A recent book review in the New Yorker ruminated on the progress and defects of the meritocracy, a word born in sarcasm, now become an ideology and platitude. I am not sure that the review really touched on the deeper issues involved, so am motivated to offer a followup. The term was coined by a British sociologist, which is significant, as it describes a fundamental shift from the preceding system, the class system, as a way of allocating educational opportunity, professional work, military grades, and social status in general. It would be natural for someone of the British upper class to decry such a change, though the coiner, Michael Young, was generally a socialist and egalitarian, though eventually made into a Baron for his services ... ironically.
The book review focused mostly on the educational establishment, where the greatest sea change has occurred. Where elite schools used to lazily accept their students from elite prep academies, from certain rich families and class backgrounds, now they make a science of student selection, searching far and wide, high and low, for the most meritorious candidates. Are SAT scores useful? Not very, the new consensus has it, especially as such tests unconsciously reproduce various cultural biases, instead of rendering the true grail- a score of merit, whatever that really might be. But anyhow the slicing is done, higher education is now an intense, mostly meritocratic sorting process, granting opportunities and education on the basis of qualifications, intent on funneling the most capable people into the higher rungs of the ladder of professional activities and status.
One question is whether all this laborious sorting of students has been a good thing, overall. Do we get better staffed hospitals, better filled jobs throughout the economic system by virtue of this exquisitely and remorselessly selective weeding system? Yes we do, perhaps at the cost of some social serendipity, of finding CEO material in the mailroom, and the like.
But the deeper question is whether all this selection has been good for our society at large. There is answer has to be more guarded. If economic efficiency is the only goal, then sure. But it isn't, and some of our social atomization, and creeping class-ism and despair in the lower rungs of society comes from the intensification of meritocratic selection, which spills over to many other areas of society, directly through income and wealth, and indirectly through many other mechanisms of status, particularly politics. Much of Trump's support comes from people sick of the "elites"- those selected by SAT scores, course grades, and the like to rule over the working class. It is not clear that grubbing for grades and mastering standardized exams have done such a good job at selecting a ruling political class. That class has not done a very good job, and that poor performance has sapped our social solidarity. The crisis is most glaring in the stark cost of losing out- homelessness and destitution- the appalling conditions that are the mirror of billionaires also produced by this Darwinian system.
The problem is that we need areas of our lives that are not plugged into the rat race, for both psychological and sociological reasons. Such areas are increasingly scarce as this new gilded age gobbles up all our social relations under the rubric of the market, paticularly with its newly internet-extended capabilities. Religion has traditionally been a social locus where every one is worth the same- many classes come together to share some profound feelings, and occasionally explicit anti-establishment messages, (though also often a message of exalted status vs some other sect, faith, or unbelievers). But religion is dying, for good reason.
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| A town meeting |
Civic associations and volunteer life have in the US been a frequent antidote to class-ism, with people of all classes coming together to make each others' lives better. But modern transportation has enabled the definitive sorting of classes by socioeconomic level, rendering civic activity, even when it occurs, poor at social mixing. No longer does a geographic community have to include those of all professions and walks of life to be viable. We can have lilly-white suburbs and gated communities, and have any tradespeople and retail employees commute in from far away. That is a problem, one caused ultimately by fossil fuels and the freedom that they bring. The civic sector has also been invaded by an army of vanity foundations sponsored by the rich- a patronizing and typically futile approach to social betterment. Volunteerism has also been sapped by lack of time and money, as employees throughout the economic system are lashed ever more tightly to their jobs, stores kept open at all hours, and wages for most stagnate. Unions are another form of civic association that have withered.
All this has frayed the local civic and social connections, which are the ultimate safety net and source of civic solidarity. While Republicans bray about how terrible government is at replacing these services with top-down programs, (with some justification), they have at the same time carried out a decades-long battle to weaken both government and civic life, leaving a smoldering ruin in the name of a new feudal overlordship of the "job-creators"- the business class. That is the ultimate problem with meritocracy, and while appreciating its role in spreading social justice in the distribution of educational and professional opportunity, (a promise that is far from fully realized), we need to realize its cost in other areas of our national culture, and work to restore community diversity, community institutions, and community solidarity.
- Are corporations amoral and evil?
- Is market manipulation part of the story?
- Don't go to the hospital.
- Japan vs MMT.
- Amazing Chopin.
- Quote of the week:
Where love rules, there is no will to power; where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. – Carl Jung
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