Alas, Emily Oster’s proposal that we just forget and forgive the pandemic insanity of the past few years has pleased no one. This is partly because her op-ed is tone deaf and stupid, of course, but it’s probably also down to Emily Oster herself, and a growing cultural exhaustion with the kind of person she represents. Oster is, in the terminology of Bruce Charlton, an almost archetypal Head Girl – the typical “all-rounder” who “performs extremely well in all school subjects” and “is excellent at sports,” while being “pretty, popular, sociable and well-behaved”:
The Head Girl will probably be a big success in life, in whatever terms being a big success happens to be framed… But the Head Girl is not, cannot be, a creative genius.
Modern society is run by Head Girls, of both sexes… Modern colleges aim at recruiting Head Girls, so do universities, so does science, so do the arts, so does the mass media, so does the legal profession, so does medicine, so does the military…
The Head Girl can never be a creative genius because she does what other people want by the standards they most value. She will worker harder and at a higher standard in doing whatever it is that social pressure tells her to do – and she will do this by whatever social standards prevail, only more thoroughly. …
We live in a Head Girl’s world – which is also a world where creative genius is marginalised and disempowered to the point of near-complete invisibility.
Oster ticks all the boxes here. She was a star student and athlete in her school years, and her public presence is about projecting a pro-social, positive conformist image, while using superficially analysed Science and Data to calm neurotic mothers worried that they’ve strayed beyond the boundaries of what is medically optimal or socially acceptable. She doesn’t like closed schools very much, but she just loves vaccines.
There’s probably some reason to be sceptical of Charlton’s concept of the creative genius, but he’s dead right about the malign influence of Head Girls like Oster. Modern social institutions – particularly schools – have been caught for decades in an escalating spiral of harsh selection for conscientiousness and conformity. Since 2000 especially, Head Girls have cemented their dominance across a great many bureaucratic institutions and white-collar professions, and they have used their growing influence and seniority, above all, to recruit and promote more Head Girls like themselves. The problem is that traits like conscientiousness correlate not at all with raw intelligence and ability. Thus, our world has come to be steered by fleets of extremely agreeable, deeply concerned, highly productive and overly socialised Emily Osters – midwits who have very few original thoughts, and who make up for that by caring a lot about what other conformist midwits of similar status think about them.
There’s nothing wrong with Head Girls, when their worst tendencies are counterbalanced by a sufficient number of disagreeable, intelligent, and less conformist colleagues. When they become the predominant personality type in newsrooms, faculties and government offices, though, you start to have serious problems. Then, your schools and your media organisations come to be dominated by committees and meetings, by the avoidance of open conflict, by the constant erection of and sheltering within consensus positions, and by preference cascades kicked off by clamorous organised minorities. All of these characteristic symptoms of government by Head Girl are intolerable to everyone who isn’t a Head Girl, and talented people with any other options at all will ultimately leave their influential positions in Head Girl-dominated institutions, driving the Head Girls to ever greater ascendancy.
One of the reasons things like lockdowns and mass vaccination frenzies have become possible in the first place, is the uniformity of outlook and opinion among the governing elite. When everybody, from university professors to the minister president of Bavaria to municipal police administrators, believes that with enough social distancing we can eradicate SARS-2, and that the unvaccinated are responsible for prolonging the pandemic, the result is a powerful if erratic and ever-shifting social tyranny. Social media technologies have been particularly noxious for the consensus formation of the Head Girls, widening the range of issues on which they have functionally identical opinions and enforcing conformity more thoroughly than was ever before possible. And should one of their runaway preference cascades go off the rails and destroy society, they’ll rapidly reunite around the new consensus position, that nobody could’ve known any better and all the worst offenders – especially their friends and colleagues – acted in good faith with the knowledge that was available at the time.
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I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that the obsession with placement of ‘Head Girls’ (and that can be translated in quite a literal sense) into every position of authority and influence has coincided with the destruction of traditional family values, the eradication of the individual and the introduction of 1984-like thought police. An unfortunate coincidence.
I’m not sure what you are meaning to say.
An interesting take. Many good points. A lot of men (people with willies) fall into this category too these days – not sure if it comes naturally or they do it to fit in.
I think it is unfortunate this concept has been genderised. There was no need to.
What do you mean by “genderised” and why is it a pity?
Good point. Why does this article talk of head “girls”, of both sexes? Is (for example: pick any male whose head we want on a platter) dead-behind-the-eyes Chris Whitty a “head girl”, with his pontificating? I do think use of the word “girl” in this article is a bit of a distraction. It feels like school slang, such as Roald Dahl’s school calling prefects “Boazers”, for no reason other than that it sounds funny. Does Eton not churn out “head boys”, nicely groomed for Parliament, or are they “head girls” too?
(A totally separate issue is that gender politics is an extremely hot topic right now, but this article does seem to fetishise the term “head girl”.)
My thoughts exactly; an open goal to the sort of people who will want to attack the argument.
Etonians could well be ‘head girls’ now. The school (headmaster) got rid of Will Knowland.
Because the subject happens to be a woman. If it had been a man it would have been ‘Head Boy’.
A bizarre proposition. I think you (the author) are falling too much for Oster’s self-presentation to outsiders, ie, that of a conforming, socially agreeable and hard-working high-achiever. People in her position always (try to) look like that. Considering that universities are very politicalized in every aspect, she’ll doubtlessly have a couple of personality traits more useful in such an environment such readiness to cheat where possible, resorting to intrigue and backstabbing to get rid of more talented current or possibly future opponents and maybe one or the other instance of well-placed casual sex (highly useful to remove immediate obstacles and possibly useful to get rid of future obstacles by inverting this card, ie, claim you were the naive young woman ruthlessly exploited by … who therefore must be …).
Also known as Alpha-Karens.
Usually only mating with SoyBug Men, Women or Whatever.
Their main nemesis are socially conservative SAHMs.
This lady provides an interesting angle in that regard and on that Osterism issue:
https://emilyburns.substack.com/p/with-whom-does-emily-oster-want-an
This is getting silly. Michael Senger’s excellent article said all that was required. Why the need to over think this matter?
A silly but moderately well placed woman seeks an “amnesty” effectively from those she was seeking to harm these last three years, for some of the most heinous crimes committed on this planet.
That’s it. End of.
And the correct and only response is – firk OFF!
In the end she’s an authoritarian shill with little actual intellect other than embracing the herds latest conspiracy theory.
That’s a great article, and goes a long way to explaining why our institutions are all in such a mess.
The backlash against the Oster article has been wonderful to behold, and I suspect has taken the author and her like aback. I must admit, even I’m a little surprised at the scale and ferocity of attacks against the concept of an amnesty, but what a pleasant surprise!
Clearly, there are a great many people out there who want revenge against this shower, more than I might have thought. Good. That’s great by me. The criminals who have done this need to be brought to account.
You’re so right, but it will never happen. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Politicians, bureaucrats and the ‘Establishment’ at large do not apologise for their cock ups.
The UK Public Inquiry will shove vast sums of money into the deep pockets of our ‘learned friends’ and conclude that “lessons will be learned”.
A head girl is a school girl ! We need grown up people with depth of values and a humility to apologise. She hasn’t and will not. No not forgiven because the crime was too big.
God help us one and all.
Emily, the answer is NO.
I am a woman and it pains me to say it but name an organization that has been improved by a woman? John Lewis seems on the rocks, the CEO of GSK was seen as weak and out of her depth, the Post Office scandal, Christine Lagarde for God’s sake – on and on. I am not saying the world should be run by men but I am not sure my sex has excelled itself and think this article highlights a good chunk of the problem
Ursula von der Lying.