Gatekeeper

“ Despite this, however, something still rankles about the fact that the gatekeeper – whose blessing can, after all, determine whether an academic is hired or promoted and may condition how highly their work is valued by others – might here be deciding on the basis of commercial viability, however defined. ”

“ In other words: there is always merit in playing devil’s advocate, at least temporarily.
The first point to note is that the gatekeeper model – that is, the system of deciding on permissibility before publication through both publisher policies and peer-review practice – works on a series of unspoken ideological assumptions that are never wholly objective and apolitical, but are rather, at the extreme end, based on a series of exclusions and marginalisations. ”

“ Figure to yourself an American girl, set down opposite an iron gate, in the country, and how long do you imagine she would be ignorant of the owner's name? If the blood of those pious inquisitors, the puritans, were in her veins, she would know more, not only of the gate, but of its owner, his wife, his children, his means, his hopes, wishes, intentions and thoughts, than he ever knew himself, or would be likely to know. ”

“ Shemaiah son of Hashub, son of Azrikam, son of Hashabiah, of the sons of Merari; 15 and Bakbakkar, Heresh, and Galal, and Mattaniah son of Mica, son of Zichri, son of Asaph; 16 and Obadiah son of Shemaiah, son of Galal, son of Jeduthun; [71] and Berechiah son of Asa, son of Elkanah, who lived in the villages of the Netophathites.
17 And the gatekeepers were Shallum, and Akkub, and Talmon, and Ahiman, and their brethren. Shallum was the leader, 18 and up to this time they have been stationed at the king's gate eastward. They were gatekeepers of the encampments of the Levites. ”

“ Behold these same idealists then, successful business men, professionals, property owners, money leaders, creeping into the social ranks they once despised, pitifully, contemptibly, at the skirts of some impecunious personage to whom they have lent money, or done some professional service gratis; behold them lying, cheating, tricking, flattering, buying and selling themselves for any frippery, any cheap little pretense. The Dominant Social Idea has seized them, their lives are swallowed up in it; and when you ask the reason why, they tell you that Circumstances compelled them so to do. ”

“ Blee, “an’ theer it do lie in a nutshell. A man’s gate-post is his awn as a common, natural gate-post; but bein’ a sainted cross o’ the Lard sticked in the airth upsy-down by some ancient devilry, ’t is no gate-post, nor yet every-day moor-stone, but just the common property of all Christian souls.”
“You’m out o’ bias to harden your heart, Mr. Blanchard, when this gentleman sez ’t is what ’t is,” ventured the man Peter Bassett, slowly. ”

“ Our folk isn't your folk because they speak the same language. In your country, your station or condition, or whatever you like to call it, answers for you, and the individual man merges into the class he belongs to. Not so here. We don't care a red cent about your rank, but we want to know about you yourself! Now, you strangers mistake all that feeling, and call it impertinence and curiosity, and such-like; but it ain't anything of the kind! No, sir. It simply means what sort of knowledge, what art or science or labor, can you contribute to the common stock? ”

“ Many of us live publicly with featureless public puppets, images of the small public abstractions. It is when we pass our own private gate, and open our own secret door, that we step into the land of the giants. ”

“ One day he asked me to introduce him to a certain Bellevue capitalist. The fellow had pleased me, and I agreed to do the introducing—partly, I admit, to see whether a man that gutteralled his words out of his stomach could swindle one of our own sharpers that talked through his nose. But now came the rub: how was I to introduce a man when I couldn't utter his name? I used to practice at pronouncing that name as I rode around in my buggy, but it was no go. At last the day came when I was to introduce the fellow with a surplus of knowledge, to the fellow with a surplus of cash. ”

“ In answer to which I assured his honor that the business and study of their own profession so took up all their thoughts and time, that they attended to nothing else, and therefore in all points out of their own trade many of them were so ignorant and stupid that it would be difficult to pick out of any profession a generation of men more despicable in common conversation or so much looked upon as avowed enemies of all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reasons of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own calling. ”

“ When he sees how reputations can be made and unmade in the secret conclaves of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms are assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs, how the language which stirs man's deepest nature lies around loose in the hands of skilled word-experts, to be used in getting up cabals and carrying party intrigues, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard life as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins. ”

“ Their whole time is taken up with their business and their pleasures. In modern society it is not, as it used to be under previous social orders, the exploiters themselves, or at least a class of them, who foster the arts and sciences. ”

“ Why do you not strive to be like Me? Is it not worth a Life of Endeavor to command the Love and Respect of a Moral Settlement on the Outskirts? All the Conductors on our Division speak pleasantly to Me, and the Gateman has come to know my Name. ”

“ He went on to denounce the men of learning as a class uninfluenced by the spirit of existing affairs and as enemies of the public weal, and concluded by saying, "Now or never is the time to close the mouths of these secret enemies, to place a curb upon their audacity." ”

“ Instead of waiting for years of contact with cultured people to bring him the correct manners befitting a man of wealth, he need only learn at once from a dependable authority the etiquette of society, the good form that has been crystallized into rules after years of social intercourse. ”

“ Do you not sometimes suppress information which would prevent your obtaining a good bargain? Do you never allow your customers to purchase goods under false ideas of their value and demand in the market? If you saw a man, less skilled in business than yourself, about to take a step injurious to him, but advantageous to you, would you warn him of his danger—thus obeying the command to love your neighbour as yourself?”
“Why, uncle, these questions are absurd. Of course, when engaged in business, I endeavour to do what is for my own advantage—leaving others to look out for themselves.” ”

“ Learning being the sole channel for the exercise of individual capacity or individual ambition, [Pg 66] the old baneful system of competition soon developed itself. A superior class, a class composed of scholars, students, artists and authors, arose, whose views and whose political ideas threatened the very life and liberties of the community. ”

“ We seek to profit by one another's mistakes, and we do—that is, we profit by them to the extent of gloating over them. Then we go and make a few glaring mistakes on our own account, and when the word of it spreads through the neighborhood, seemingly on the wings of the wind, it is their turn to gloat. We have a regular Gloat Club with an open membership and no dues. ”

“ Finally, in the course of his many discussions, he describes in detail the method by which the delicate adjustment of these rival powers may be secured in the typical man; suggests who is to be the judge of the conflicting claims of these powers, and indicates the process by which this judge may most persuasively lay his opinions before those whom he wishes to influence. The method for the attainment of the perfect type is culture; the censor of defective types and the judge of the rival claims of the coöperant powers is the critic ”

“ SECOND STUDY TO ESTABLISH INTELLIGENCE IN FEELING
Art is in bondage in this country: its internal polity to the temperamental ideal; its external polity to the commercial ideal. Business and social life are in the same bondage. In music, in drama, in letters, in society, and in trade we permit personality to exploit itself for commercial purposes. ”

“ From the broad and beautiful vantage points of democracy and fraternity—every shop here was a lair, the products, exposed and secreted, a spectacle of moral decay and insensate devouring; every schoolhouse a place of dismal enchantment where competition was not only taught but enforced. ”

“ And in choosing this system of training and education, thou art wise in thy generation—wise as the serpent—for by what other couldst thou hope to raise men, who, eschewing nobleness, and aspiring not to greatness—who, rejecting antecedents and abandoning individuality, shall swell the throng of money-getters, buyers, sellers, producers, contractors, speculators, and other zealots of utility, and thus elevate thee to the height of practical glory, thus make thee still more wondrous! ”

“ Regardless of our vocations-working in a large corporation or heading one's own business, farming, creating art, teaching language or mathematics, programming, or even participating in a university's board of trustees- we accept, even if with some reluctance, the rationalization of language. Our lives take place increasingly in the impersonal world of stereotype discourse of forms, applications, passwords, and word processed letters. ”

“ Organizations—civil, religious, scientific, political, artistic—have usually let us severely alone, where their influence, if they should come into touch with the library, would surely be for good—would be exerted along the line of morality, of more careful book selection, of judicial mindedness instead of one-sidedness.
Let us trust that influences along this line—if we are to have influences at all—may gain a foothold before the opposite forces—those of sordid commercialism, of absurdities, of falsities, of all kinds of self-seeking—find out that we are worth their exploitation. ”

“ If you are a shop or factory girl, a clerk or bookkeeper, or have any similar work, learn yourself and then teach your associates that your interests and hers are identical with those of every other hand and brain worker in the world, no matter what nationality, color or sex. ”

“ But with persuasion the case is different; emotions are varied, and in each separate instance the arguer must carefully consider the ruling passions and ideals of his audience. The hopes and aspirations of a gang of ignorant miners would differ widely from the desires of an assembly of college students, or of a coterie of metropolitan capitalists. Education, wealth, social standing, politics, religion, race, nationality, every motive that is likely to have weight with the audience should be taken into consideration. ”

“ Moving away from the Internet, one could visit a factory, a stock exchange, a store. One could find oneself in subway in any city, witness a first-grade class in session, or pursue business in a government office. All these scenarios embody the various forms of self-constitution through practical activity. It seems that everyone involved is talking the same language, but who understands what? In seemingly simpler contexts, what do individuals understand today when they understand a written instruction or conversations, casual or official? ”

“ In a class or guild of this kind, each artisan has not only his fortune to make, but his reputation to preserve. He is not exclusively swayed by his own interest, or even by that of his customer, but by that of the body to which he belongs ”

“ On the contrary, every trade, every occupation, every art, and every profession, including the most learned ones, was similarly overcrowded, and those in the ranks of each regarded every fresh recruit with jealous eyes, seeing in him one more rival in the struggle for life, making it just so much more difficult than it had been before. ”

“ In other words, the competitive feeling and desire in its largest sense are necessary for the concentrated excitement of interest. So any scheme of social organization that proposes to do away with competition and desire for superiority labors under the psychological handicap of removing the basis of much of the interest in work and study and must find some substitute for the lacking incentives before it can seriously ask for the adherence of those with a realistic view of human nature. ”

“ And who has not, indeed, under the influence of the benign spirit, the genial and engaging manners, the kindly and obliging offices of the accomplished tradesman, often felt his prejudices give way, his original intentions to purchase nothing yield, and, instead, a purpose gradually spring up in his mind to do just the opposite of what he originally designed? ”

“ He compares him as a type with the abstract ideal of human excellence, and notes wherein his powers “fall short or exceed.” He indicates the reaction upon the social and political life of the nation of these various defects and excesses, their inevitable influence in producing social misadjustment and friction. Finally, he urges that the one remedy that will correct these errant social types and bring them nearer to the perfect human type is culture, increase in vital knowledge. ”

“ For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and decorations of them, especial effort ought to be made to express the worthiness and honourableness of the trade for whose members they are founded. For I believe one of the worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to the character of a tradesman. ”

“ Everywhere exist these agents of custom and convention, wielded by a power behind them, and holding long no one direction, but varying in every wind. Some breeze of general policy, however, prescribes the law of these alterations, while only a weak and brainless sensibility, blowing from every source, commonly occasions the continual veering of our private word. Through what manifold phases a good conversationist has dexterity to pass! ”