Stephen Woods

“The path from knowledge, as a general form of domination, to administrative power might seem more circuitous. Does the kind of esoteric knowledge we encounter at Chavín, often founded in hallucinogenic experience, really have anything in common with the accounting methods of the later Inca? It seems highly unlikely – until, that is, we recall that even in much more recent times, qualifications to enter bureaucracies are typically based on some form of knowledge that has virtually nothing to do with actual administration. It’s only important because it’s obscure. Hence in tenth-century China or eighteenth-century Germany, aspiring civil servants had to pass exams on proficiency in literary classics, written in archaic or even dead languages, just as today they will have had to pass exams on rational choice theory or the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The arts of administration are really only learned later on and through more traditional means: by practice, apprenticeship or informal mentoring.”
― David Graeber, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity