Seldom have I read anything so superficial as Peter Thiel’s supposed cultural analysis. For instance, his comment that universities should not be offering doctoral programs in areas that there are no jobs shows that he has mistaken job training for “education…” which as Oscar Wilde so astutely observed “…. teaches one to despise the money it prevents one from earning”. Perhaps if he had himself been properly educated he would not have to throw in as a seemingly tangential afterthought that it might be a good idea if people spent a little time in search of the meaning (or perhaps better, the significance) of life. After all, unless one, in some quasi Heideggerian manner regards the meaning and purpose of life to be to ask the question as to what its meaning and purpose is, then until that is settled there seems to be little point, at least for an authentic individual, in doing anything else. Moreover, his obvious lack of a proper education clearly resulted in his a complete lack of any systematic comprehension, much less understanding, of the role that political, psychological and/or economic structures play in constituting culture.
Whose idea was it to have Thiel interviewed by John Gray? Why not ask George Monbiot, or Laurie Penny, or Carol Vorderman, or Darren McGarvey, or someone who would have been constructively crtitical and questioned this man's hugely over-inflated sense of his own ability.
Seldom have I read anything so superficial as Peter Thiel’s supposed cultural analysis. For instance, his comment that universities should not be offering doctoral programs in areas that there are no jobs shows that he has mistaken job training for “education…” which as Oscar Wilde so astutely observed “…. teaches one to despise the money it prevents one from earning”. Perhaps if he had himself been properly educated he would not have to throw in as a seemingly tangential afterthought that it might be a good idea if people spent a little time in search of the meaning (or perhaps better, the significance) of life. After all, unless one, in some quasi Heideggerian manner regards the meaning and purpose of life to be to ask the question as to what its meaning and purpose is, then until that is settled there seems to be little point, at least for an authentic individual, in doing anything else. Moreover, his obvious lack of a proper education clearly resulted in his a complete lack of any systematic comprehension, much less understanding, of the role that political, psychological and/or economic structures play in constituting culture.
Whose idea was it to have Thiel interviewed by John Gray? Why not ask George Monbiot, or Laurie Penny, or Carol Vorderman, or Darren McGarvey, or someone who would have been constructively crtitical and questioned this man's hugely over-inflated sense of his own ability.