"The intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community" can only "produce some thing valuable" because it's supported by the 'masses', with untold open and untold invisible work at all levels.
>This does not mean that the «masses» are excused from cultivating themselves
I think the persons who pick up our shit and clean our offices and make food for us and stuff do have a lot of excuses of not having the time and energy for "cultivation"at the level of people whose job is to read and study.
But Einstein did not suggest cultivation should be «at the level of people whose job is to read and study», he said that it should reach the level of avoidance of gratuitous violent hatred.
Cultivation which remains mandated, because those people in topic have a job by definition and they have to perform it well, which implies some intellectual proficiency (moreover, they will be partially socially active, they will often be neighbours and in general meet people, and they will often be actors in democracies). Instead, reality is that a large number of those agents will be liabilities instead of assets, in the very performance of their jobs. So, «intelligence and character» remains more than a goal, a necessity.
>he said that it should reach the level of avoidance of gratuitous violent hatred
Well, lots of that going on at the top levels of academy and educated people too. In fact, usually it's them that "inspire" the masses to violent hatred. So it's not like some unique deficiency that the masses have.
Yes, and this is why in the "sketchy out of space constraints" model that Einstein drew the discriminator chosen to define a special «intelligence and character» is the «inventive mind» having effectively achieved «inventions», i.e. some expertise in application to problems, also educated by accomplishment with regard to actual solutions.
People who apply themselves in thought, and humbled by hard facts.
(This will be different from other profiles you may have initially guessed. You will notice that "ideologists" are right out.)
There needs to be a term similar to "embedded emissions"[0] (embedded labour?) to capture this concept. Anyone who contributes with something deemed worthwhile to society by these types can only do so because they have a lot of embodied "un-worthwhile" work done for them by other people. Whether that is the farmer producing the food your eat, the truck driver delivering your amazon packages, the engineers maintaining the infrastructure you rely on, the person picking up your garbage, and so on.
Nobody produces independently of others in a modern society, and any libertarian type that pretends otherwise needs a reality check.
