20111125
merit
Meritocracy is a useful illusion. It tempts us to identify ourselves with the powerful and against the powerless. Because we are sure our own merits are great and our problems only circumstance, it comforts us that our own gain in future status in is assured. Because we are unfamiliar with others' circumstance and assume their problems are character flaws, it offers us the thrill of looking down on their unworthy laziness. It is useful because it encourages our complacence and discourages questioning our fundamental assumptions.
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2 comments:
Ha. Handy, indeed.
Meritocracy, like most of western ideals, is based on the supremacy, of 'rights' and the idea of 'deserving'. 'Desert', or 'merit', of course have no definitions that are clear. By what measure, and whose values, do we decide what merits what? The nature of rights are to divide community, and alienate the individual from his or her true nature-- that they are part of a larger whole. This participation in the larger whole is what grants us freedom-- not isolation.
Rights are an entirely philosophical construct. NEEDS, on the other hand, have empirical evidence to support them. And RESPONSIBILITY, as the moral obligation to self and community (and perhaps Truth), may be a philosophical construct, but it binds communities together, and humans to each other. These two, are far better axiomatic positions, because they are truer of humanity and the nature of man.
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