A Life Uncredentialed

Occasionally the thought crosses my mind to write a book or two. With almost 4,000 posts, many of them a thousand words, this blog already comprises the equivalent of quite a few books. But the thought was sparked again recently when I was introducing an old friend to the music of Bruckner. He read some stuff on his own and found it too technical, so I sent him a link to a post I did which he said he found much more useful. He's a painter and spent a session listening to Bruckner and quite enjoyed it.

So the thought has crossed my mind to write a book on something I have become more aware of over the years: the triumph of credentialism in advanced societies. I am more aware of this because nowadays I live a life that is mercifully free of credentialism.

Let me share some details: I am going to design and build a house for myself in the next couple of years and there are essentially no credentialed persons involved. In order to find a suitable and affordable lot I searched for a few months without much success. Finally, just before going to Europe for three weeks in August I asked my long-time driver (also a musician) to have a look around. He comes from a large family (eight brothers, five sisters) and seems to know everyone. When I got back he had a lead for me and I liked it. Here is a video, my driver, wearing sunglasses is in the middle:

I am buying one normal sized lot in the middle of a few dozen lots, all surveyed. It appears as if mine will be the first house. Nice view of the hills. This is a 360° shot.

Here is what is uncredentialed about it. My driver, of course, has no real estate credentials and neither did the seller's representative. There is no deed to the property yet (though there will be in a few years) so I had my lawyer (yes, she has credentials) look over the very skimpy papers which she said were ok. No escrow, no wire transfers and no checks. Instead I handed over a bag of actual cash and now have a "Carta de posesión" from the local village that says I own the land. I did have a surveyor mark the boundaries, but I'm not sure what his qualifications are. Civil engineer? So there were no closing costs and there will be no taxes and no building permit is required.

My architect, Canadian, has no credentials. She was a photographer and is an excellent designer, though with no credentials there either. Her builder might be an engineer, I'm not sure. But none of his crew have any credentials. The reason we can do things this way is because we are in Mexico. Even if we did have to get a building permit, which we don't, no building inspector would come. I don't think we have any, just people from the archeological branch of government in the case of historic buildings.

Looking back on my career as a musician, right from the beginning I had no faith in credentials. My first instrument was electric bass in a rock group and when I converted to classical music and became a classical guitarist the first ones I met, while enthusiasts, had no credentials. I finally learned the trade with José Tomás in Spain, but I have no idea if he had any degrees. His "credential" was to be one of a few select students of Andrés Segovia--a great artist, but with no credentials that I am aware of. My first exposure to academia was wonderful in that I became exposed to the whole panoply of Western Civilization, but as regards the guitar, it was disenchanting.

I arrived at university, guitar in hand, only to find that the guitar instructor, a fine musician and student of Julian Bream (no other credentials) had left town so I was handed off to a couple of hack amateurs while they tried to persuade me that my instrument(s) were actually lute and piano. Nope. Later in life I did attend a serious musical institution, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, but at the end of the summer master class, I didn't even bother picking up my certificate. As far as I was concerned your only "credential" as a performer was your last concert. Funny story, I was riding around with a retired organist looking at houses and he was bragging about attending Juilliard. I have a weak character so I was unable to restrain myself from casually mentioning that I attended one of the very few musical institutions with a higher reputation than Juilliard. That caused a deafening silence. Yes, the Mozarteum. Mea culpa!

So I actually have a long-standing bias against credentialism that extends to the present day and is even stronger now. Of course, in Mexico, this is a fairly common view. No-one has much faith in government bureaucrats.

But when I visit supposedly more advanced countries like Canada, Austria, or Germany, I can see the devastation that out-of-control credentialism has wrought. Universities are rigid ideological camps, cities are ruined by zoning and ordnances to the point that houses are unaffordable, and renovations are impossible. The costs of everything keep climbing and the reasons are connected to the layers of bureaucracy and regulation that control every aspect of life. The benefits of a rational society are eaten up by the parasitism of the unproductive. These are vampire societies with a minority (though, sadly, not a tiny minority) sucking the life out of the people. In Canada in the last few years, while the number of employed in the private sector increased by 3.5% the number of government workers increased by 31%.

But statistics are not as important as the feel, the attitude of societies. In Canada, small businesses have almost been erased from the landscape, crushed by taxes and regulations, things that only big businesses can easily tolerate. People are junior partners in their own lives. And yet, all I hear is discussion of how much more taxes can be raised, how many more government regulations are required, how more minutely people's lives have to be controlled.

On the other hand, the best thing I have heard lately is that Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, is actually doing the right things. He just got rid of the entire federal tax department, a hive of corruption, and it will be replaced by a new, much smaller and more efficient department. I'm sure Canada, and many other countries, could benefit from the same kind of treatment.

So that's just a brief sketch of a prospective short book. What do you think readers? Scandalized? It's not political exactly, it's more anti-political.

Now some suitable music: