The Oligarchs' Lost Letters: The Gift Of Education
A Letter on Education, Ingratitude, and Civilizational Duty
To My Dearest Friends,
Education is a gift to all who receive it. It allows even the poorest farmer’s son to become greater than his father will ever be. He may attain an illustrious profession such as a lawyer, a doctor, or a scholar. It raises even the dim among them up from their modest roots to a contributing member of society and the common good. It allows every citizen who has access to its enlightenment and depth transcend their family’s legacy. It transforms those who are poor and a drain on society to become wealthy, important, or even influential and powerful. Universal education is the greatest endowment we have ever bestowed on society. We have allowed the populace to claw themselves out of poverty and become part of the elite class or a contributing member of a middle class. We have gifted all poor families an opportunity to reach up from their lowly profession and financial standing into a life of contribution and relative wealth compared to their ancestors.
Our fathers would have loathed the benevolence of universal education because they believed the people must be kept uneducated and ignorant to maintain power and control. The previous generation was deeply self-interested and contemptuous of the many. Now we are in power, and we believe that the betterment of all men and their ability to strive for a better future should be theirs. We have built universities and institutions of higher learning accessible to all. We have invested in the banks that give out small loans so every man or woman can make something better of themselves. The ability to gain status, wealth, and importance has never been an easier task for the masses.
Yet the many still hold deep contempt for us. They blame us for their self-imposed corruptions. Their short-sighted nature allows politicians who are presumably of the people but only self interested in reality, to hold offices that could make their lives better, but these things take time. We have not built the architecture of universal education in five or even ten years. It took many years to build the mechanisms, architecture, and institutions to make higher education a place for the entire populace, not just the privileged. Yet the people, being fickle and short-sighted in nature, vote for politicians that offer short-term solutions to issues that will take generations to solve. In doing so they also create new problems that, if they continue, will eventually become irreversible.
We have given the many access to education and the ability to become something greater than what they were, yet they still hold contempt and hatred for us. We have given them institutions that teach long-term planning, philosophy, and the art of building something complex, and they have in turn become more short-sighted, more susceptible, and more prone to vote in men who presume to be of the people, but we all know they are nothing more than charlatans wanting influence and power without earning it. Any educated person can see this, but the many, even when educated, perhaps do not understand things quite as we do.
If we allow short-term solutions that cause long-term problems to become the status quo, society will eventually hollow out and destroy itself. We have given the many an education in history with many examples of this such as the French Revolution, the fall of Greece, the fall of the Roman Republic. Yet they are seemingly unable to see that these things are being repeated before their eyes. They are still quite susceptible to funded movements built around a specific ideology or issue that will hurt society in the long term. They cannot see the actors behind the movements, or perhaps they do not want to. They are swept up in the emotions of the moment and seemingly forget their formal training and logic, the very training given to them in our institutions of higher learning. They are attempting to drag society down slowly, without awareness and without foresight. For our fathers warned us of their nature but our fathers lacked the imagination and capability to see the good it will provide.
We believed the education we had given them would be enough to make the entire society better, but it seems they have become more susceptible, not less. Now everyone knows history in a sense, but they misuse it and ignore its lessons. They take the teachings of the philosophers we mandated to be taught and twist them.
Even so, our introduction of universal education has helped every person in this society to read, write, and understand the ways of the world better. It has granted literacy to the common man like no other society before it. It has, even with these present difficulties, produced a gain in the common good for everyone. There are far fewer poor men and many more contributors and community builders. This will help the future societal good immensely. The men in the middle, those who are wealthy but not elite, are building communities and local institutions, and in doing so they are allowing the future of our society to become brighter. They are teaching their children how to read earlier. They are instilling values in every person in their communities that allows a society to flourish. It is undoubtedly one of the greatest gifts we have ever bestowed on the world.
While some still attempt to undermine us and many still hold contempt for us, they will see eventually that we have given them something invaluable to their future and to our future as a society. We have given them every essential tool they will ever need to flourish. These corruptions and disturbances herein mentioned must be addressed now before they spread and rot the beautiful society we have built granted the many. We cannot allow funded ideological biases into our institutions of higher education. We cannot allow short-term promises that cause long-term structural damage to become the status quo. We must protect this gift and remain vigilant against any and all who try to poison it. If we do not, society will rot, and it will be the fault of the elite few who could see this in advance and yet could not control or did nothing about the spiral into destruction.
Sincerely,
The Benefactor