Clerisy

The clerisy is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society. It is also called the intelligentsia or the literati. American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "clerisy" as "Educated people considered as a group; the literati." For a concise definition, Onelook defines it as "educated class of intellectual elites." A person who is well-versed and an expert or genius in a field can be complimented using this word: "Wow, Joe, you are very smart, you are brilliant! You must be part of the clerisy!" The word clerk, which, today, usually means an assistant at a store, hotel, restaurant, or some other establishment, was formerly used as a synonym for "scholar." This fell out of common usage, with many online dictionaries labeling this sense as "obsolete" or "archaic," though "clerk" remains a fairly common word today. It was coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834), adapted from Klerisei, a German word for "clergy," from an old sense of "clergy" meaning "learning" or "knowledge," which had fallen out of use but survived in the proverb, "an ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy."

In contrast to the clerisy, the laity consists of the vast majority of individuals. A member of the laity is called a layman. Although most dictionaries define "layman" as a person who is not a professional in a field, it can also be used more generally as a synonym for "common person" or "everyday Joe / Jane" or "Joe on the street."

For the purposes of this article, we will bring back an archaic sense of "cleric" and use it to refer to a member of the clerisy, and we will use "layman" to refer to a member of the laity.

Examples

• When it comes to listening to music, the everyday listeners, like you and me, are part of the laity. Expert music critics such as Todd in the Shadows, Spectrum Pulse, and more, are part of the clerisy.
  • Laity: An average high school student who listens to pop music on a regular basis usually likes or dislikes a song based on the melody, the instrumentation, and the vocals. Any song with a catchy and fun beat can easily appear on a high school student's personal playlist. Although "Hey Soul Sister" has generally negative reviews among critics and audience alike, getting a very low rating of 30% on Album of the Year (202 user ratings as of December 2024) , and appearing on numerous "worst songs" lists for the year 2010 including the one from Village Voice , teenage students attending the League School of Greater Boston in Walpole, Massachusetts, had the opposite view. This song was generally loved by such students. Michael Pensak likes this song. One day, in early 2011, Raymond Wang, then 14, was listening to the song on one of the computers in Room 107, the school's "computer lab," with staff member Chinye (who went by "Chichi"), and Mark Chrislu and his entire class, including a girl named Ellie, came into the room. Ellie loved the song, and several of her classmates liked it as well, deciding to stay in the computer lab to hear the song. On the other hand, some people don't like "sad songs" and try to avoid them. In April 2013, during a karaoke session in the music room, League School student Hector Cartagena revealed that he didn't like "The One That Got Away" by Katy Perry as he found the song to be quite sad.
  • Clerisy: Unlike the "high school students" and "average Joes" as illustrated above, music critics are a lot more selective when it comes to music preference. We need to make it abundantly clear that "media critics" (the music critics who post reviews on Billboard, Rolling Stone, etc.) are quite different from "YouTube critics" (Todd in the Shadows, Spectrum Pulse, A Dose of Buckley, etc.) when it comes to critical reception. For this section, we will focus on YouTube critics because, for some reason, "media critics" are very lenient when it comes to reviewing songs. Songs with "generally negative reviews" (such as "Marvin Gaye" by Charlie Puth) are very rare. A fast, reliable way to measure the audience reception of a song is to look up the "user score" of the song on Album of the Year. Although plenty of songs have scored as low as 30%, 20%, or, in extreme cases, even 5%, it is exceedingly rare for a song or artist to get a "critic score" that is lower than 40%. For example, of the six albums Justin Bieber has released ("My World," "My World 2.0," "Believe," "Purpose," "Changes," and "Justice"), "Purpose" is the only album whose user score exceeds 50%, while "Changes," widely regarded as the worst of the bunch, scored only 26%. However, all six albums had a critic score of 50% or higher, and all of them except "Changes" (which got a 54%) had a critic score of 60% or higher. Therefore, for the remainder of this discussion, we will limit our focus to "YouTube critics." From this point onwards, "music critic" will exclusively mean "YouTube critic."
    • Unlike average Joes and Janes, music critics don't "like" or "love" songs easily. Instead, they carefully analyze the lyrics, the instrumentation, the composition, the surface and deeper meanings of the lyrics, and so on, to form an educated opinion and educated evaluation of the song as a whole. Todd in the Shadows hates Lewis Capaldi's 2019 song, "Someone You Loved." However, he loves Taylor Swift's 2015 song "Style," even going as far as putting it at #1 on the "best of 2015" list. Todd loves how, unlike previous Taylor Swift songs, where Taylor sings about a breakup after the breakup has already happened, there is no such distance in "Style" as Taylor sings about the relationship during the relationship and goes in with no illusions.
• En-Kuang Lung (born October 20, 1966), who goes by "EK Lung," is part of the clerisy. He is a very versatile teacher who is knowledgeable on numerous subjects, including math, science, SAT preparation, and, as a Christian, Bible study. Within the field of science, he is very knowledgeable and well-versed in space science, physics, biology, and so much more.
  • On November 20, 2022, he and his longtime client, Raymond Wang, had their weekly Zoom meeting for two hours, from 7 p.m. EST until 9 p.m. EST. As part of their routine, they discussed the latest news. This time, they discussed the mass shooting, which occurred at a nightclub in Colorado Springs the previous night. After reading a news article about the tragedy, EK and Ray talked about strategies for dealing with an active shooter and ways to neutralize the threat. When confronted with an "active shooter" situation, we can call 911 and then hold the shooter against the ground and restrict his movement until the police arrive. EK Lung gave a perfect response to one of the questions. At 8:38:30 p.m., EK Lung said, ""We don't let our own emotion run our lives. We let God run our lives. We let the Holy Spirit run our lives." In such an emergency, even taking the gun and killing the shooter would be considered acceptable and heroic by the general public. However, as mentioned, EK Lung is not a layman, he is a cleric, and being the excellent Christian that he is, he argues that all human lives belong to God, and killing the person is against God's will and plan.

Connotation

Clerisy is a very positive word. It is akin to other words for authority and knowledge, such as "genius," "experts," "elite," "professional," and "authorities."

In business

• In 2021, entrepreneur Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and investor Lisa Myers announced the launch of a growth equity fund called Clerisy.

Appeal to clerisy

An appeal to clerisy (a.k.a. argument from clerisy) is a form of argument in which the opinion of one or more clerics is used as evidence to support an argument. It is very similar to the argument from authority and obtaining knowledge in this way is fallible. This fallacy can also be committed for subjective matters of taste and preference. People easily fall for cognitive biases such as the halo effect, authority bias, and celebrity bias, such that the opinions, viewpoints, or decisions of a celebrity or a public figure we perceive as an authority figure or a deity seem more important than the opinions, viewpoints, or decisions of "regular people" such as "Joe on the street" or "John at the park." People tend to attach extra "weight" to the beliefs of celebrities, so for a lot of people, "MandJTV likes Castform" is far more significant than "My friend Joe likes Castform,” since MandJTV is vastly more famous than “my friend,” presumably an obscure individual.

• Example 1: Reception of Sylveon. Most Pokémon fans love Sylveon, the Fairy-type Eeveelution introduced in Generation 6 in the 2013 video games, Pokémon X and Y. It is number 700 in the National Pokédex. According to a Tiermaker poll conducted in May 2024, a random sample of 321 participants were surveyed, of which 268 people like Sylveon (83.5%). Treating "love" as a subset of "like," 208 people (64.8%) love Sylveon. An approval rate of 83.5% indicates near-universal acclaim. However, this means that 16.5% of Pokémon fans either dislike Sylveon or feel indifferent. Unfortunately, MandJTV (real name: Michael Groth), who is one of, if not the, biggest names in the Pokémon community with over 956 million views on his YouTube channel to date, is part of the 16.5% minority. Although he loves most "fan favorites" such as Greninja, Aegislash, Luxray, and Corviknight, he has "no strong feelings" when it comes to Sylveon, and to the dismay of many fans and viewers, he has expressed that indifference in multiple videos, including a "tier list" video in March 2019 in which he put Sylveon in the "B" tier. Now, clearly, MandJTV is just one person, one human being, on a planet with 8 billion humans, but due to his popularity, his opinion feels way more significant than an average Joe's opinion. Even though a huge majority of Pokémon fans adore Sylveon, the most popular Pokémon YouTuber is not one of them. To many of his longtime fans, his single opinion might carry the weight of ten or even a hundred "regular" opinions about Sylveon, especially for fans who love Sylveon so much that they would rank it among their personal top five. And don't even get me started about the fact that MandJTV actively hates Empoleon (#395 in the National Pokédex), another widely beloved Pokémon (Like Rate: 203 / 262 = 77.5%, Love Rate: 135 / 262 = 51.5%). Fortunately, for Sylveon lovers everywhere, there are plenty of popular PokéTubers who love Sylveon, just as the 83.5% like ratio and the 64.8% love ratio would suggest.

• Example 2: Take Me to Church. If you have been actively following Todd in the Shadows for at least a month, you already have a solid understanding on how Todd's system of reviewing songs works. He picks apart the songs and reviews them piece by piece before concluding with a final "verdict" for the song. Unless you are a perfect clone of Todd, you will disagree with Todd, and there will be times when you strongly disagree with him. Despite this, though, Todd actually has a fairly normal taste in music. His opinions about songs correlate strongly with Album of the Year ratings. Songs rated below 50% are far more likely to appear on the "worst songs" list than the "best songs" list, while songs rated 80% or higher are far more likely to appear on the "best songs" list. For example, Taylor Swift's "Style," which has an amazing 91% rating, took the #1 spot on the "best songs" list of 2015. "Body Like A Back Road," which scored a meager 12%, was #3 on the "worst songs" list of 2017. Of the songs that have appeared on one of the two annual countdowns, almost all songs with "extremely high" (80% or higher) user scores have been on the "best songs" list. Hozier's "Take Me To Church" is a big exception, however. Despite a wonderful 83% rating, Todd hates this song and put it in the "Dishonorable Mentions" in 2014. Again, although Todd is only one person, his dislike of this song feels like a lot more than just one vote because Todd is so popular and famous.

• Example 3: Lopunny. On July 1, 2013, Tama Hero (then known as Tamashii Hiroka) released a video to YouTube, ranking her top ten least favorite Pokémon. At #1, she picked Lopunny (#428 in the National Pokédex). Since Tama Hero is one of, if not the, biggest female PokéTubers, with over 68,500,000 views, this is a salient opinion due to her fame.