Fighters Vs. Fight Analysts
Our world is full of fights and contests, thought many are not explicitly labeled as such. For example, we fight for success in romance, sports, arts, politics, war, law, business, finance, careers, academia, talk, and writing.
In addition to those who fight directly, we also have many in supporting roles, such as teacher, coach, agent, toolmaker, reviewer, referee, storyteller, and biographer. In addition, intellectuals and academics often offer neutral abstract analyses for different arenas of fighting. Such analyses can suggest not only how to win fights, but also what value these fights offer the rest of us, and how to change arenas to make more such value.
Each fight-related role has a different mix between seeing fights from the view of particular fighters, and seeing them more from the view of neutral observers. At the two extremes, fighters themselves mostly see their fights from their own partisan view, while referees and neutral abstract analysts arguably have the most opportunity to take non-partisan views, though they may fail to do so.
I see a correlation in the status assigned to these different roles, due to the status of the arena itself. For example, those who play the kids’ card game Crazy Eights, as well as its teachers, coaches, biographers, and theorists, all achieve lower status from these roles, as Crazy Eights it itself low in prestige.
But I also see differences across areas in whether it is the partisan or non-partisan who get more status. For example, regarding financial trading, and games of strategy. those who do abstract analysis of optimal play, or who build algorithms to figure out optimal play, gain the highest status. And such non-partisan folks gain pretty high status re war and sports, even relative to the best partisans.
The strongest example I know of in the other direction is: culture. I recently did some polls asking about the prestige of 16 academic areas of study, and cultural studies came in dead last. Yet our most prestigious intellectuals today are public intellectuals, whose main activity, and the reason most like them so much, is that they fight to push culture in preferred directions.
Politics seems similar in this way, if not as extreme. That is, we celebrate politicians and political activists far more than we do those who do neutral abstract analysis of how political systems work. (That was the area in which I got my Ph.D.)
So why do we celebrate fighters relative to fight analysts so much more in some areas than in others? The theory that occurs to me is that in the more we really like certain kinds of fighters, and the more unrealistic the images they tend to present of their actions and motives, then the more we dislike the analysts who are likely to dispute such images. On the other hand, if, as with sports or financial trading, we can mostly accept the descriptions of fights that neutral abstract analysts are likely to come up with, then we are more willing to respect and celebrate such analysts.
A corollary of this theory: culture seems the area of life where we are the most wary of neutral abstract descriptions, for fear that they might undermine the stories that our favorite culture fighters tell about their fights.
Interesting question. Your answer—that when it comes to culture, where we each have a dog in the fight, so to speak—has some practical implications for those of us who study and write about culture. Perhaps we can better communicate if we pick a side and write in a self-aware voice vs being neutral or being an actual fighter.
Some fights have clearer winning criteria.
More clear winning criteria -> higher status analyst
Less clear -> higher status fighter
When it is unclear what counts or should count as winning, analysts can only talk particulars, and in that sense are no good as the practitioners, the fighter. Sure the rules are clear what counts as winning an election, but rhetorical politics or cultural conflicts have underspecified winning criteria.