort of a, a heretic, as it were from my own liberal tribe. So

Vance Crowe [00:27:24] Were you tossed out in the way that you would be today if you, if you came out with such heresy?

David Goodhart [00:27:29] Well, I mean, in some ways, I guess I, I hadn't really thought of that before actually. But I guess I was lucky that in a way this happened before the era of social media. So, you know, I didn't, I didn't get the kind of pile on that I would've got today for, for writing such a thing. But there was, you know, there was huge debates in The Guardian about it. And when I then became, it was interesting 'cause it was a time when, you know, immigration was, was increasing very fast. And I was, you know, I was a mass immigration skeptic. And I, you know, partly for the reasons I, I've just described, and I was also a little bit skeptical about multiculturalism, again, for the reasons I've described them. And I think, I mean, you know, it depends what you mean by multiculturalism, of course. But I mean, you know, if you allow, you know, if you say to people, you know, come here, come, come and live in this country and just be yourself. You know, you don't have to make any adaptation to it. Don't, don't, you don't need to learn English. You don't need to adopt the kind of common norms of our, of our society. You know, that seemed to, that form of multiculturalism and what might call sort of laissez-faire multiculturalism is, is an absolute disaster. It seemed to me. So I was a multiculturalism skeptic, and a mass immigration skeptic partly derived from that, that the sort of diversity versus solidarity or the, or, or, or, you know, the tension that I saw between those two. No, you know, it's not, it's not an unovercomeable tension, you know, you can, you can overcome the, or you can mitigate tension, but, but you know, you have to, you have to worry about it. You have to think carefully about it. Anyway, that I, I, I sort of became for the BBC, you know, the main, the main sort of official source of news on TV and radio.

David Goodhart [00:29:14] I, I became the sort of go-to guy, the, the, the liberal who was skeptical about immigration and multiculturalism. So, you know, because, you know, the BBC tends itself to be quite liberal. So, but I was, I was an acceptable person to come on and say, you know, immigration is too high. 'cause they couldn't get, you know, a kind of, you know, someone, someone who'd been saying that for, for decades, you know, a conservative person saying it was unacceptable.

Vance Crowe [00:29:39] That's not interesting. Right. The interesting thing is, there's a liberal here that thinks this,

David Goodhart [00:29:43] Which

Vance Crowe [00:29:44] Is against the grain. Yeah,

David Goodhart [00:29:46] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:47] So as you are talking, it's, it strikes me, for anybody that's only listening to it, they don't realize that just over your shoulder, you have the Tower of Babel, which is well painted onto a, onto a picture in your wall. The, but like I, it strikes me that the anywhere people are encouraging a future of which, like other cultures in our past, the Bible stories of the Tower of Babel have said, be careful, right? Like the, the carefulness of the story of the Tower of Babel, to me is more than just having hubris that you think you can build a, a tower to God. But it, but it also of we can just keep pushing things together and it will just work. Because as soon as they spoke different languages, as soon as they thought different things, they scattered out. Where is your thought on this, this concept of the Tower of Babel and how it fits with somewhere and anywhere people?

David Goodhart [00:30:43] Yeah, I, I'd never really thought about the, the decorations in my front room as being so relevant to the things I've been writing about. But you are right. And of course, the Tower of Babel, people often forget that, as it were, the reason why the Tower of Babel became impossible to build. You know, it's, it's a construction site because God was reacting against the hubris, the, the human hubris that we could build this great tower to heaven. It's the same, it's the same kind of, I mean, that, that hubris is evil is also, of course, one of the themes of Milton's paradise loss. You know, the devil is a very attractive figure in paradise loss, which is often rather confused people. But, but, but he's kind of, he, he's, he's a kind of rational, a rationalist. He hubristic rationalist. And, and you could indeed say that kind of, you know, anywhere, you know too, you know, too much kinda anywhere thinking has that, that doesn't take account of certain fundamental sort of truths of, of, of human wellbeing in a way, you know, the, the need to belong somewhere, the need to be, you know, to feel part of something bigger than yourself, to feel part of a, of a tribe, if you like. Now, you know, it could, in, in modern societies, it can and indeed should be a porous tribe, you know, that one that you know, does welcome other people that people, you know, people, but still something, you know, a structure that you are, that you are part of. And, you know, and, and, you know, anywhere thinking does, as I said earlier, tend to be very, I mean, even though, you know, anywhere thinking is more associated with the left than the right to use the old fashioned terms, I mean, anywhere tend to be very individualistic.

David Goodhart [00:32:27] And they, you know, or, you know, modern liberalism for want of a better word, you know, has, has not, you know, one of, one of its weaknesses has been its inability to deal with the, the, you know, the human desire to belong and, and, and, and, and, and to feel continuity in your life, and indeed to respect tradition, you know, not uncritically, but you know, that, that actually we've done things in a certain way for a very long time because they work quite well. Now, we may want to amend them, but we don't necessarily wanna chuck them out completely and start again. I mean, the, you know, that, that hubristic rationalism of, you know, you could save a lot of modern woke culture too. So, you know, in relations between men and women, for example, you know, we, of course things have changed and, you know, most mainstream, most of mainstream society in the US or or Europe now accepts a, a kind of a, a, an underlying equality between men and women that, that, you know, three or four generations ago would've been seen as slightly eccentric. Now it's part of common sense, but that doesn't mean to say that we think that men and women are the same, or that we should just completely junk a, a a gender division of labor. I mean, of course we shouldn't, you know, I mean, it's sort of, again, but that, you know, this is, this is what a lot of, a lot of people, you know, so people complain about gender pay gap, which is, which is primarily the result of, of the preference of, of female preferences.

David Goodhart [00:34:02] I mean, you know, women, not all, but most women want to have children. They want to have families. And for a period when children are very young, they want to put family first or, or at least, or at least be able to work part-time. And if you work part-time, you know, it's, it's much, it's, you know, you know, whereas men still, you know, to through that period tend to still put a bigger focus of their, of their lives, goes into their, it goes into their working life. And I mean, that, that, you know, that that's not gonna change. And, but it, but a lot of, but you know, the, the attempt to sort of de-legitimize that seems to be completely wrongheaded. I mean, what we want is for people to have the choice, what we want women to have the choice. You know, some women, you know, don't wanna have kids at all, wanna have kids and go straight back to work, you know, they've got successful professional careers, but lots of women want, you know, as it were, kinda more, more conventional ability to, to, to be able to afford to stay at home when children are very young and so on. And, you know, I mean, I think that's one of the, one of the kind of weaknesses of modern feminism is it's become kind of illiberal almost. And, and it kind of looks down on women who have more traditional priorities.

Vance Crowe [00:35:17] My wife and I had to have like a real crisis of conscience, right? We had gotten married in DC and knew we didn't wanna be there, so we moved to St. Louis, but we had careers we wanted to do. Neither of us wanted to say, yes, I'm willing to commit 50% of my time to raising the kids. So we just kept pushing it off, not realizing like, there are some natural laws here that you don't get to ignore, and it doesn't matter how much fashion or culture says that. Like, you don't have to worry about this. And we did. And it was extremely difficult. And I, that, that actually leads me to a, a, a change in society that I think modern feminism celebrates as an obvious and absolute good birth control. And all the way up until just in the last few years did I even realize like, hey, there actually is a rather dramatic downside, and maybe not even downside. It's just a cost benefit that comes with, with adding in the ability to time out when you get pregnant, changes culture so dramatically Mm.

David Goodhart [00:36:26] That

Vance Crowe [00:36:27] We weren't prepared for how many other knock on effects would ha would happen there. And I think we're still feeling the residual waves hitting our culture because of the changes that happen to society from birth control.

David Goodhart [00:36:41] Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously it's, you, it has been a great advance for, for women and you, and, and, and perhaps indeed for society as a whole, the fact that women are able to control their fertility in ways that they couldn't even a few generations back. You know, it does open up opportunities for women that the, that that were not as common in the past. But yeah, I mean, like most advances, most advances have have hidden costs too. And I mean, actually an interesting, another, another example of that is the, and it was probably true in the US as it was in Europe. There was a, in effect, a kind of glass ceiling for, for women, you know, right up until the kinda immediate post war period anyway. I mean, it started breaking down in the fifties and the sixties. I mean, thankfully, but there was a, there were kind of, you couldn't, you couldn't, do you, you couldn't rise above a certain level in the civil service. Certainly not if you were, if you were married and had children, but, and you couldn't, you know, you were, you, were, you, you, I mean, well, there are huge areas, you know, you couldn't, many women couldn't go to universities until the beginning of the 20th century and so on. But one of the, one of the sort of unintended benefits of that, that we've, and we've sort of experienced the loss of, but it's one of those things that's rather hard to kind of talk about or write about is that when there, when there was quite a low glass ceiling for women, certain sectors got huge free lunch.

David Goodhart [00:38:17] I mean, at my, so you got absolutely brilliant women running primary schools, you know, running, running hospital wards, you know, the, the people, you know, may, you know, as recently sort of sixties and seventies, absolutely brilliant, women were doing those things. So particularly public services had a huge free lunch from enjoying the, the, the skills and the abilities of the very top, you know, like the kind of the top 5% of women were, were often doing those quite as it were, sort of middling jobs because they weren't able to, or they, you know, they, they couldn't go to university or whatever. They, they weren't able to to become partners in, in, in, in big law firms. Now the daughters of, of, of those brilliant women are, are now partners in, in big, you know, financial, financially focused law firms or whatever sort of the pinnacle of, of sort of success is seen as these days. So, and indeed, I mean, I think it's one of the reasons why the state in many ways works less well than it used to is because those, those brilliant women are no longer working in those, in the, you know, in those sort of, in those public services, or not to the same extent, but actually,

Vance Crowe [00:39:34] Wow, that is an idea worth flagging. I that never considered that.

David Goodhart [00:39:40] Well, my, my mother-in-law was actually quite a good example of that. I mean, she had two, she was, she was actually from Australia. She had a degree from Melbourne University and a degree from Oxford and became, but she became a secondary school teacher. She became head of the English department in a, in a, in a secondary school, like a high school in North London. And was one of those sort of famous teachers who, you know, people sort of talk, talk about years later. So, you know, my wife, you know, would often, oh, you know, oh, you mean your Deborah Callaway's daughter, you know, people, I mean, she was obviously an absolutely fantastic teacher. No, and all her kids, my wife became a very successful journalist. Her, her, her brother works in finance, you know, that her, her sisters also had a very successful career also, at least partly in journalism. And, you know, and they, you know, that they, and, and, and that's great. You know, I mean they, they've had the freedom to, to do things that, that perhaps their mother, their mother deliberately chose, I think, to, to, to do that job, to, so she could enjoy school holidays and bringing them up.

Vance Crowe [00:40:50] David, dammit. You like, you are blowing my mind and every time I, I listen to interviews with you, so I do a thing where I do private interviews, a lot of times people will hire me to interview their grandparents or, you know, one grandfather. And so in these conversations, because people, they're not going out publicly. People say what they really think. Yeah. And I, I have talked with several older women in their eighties, nineties even. Well, yeah, almost a hundred. And what you're describing is exactly what they did with their lives. Yeah. Right? They, they,

David Goodhart [00:41:22] I, and it would've been very frustrating to them. I mean, I'm, I'm not saying we should go back to that for one moment, be, you know, because they, they would, you know, they, but, but they, yeah, I mean, but they were an amazing, amazingly beneficial group to, you know, and I mean, actually, yeah, well, somebody should write a book about it. I mean, the kind of the foundation of the, of modern public services and welfare state was, was often driven by extremely able women, you know, who, who they, they weren't necessarily running the whole show, but they were, like I say, you know, primary school head mistresses and so on, and oh, running, running

Vance Crowe [00:41:55] Medical systems that for, for that were incredibly sophisticated in a place where there's like 200 people in the town, right? But that they needed somebody to be running it so that all the other towns, I I think this is, you know, I think you have a particular skill and the, the, actually the picture behind me, the Tower of Babel reminds me of this. You and Nasem Taleb are quite good at picking out a social phenomena and naming it so that it becomes a pattern language so that other people can say, yes, I see that phenomenon and because I can name it, I can now build on top of it. And one of his ideas, in fact, the one that he uses, the Tower of Babel to describe is called the intransigent Minority. So this is the idea that new ideas don't enter society because the mass, the middle group of people, the majority of people slowly decide something and they, they come along to it. He says, no, that's not how it works. What actually happens is you have ideas that are outside of acceptable in society, right? They're

David Goodhart [00:42:55] Either

Vance Crowe [00:42:55] Radical or just totally abhorrent. And then you have a small group of people that the narrative about who they are and what they want drives that thing forward so hard that other people are like, I I don't just give into 'em. You know, it's, it's, okay. So for example, it could be I only, I only eat kosher, right? So if I only eat kosher, and I demand kosher at all times, then for an orange juice company to do the process, to get it so that it can be kosher, everyone that wants to eat kosher will drink that. And anybody that doesn't care if they eat kosher will drink it also. So you've now pushed that into society.

David Goodhart [00:43:32] Mm. And

Vance Crowe [00:43:33] As I was getting ready for this interview, I was speaking with somebody and they said, ask David if he thinks that the anywhere people are a form of the intransigent minority for liberal western democracies around the world, are they the group of people that are pushing so hard on the mass, the center of, because western democracy is not, the majority of people are not living under western democracy. So are they anywhere people and intransigent minority in some way?

David Goodhart [00:44:03] I, I, I don't think they are particularly intransigent. I mean, be because their, their ideas have become so dominant. But I, but I guess they, they, they were an intransigent minority who've now become the establishment, I suppose. And, and you're now getting a reaction. You, I suppose, you know, the toing and froing of politics can be used, be described perhaps in in terms of, of, I mean, because obviously it's always minorities, often quite small minorities who drive things forward. And, and we've now got a kind of an equal and opposite InTransition minority from the kind of populists more somewhere side of events who have, you know, who've, you know, which threw up Donald Trump, you know, in, you know, in all his kind of weirdness and grotesqueness, you know, he does represent something, you know, a sort of legitimate pushback against the kind of the, you know, anywhere the domination of anywhere liberalism that itself had once been a, a, a minority, as you say. But it does make me think, I mean, I, you know, I'm like, I've just, I've actually, I've just written a follow up book to the road, to somewhere, the anywhere, somewhere book called Head, hand and Heart, which is actually published in the US as well by Simon and Schuster came out at the end of last year, or came out September last year. And when I, I kind of, I I, I borough down further into the, the idea of the kind of educational division that has arisen from, well, the, the kind of educational stratification of our societies that has, that has been the product of mass higher education.

David Goodhart [00:45:36] I think mass higher education is such an important phenomenon and not really sort of studied enough in, in terms of, of how our societies have changed. I mean, you know, they are such a sort of engines of, of, of anywhere values universities. And actually the brilliant book that I, that I drew quite a few of my ideas from is actually was written by a famous American political writer, Daniel Bell, back in the early seventies. I mean, he predicted a lot of, a lot, a lot of the trends that we've seen, the coming of post-Industrial Society was the title of the book. Not, not a terribly exciting title, but it's a really good book. And he talks about how, you know, not only have, so I mean the basic thesis of Head Hand, heart is in the title. I mean the, I'm, I'm arguing that we have in a, in a sense, it's another way of looking at the anywhere somewhere issue that we've, we've, we've allocated far too much reward and prestige and status to one form of human ability, you know, cognitive analytical intelligence kind of exam, passing ability, you know, that sort of pattern. Recogni, you know, one form of it is the sort of pattern recognition ability that allows you to, to do well in an IQ test. I mean, it's not just that. I mean, and, you know, and this is a, this is a, you know, genuinely useful human attribute. And I, you know, I'm not trying to denigrate it. And, and, and obviously, you know, human society needs high intelligence as never before, as you know, we need clever teams of people to work out a vaccine for COVID as, as happily they seems they just have done, we need people to work out how to suck carbon outta the atmosphere, et cetera, et cetera.

David Goodhart [00:47:21] So this is not an argument against high intelligence, but I think we have allocated too much reward and prestige to this one cluster of aptitudes. And, and that inev inevitably drawn it away from those other aptitudes related to, to, to, to, to manual skills and craft and artisanal skills and in and to, and to the, the aptitudes associated with, with, with heart. I mean, caring.

Vance Crowe [00:47:46] So when you say that change the value or the prestige, I mean, how, how do you do that in a market economy?

David Goodhart [00:47:55] Well, I mean, I mean, this, this goes back to the, your sort of theory of change or in transition, minority theory of change. I mean, I think, you know, look at how the business plans of big corporations have been changed over the last 20 or 30 years by say, changing ideas about gender equality, changing ideas about the environment. I mean, they, I mean, obviously some, some companies more than others, but they've massively impacted. And that, you know, behind market signals, lies, you know, human beings and human preferences. And now how those preferences change over time is partly dependent on, on the, on these intransigent minorities, you know, pushing particular, particular agendas. I mean, that's sort of how social change happens. But, you know, but, but market signals don't come from nowhere. They come from somewhere and they, and they can change. And like I say, big corporations have had to adapt to. And, and if they can adapt to changing attitudes, gender equality, changing attitudes to the environment, then they can jolly well adapt to changing attitudes to how status should be distributed, how status and indeed income should be, should be distributed. And I think

Vance Crowe [00:49:15] This, it's interesting because my natural reaction to what you're saying is it feels like the changes, having been a person that's worked in a corporation, it feels like the changes that corporations have made have actually in a lot of ways been easier for them, right? So you think about a sustainability report, a sustainability report employs two to three people that you don't wanna fire, but the work isn't really all that important. And then those people work with a PR company and they take kind of data and they put it together as far as what are you doing for a climate report? Like, I don't, I I think that they now make more lip service to it. I think they probably have to pay taxes or some sort of bonds in order to be able to, to say that they're doing these things. But some of those changes don't seem to me to be real. And if you think about the gender equality or the gender pay ones, those I think are a result of that is the easiest path for the corporation to go down is to, is to look as objectively as you can and, and say, we're not actually gonna look at how your performance is or what your, what you've done as an individual. We don't have the time for that. So we're just gonna instantiate these changes. I, I, I would love to see the caring or, or the, the, the hand heart kind of idea increase in value. I just don't know that corporations,

David Goodhart [00:50:39] No, I mean, yeah, it, it is not gonna happen immediately. I think the pandemic has pushed us a little way in that direction. You know, you think about the, the key workers, I mean, obviously a lot of the key workers are people who work in hospitals, and they're often quite well paid and quite prestigious. They have prestigious jobs already. If you're a nurse or a, a doctor, particularly in a, in a, in a, in a big hospital. I mean, you know, this is, you're, you're not suffering and well, I mean, you may be exposed to COVID, but you are already, you are already doing reasonably well. I mean, but there are the Cinderella services, we've seen that particularly in old people's homes, both in the US and in Europe. What

Vance Crowe [00:51:16] Is this, the Cinderella services?

David Goodhart [00:51:18] Well, I mean, those are those that do less well, those that are ignored. Like, you know, Cinderella didn't go to the ball, at least not initially, you had to stay at home and sweep up. So, you know, and, and you got, you know, but people, you know, people working in old people's homes, you know, on, on minimum wage or even below minimum wage, you know, who have to, you know, changing a catheter, you know, wiping an old person's bottom, you know, someone who has dementia. I mean, these are, these are things that require a great deal of both kind of physical and, and emotional and indeed intellectual skill to do well. I mean, to, to know how to, how, how, how to, to handle somebody perhaps, you know, a frightened old person. I mean, you know, these things that happen every, you know, there are millions of these acts that, that, that happen every day, you know, in, in old people's homes and are very, very poorly rewarded. And, and I think, you know, the, the pandemic has sort of shone a bit of a light on that. And, you know, we've, we've all been celebrating not just, as I was saying, not not just the doctors and nurses, but also the so-called key workers. I mean, the people who couldn't stay at home. I mean, as somebody pointed at rather nice pithy comment on the whole crisis, you know, that it used to be that, you know, affluent people, you know, benefited. 'cause 'cause they, they could travel a lot. And in the pandemic affluent people have benefited because they can stay at home, you know. But the, you know, the, the people, the people who kept what I call the kinda hidden wiring of our lives together, you know, the people that stack shells in supermarkets, the people that deliver things to the, to the drug stores and the supermarkets and the, and, and, you know, the refuse collectors and, and you know, people who do the, and the, and the bus drivers, you know, these are people without college degrees often on, on pretty basic incomes.

David Goodhart [00:53:11] And I think, I think at the very least, you know, obviously we're gonna, we're gonna remain market economies, market societies, even to some extent, you know, that these people are not suddenly gonna earn a king's ransom, nor should they. But I, I think we will kind of recognize more our interdependence in a way, our, our, our dependence on all of those people doing those basic jobs. And, and that, I think, you know, if you are somebody who's stacking shelves in a supermarket now, it's true that, you know, just being recognized doesn't necessarily help you pay the bills anymore easily. But it, I think it does make your life better if you, if you have a feeling you're going to work and you're doing something really useful, you are contributing. And not only that, I mean, you know, you know that anyway, but you, but you know that other people know you are contributing too. And that just because you're not paid as well as a, as a banker doesn't mean to say that what you are, what you you're doing is not valuable. I mean, perhaps equally valuable in some ways, you know, how we, how we distribute, distribute rewards in society is a very complicated thing. I mean, it's not, but I think,

Vance Crowe [00:54:13] Well you've saw, you've talked about this in a way that I was also kind of taken aback by, but you've been very critical of meritocracy. Yeah. And, and that, and that. Like, and so when I hear that, I think what do, what do you mean meritocracy is the way everything's built? How can you have any system that's not meritocracy, but how would you lay out what is meritocracy and why it is not what everybody says it is?

David Goodhart [00:54:37] Yeah, okay. I mean, there, there's been a lot of meritocracy. You know, the idea that as it were, you know, clever able people from all backgrounds should, should, should, should, should run the show and, and should indeed be, you know, should, should have the highest rewards and the most prestige. And, and indeed the system should be as open as possible so that, so that, you know, so that, you know, as against, you know, kind of aristocratic societies or, you know, societies where privileges is handed down from generation to generation. You know, we, we want, we of course, I mean I, I'm, I'm skeptical about some aspects of meritocracy, but obviously I want a society as, as open and, and socially mobile as, as feasible. But I think it's very important to recognize that, I mean, a, a meritocratic society is impossible. And, and we will, or rather, I mean, a, a strongly meritocratic society is never going to happen because, you know, parents will always be able to hand on, pass on their privileges to their children one way or another. You know, you don't necessarily need to send them to private school. But, you know, there are all sorts of ways in which parents can and will, you know, whatever their political beliefs, they will hand on their privileges to their children if they can.

David Goodhart [00:56:11] They will give them kind of cultural and indeed cognitive advantages that will allow 'em to succeed. Indeed, there's some American philosopher who, I can't remember his name now, but he, you know, he came up with this pithy comment saying, you know, well, o obviously merit meritocracy is a great idea, but you know, you know, so we, we think of, of course, the most clever enabled people should run our society. That that's fine. But, but I think we're not gonna feel quite so comfortable when the children of the clever enabled people end up running our society too. And, and the children. Children. And, you know, the, the meritocracy very quickly turns into, into oligarchy because of that deep human instinct to pass on your advantages to your children. So that means that, I mean, that means that meritocracy is never, is only going, going to be very partial. Well, it doesn't mean to say that it's not, not in some ways something to aim at. I mean, there, there, I mean, lots of, lots of people have been writing books that are critical of meritocracy. Recently, Michael Sandel, a famous Harvard philosophy, indeed, his book came out at the same time as mine. We were reviewed together in quite a few places, including the, what's the paper in Boston called? The Boston Globe, is it? Yeah, that's right. And, and Daniel Markovitz wrote a book called Meritocracy Trap. I mean, it's particular, there's been a particular reaction against it in America, I think. But partly because, you know, meritocracy has became more of a kind of overt political ideal, particularly for the center left, particularly for the Democratic party, I guess, you know, republic Republican and more conservative parties because they've been associated more with, as it were traditional privilege, have perhaps felt slightly more ambivalent about meritocracy.

David Goodhart [00:58:00] So it was an idea very much for the center left of, of Western politics. And I think it emerged after the kind of Reagan Thatcher era when many of the economic ideas, the, the left had to accept that a kind of more, a more market based economy, perhaps, you know, less the less big state, less public spending, whatever. So, so one, one of the kind of, you know, they needed new stories, so they had to concede on the, on the economics. So they were looking for other stories. Of course, one of the, one of the main stories that, that the left hook up was, was, was culture, you know, was diversity, you know, promoting ethnic minorities and, and women's rights and so on, you know, which is, which has kind of gone off, you know, in, in a slightly crazy direction, you might say in the whole sort of work movement. But one of the other things was wa was, was, was meritocracy. And yet, you know, in that period since the 1980s, never have we seen such grotesque increases in inequality in America. And, and so, you know, and this is particularly true, the Markovitz book, you know, so meritocracy is now a attacked as a sort of legitimizer of this huge increase in inequality. Oh, well, it must be fine because look, you know, they're the clever, they're the people that went to Harvard or Yale, and therefore they're entitled to their, their, their millions and millions in income every year. And what, what I think what I think has now happened is that we've, I mean, of course, of course we still want the idea.

David Goodhart [00:59:38] I mean, it, it's just common sense. And, and, and even, I mean, the, the, the, the word meritocracy, by the way, was invented by a, a British socialist called Michael Young, who wrote a book called The Rise of Meritocracy at the end of the 1950s. And he didn't, I mean, he wrote this, it was a kinda satire against the idea of meritocracy. I mean, very much along the lines of what I just described, that he sort of saw it creating a new, a new elite that would hand on its privileges to its children. And it was no different in a way, to the, to the kind of traditional landed elite or the, you know, those who, those with inherited wealth who passed it down from generation to generation.

Vance Crowe [01:00:16] So am I like misunderstanding, because like when you describe it as meritocracy, I think of as, hey, the top performer gets paid the most, they get the biggest raise they get to keep moving up in, in the

David Goodhart [01:00:29] System. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and nobody, I mean, no one with common sense is against that. And indeed, I'd go further, I'd say, and, and indeed this is one of the problems for the critique of meritocracy. I mean, that it, well, the critique of Mar meritocracy wants to have it, but I mean, it is, there's kind of two barrels that are aimed at meritocracy. One, the most common one is that meritocracy, we don't have enough of it. You know, meritocracy has failed because, you know, because for the reasons I gave earlier, I mean, you know, parents hand on their privacy to their children. So you are, you are seeing meritocracy turning into oligarchy that it's not meritocratic enough or, or rather, you know, it, it, it, it osfi the other, the other critique which I'm more sympathetic with. Well, I mean, I'm sympathetic to both in a way, but, but the other, the other critique is that it's not a good ideal in itself now. I mean, you know, let me express it like this. Is it a good idea to turn a society into one in which a relatively small number of the most able win and everybody else feels like losers? Well, obviously not if you put it like that. I mean, and, and I think, you know, that that was, I mean, that was the sort of basic Michael Young critique back in the late fifties. But against that, you know, you are, you are quite right to kind of, to maintain the common sense position. And even Michael Young accepted the idea that of course, you want meritocratic selection for jobs, particularly top jobs. You know, you do not want to be operated on by someone who's failed their surgery exams.

David Goodhart [01:02:02] You know, you know, you do not want your, I don't know, your nuclear research, you know, program to be run by someone who's been chosen by lottery. You know, you want, you know, you want your, you know, best people in the right jobs, obviously. And that, that that kinda disarms, you know, the critique of meritocracy is very difficult. Find it very difficult to argue, you know, I mean, if you're trying to sell a critique of meritocracy, you know, in in to a sort of democratic electorate and, you know, they're gonna sort of say, well, surely we want the, the clever people in the, in the kind of important jobs. And, and you, once you conceded that, it's kind of quite difficult then to persuade people that meritocracy is still a bad idea. But actually I think there is a distinction between, and I mean, I know this does get a little bit sort of complicated, well, not complicated exactly, but sort of slightly up itself, that, that, you know, obviously I, I think it, we should, you know, a merit, we do need meritocratic selection for jobs, but we don't necessarily want a meritocratic society, you know, you know, particularly if you describe it in the terms I just did, you know, in one in which the most able win and everyone else feels like losers. And I think there is a distinction there between meritocratic selection for jobs and em meritocratic societies. A meritocratic society is not a particularly good war. Or rather, you want it to be, you want that selection, meritocratic selection for jobs to be tempered by other things. You know, like the common humanity that we all share, the fact that, you know, we're all, you know, we're all morally and politically and legally equal, and therefore that, that, you know, that that matters.

David Goodhart [01:03:41] And so we, you know, we don't want these meritocratic people to get too hubristic and powerful and rich, and we want to, you know, that that needs to be constrained in some way. And I think it's a bit like a few years ago, the French Socialist party leader, Leon Alpar, talked about the dis, you know, being in favor of a market economy, but not a market society. And I think it's rather sort of similar to that in a way. So I, you know, I mean, I, and I think anyone sensible is in favor of meritocratic selection for jobs, but does not find the idea of meritocratic society an an attractive one, or rather, it needs to be, the meritocratic principle needs to be tempered by, by other principles to do with democracy and to do with the underlying gonna equality of all human beings. So, yeah. Sorry, so it's slightly, slightly roundabout way.

Vance Crowe [01:04:28] No, this is, I mean, I was really interested in finding out how you thought about this as we round out the interview. I have one question I don't ask everybody, but since you've been such an edge case, I'm interested to know, I ask people what, what we call the Peter Teel paradox. So this is, tell me one thing that you believe is true that almost no one agrees with you on. And it's a paradox because as soon as you start, if you say something that people agree with you on, you've already failed. But if you say something nobody agrees with you on, now you've got to explain it in a way that gets them to come around. Do you have a Peter Teal paradox?

David Goodhart [01:05:06] Wow.

Vance Crowe [01:05:06] Beyond somewhere, anywhere, people and meritocracy. You've, you've already hit a couple big ones.

David Goodhart [01:05:12] Do I have a, I think, I mean, the other, the other underlying problem with, I mean, meritocracy reveals a, a problem that no society can ever really sort properly accommodate, which is there's a massive tension between our ideas of freedom and our ideas of equality and justice. So there's a lot of talk about, I mean, every time you turn on the radio, you, you hear people talking about inequality these days and, and how the pandemic has made it so much worse and so on. And, and I kind of go along with that, you know, I mean, I, you know, I was a lefty and I'm still a bit of a lefty, but of course what, you know, that, and, and, and, and one of the reasons why that notion is so powerful is that, you know, democracy, and you might even say Christianity has, has provided us with this kind of noble lie. I mean, the idea that we are all equal. I mean, it's okay. It's easy enough to say we're all morally equal or we're all equal in the eyes of God. But of course, we are not equal. I mean, we, you know, there is a massively uneven distribution of talents of all kinds, you know, whether it's cognitive, you know, sporting skills, whatever, you know, you are good at certain things and you are not very good at other things.

David Goodhart [01:06:55] But you know, you, you see that in all the people. You know, we have a massive distribution, a massively skewed distribution of, of human talent. And, and, and, you know, and, and in that tension between the reality of the distribution of talent and the kinda modern political claim to equality, you know, you create massive resentment. I mean, you know, this is something that Nietzche wrote about. I mean, used the, I think he used the kinda French word ti that, you know, that, and I guess one of my fears is that this is a, this is an IRRis, this is an irre soluble problem. I, I'm not really answering your question, am I? 'cause I'm not, this is not a,

Vance Crowe [01:07:41] I mean, I think that the, the benefit of the question is that it forces people to push themselves to the edge. And I would say your ideas, David, are on the edge, or at least they are to, to,

David Goodhart [01:07:54] I suppose what I, I mean, I would like us to more, I would like us to examine this tension more honestly. I, in, in our, in our public conversations, this, this tension between these, these obviously it's desirable that it's desirable, that we have this massive distribute massively uneven distribution of talent. I mean, you know, wouldn't it be, it would be a kind of monstrous society if somehow we all have the same level of talent or society forced us all. I mean, this is kind of, you know, Soviet

Vance Crowe [01:08:21] Well in nature wants us to have this diversity because that way we're more resilient depending on what happens.

David Goodhart [01:08:26] Yeah, exactly. And then how do we marry that with, with our, you know, the, this, the, the idea of equality is that, is is becoming more powerful, not less powerful. I think, you know, as you know, as, as older ideas of deference and so on fall away, I mean, you know, democracy, particularly in European countries, I mean, it's a bit older in America, but, you know, the, the idea of of, of human equality in practice is a very, very young one, really. And how it, how it accommodates itself too, and rubs up against the enormously uneven distribution of human talents, I think is, is, you know, is that, you know, this is one for the, for the ages really, but, but it's, but it's one that's gonna kind of, I think loom larger. And, and I think we, and actually what, in fact, well, actually to make it more precise and to, I mean, I think we have this crisis and someone's, someone actually has written a book about, I mean, my head hand, heart book talks about this. We have a crisis of the overproduction of elites that actually does bear on my, on this more general point about resentment. We are creating a but, but because the proportion of jobs in the kind of higher cognitive professional sphere, I mean, yeah, one of the great myths of our society is that, and, and, sorry, and, and this is the Daniel Bell point, that there used to be lots of little ladders up.

David Goodhart [01:09:59] You know, you could, there were lots of little local elites, and you could, you could thrive and be a successful person in lots of different ways. And one of the, one of the thesis of my book is that we've narrowed that, that we've narrowed the idea of what it is to lead a successful life. I mean, perhaps, perhaps in Europe a bit more than America, into, you know, doing well at school, going to college, and getting a successful professional career. Now, the problem is, you know, it is just common sense, just logic. Not everybody can do that. I mean, not only can everybody, but, but society cannot bear everybody doing that because we, you know, we still need people to clean the offices and, and, and collect the refuse and do the basic jobs. So, but, but so we, but we've created this ideal and we've created this single ladder up into this ideal successful life, which is the modern university, as Daniel Bell predicted in his 1972 book. And, and, and we're encouraging lots and lots of people to go into at a time when the number of that, when not creating those new sort of cognitive professional jobs, indeed, they're shrinking. And when AI really strikes, they're gonna shrink even further. So we have what, what, what, what one might call elite overproduction, and that is creating huge resentment. I mean, indeed, you might even say, you know, things like the Bernie Sanders movement or Jeremy Corbin in Britain, he's gonna be, or indeed. And this, I mean, perhaps this qualifies as the kind of very unpopular thing to say, even perhaps aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement. And I'm not saying there isn't racism, there aren't reasons for black people to feel for, for be being pissed off.

David Goodhart [01:11:33] But I think a lot of it is also to do with something else, which is the, is that people have been encouraged to, to go to college and get these qualifications on the assumption there will be an ever-growing number of these cognitive professional jobs. And there are not. So we are creating a mass resentment and for, you know, white kids, it's, it's Saunders for black kids, it's BLM. And actually, you know, they, they feel they've done what they were asked to do, you know, they got a decent college degree, and they, but they're, they are, you know, they're working some sort of $30,000 a year back office administrative job that's absolute crap. Doesn't have any prospects. And, and they, they were expecting to be, you know, to join this kind of, you know, this professional, this professional elite. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:12:16] I, I agree with that. When we saw the protests in, in the United States this year, I put up on Twitter and got real strong pushback. But I still think is true that a large percentage of the people out there protesting have in the back of their mind that they have $80,000 worth of student loan debt.

David Goodhart [01:12:36] Yeah. So

Vance Crowe [01:12:36] Burning down the system that encourage them to spend money and to take out debt on their future earnings for the things that didn't materialize. And then you think about the people that are, they, they're piled down with this debt, and then they're doing, like you talked about, the, the back administrative jobs, the bullshit jobs, the jobs where you really only need about four hours worth of work, but that manager needs people to report to them, so they're gonna have those people report to work for 36 hours. Yeah. And like, you know, and that goes

David Goodhart [01:13:06] Parkinson's law. Do you know Parkinson's law? You know, how the, the work fills out to fill the time allocated to it. There's this g brilliant guy in right called, I think it was called Cyril Parkinson, came up with various kind of laws of how businesses work writing the 1950s in as the modern corporation was just getting, getting underway in the uk. But,

Vance Crowe [01:13:26] Well, and like this, it doesn't do anything good for human psychology to be in a job where you and your boss both know, yeah, you don't have that much to do, but you're all just participating in this game

David Goodhart [01:13:40] Game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that, that is a real problem. And I, and I think, you know, a lot of the kids, white kids and black kids, you know, have, have come outta college thinking that they're gonna get these fancy jobs and they're, and, and they're not getting 'em. And they're, and they're, and they're resentful. And it, it takes us a racialized form, probably more for the black kids than, than the, than the white ones. But they're, but they're kind of res and, and, you know, and that's, you know, I mean, I, I think it's partly the, you know, the, because so many people that run our society have been through that system 30, 40 years ago, when indeed it was true. You know, you went through the conveyor belt and you came out and you did have a fancy professional job. But, you know, and, and they have, you know, by trying to create a society in their, in the image, you know, that they have thought, you know, well, we had this, so, so everybody else should have it. Well, well, but it's not gonna work. It's not working, it's not working. Now it's certainly, it's gonna work even less. So when AI cuts through a lot of those kind of middle and lower cognitive jobs, you know, those middle and lower kind of head jobs.

Vance Crowe [01:14:41] Well, I, I think AI is gonna cut up the upper level jobs that are lower cognitive, the, the attorney jobs, the accounting jobs, the amount, the amount of work done in accounting, but not

David Goodhart [01:14:52] The top one, not the, you know, we'll all, you know, we'll need sort of top brilliant accountants and brilliant lawyers and brilliant.

Vance Crowe [01:14:57] Yeah. But those are no different than actual high priests. This is one of the conclusions that I'm coming to. Like, they are in interpreting the word of the state, which is written in this like, very byzantine complex way. And so the people at the top are, are high priests in some way. Okay. I have one more question for you. I was gonna let you go, but I'm, I, I just can't stop myself from asking this on Twitter, there has been a movement that I've observed, I'm sure it's much larger than Twitter, which is for people to refer to themselves as TRAs, TRAD. Are you familiar with this?

David Goodhart [01:15:32] I, I'm not actually, it's an American thing.

Vance Crowe [01:15:34] Well, no, I think it's actually, I think there's a lot of Europeans that do it. I, I actually talked about it with a commercial sex worker named Della who explained it to me. I always knew that the, the trad meant I like older culture, but that what she goes on to say is, trad means you are a traditionalist. You want to go back to some of those Lindy ideas, like women should feel good about being in the home and raising children. And many of the ideas that we've talked about. And I was just wondering if this had hit your radar, because I think that this is a response to anywhere people Yeah.

David Goodhart [01:16:10] That

Vance Crowe [01:16:10] Found themselves like me. That, that you were, the weight that you thought your life would have by being in anywhere person didn't happen. And so I had to make big changes to become a somewhere person. And I think that's the trad.

David Goodhart [01:16:25] Hmm. Well, I mean, I'm not familiar with the, with the term, but I mean, I, yeah, I, I mean, I, I agree with you. I think, I think a lot of people are, are, you know, recognizing the kind of the limits of, of, of modern liberalism in some ways that, you know, modern liberalism has, has done lots of very good things, but it doesn't answer all, all our human needs. And, and there is a lot to be said for, for some traditions, you know, we should, we should be, you know, I mean, you know, too, too much liberalism has become illiberal. I mean, that is part of the problem. It's, you know, it's, and it, and it's trying to, you know, force, you know, particular, you know, ways of life and, and ways of seeing the world on people. I mean, it, it should, it should learn from its own sort of theories and be pluralistic, you know, let let a thousand flowers bloom. People want to live in a more traditional way. I mean, so long as they respect the, the underlying laws. And then, then that, that's fine. I mean, they're, they're good and decent people too. I mean, you know, if you wanna be an anywhere and, you know, lead a, a more, I don't know, ruthless life, and, and you know, you have a kind of, sort of a, a sort of blank sheet theory of, of kind of human beings, and you can, you know, you can have whatever sexuality you want or whatever, then, then, you know, you wanna live like that, then that's also fine. I mean, you're, you're allowed to do that.

David Goodhart [01:17:56] But yeah, I mean, I think, I think illiberal liberalism, you know, is one of the sort of pathologies of the, of, of the modern anywhere, of any modern anywhere liberalism.

Vance Crowe [01:18:08] Well, David Goodheart, this has been an excellent conversation. If people wanted to find more about your books or interact with you, where, how would they go about that?

David Goodhart [01:18:18] I, I, I am on Twitter. I, I think, what am I, I'm David at David Goodheart. Well, I've just written my, you know, my books are on Amazon and I've just published this book, which, which is a kind of follow up to the, the Anywhere, somewhere book, as I said earlier, indeed, I, I'm, and I have a little bit of a kind of recap of the Anywhere, somewhere argument in the, in this new book, it's called Head, hand, heart, actually, hang on, I've got a copy of the American Edition here somewhere. I can hold it up. Head, hand, heart. I actually prefer, I shouldn't say this, really, I prefer the, the subtitle of the British one, which is the, the Struggle for Status and Dignity, or is it Dignity and Status in the 21st Century? This one, the, the, the American Edition subtitle is Why Intelligence is Over awarded Manual Workers Matter and Caregivers Deserve More Respect. I think the, I think the UK subtitle is Pier, but anyways, head, hand, heart published by Simon and Schuster, they did a very nice job, and yeah, by, by is a coming out pandemic present for

Vance Crowe [01:19:32] Some reason. I, I will check that book out and I, I hope to find more of your turns of phrase. I think they're valuable additions to our lexicon. So David Goodheart, thanks for coming on the podcast.

David Goodhart [01:19:43] Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. I enjoyed it.