Worshiping at the altar of self
by Tom Sullivan
Lower Manhattan. Photo public domain by Ibagli.
“Shit happens” is perhaps one of the most profound claims you’ll ever see on a bumper. It is an acknowledgement the universe is as random as it is ordered. Humans don’t like to admit that. A random asteroid didn’t do the dinosaurs any favors either. Perhaps sudden extinction was the product of a personality defect?
We prefer to believe the world rewards effort, that success follows hard work as surely as the dawn follows the night, even if its arrival is not as predictable. We believe in a world guided by meritocracy.
David Brooks has a moralistic reverie on transcending the trap of living by a meritocratic faith. But it is principally a personal transformation Brooks recommends. Clifton Mark’s Aeon piece (reproduced at The Week) speaks to ditching the broader cultural trap that perpetuates the personal one.
“The most self-congratulatory of distribution principles,” belief in meritocracy creates the false impression that the world is just, that one deserves what one gets, that hard work and playing by the rules counts for something, or should. Randomness, luck, does not exist in that world. Howard Schultz and his fellow billionaires live there. Democratic politicians speak as if that world actually existed once and, through hard work and more progressive policies, they will restore it if we’ll just hand them back the White House and Congress.
Belief in meritocracy sustains the status quo, teaches tolerance for inequity, and convinces the Haves their fortune is theirs and theirs alone. “Winners” stand on no one’s shoulders.
Mark writes:
By contrast, research on gratitude indicates that remembering the role of luck increases generosity. [U.S. economist Robert] Frank cites a study in which simply asking subjects to recall the external factors (luck, help from others) that had contributed to their successes in life made them much more likely to give to charity than those who were asked to remember the internal factors (effort, skill).
Perhaps more disturbing: Simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behavior. Management scholar Emilio Castilla at MIT and sociologist Stephen Benard at Indiana University studied attempts to implement meritocratic practices, such as performance-based compensation in private companies. They found that, in companies that explicitly held meritocracy as a core value, managers assigned greater rewards to male employees over female employees with identical performance evaluations. This preference disappeared where meritocracy was not explicitly adopted as a value.
This is surprising because impartiality is the core of meritocracy’s moral appeal. The “even playing field” is intended to avoid unfair inequalities based on gender, race, and the like. Yet Castilla and Benard found that, ironically, attempts to implement meritocracy leads to just the kinds of inequalities that it aims to eliminate. They suggest that this “paradox of meritocracy” occurs because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides. Satisfied that they are just, they become less inclined to examine their own behavior for signs of prejudice.
It is why debates about who is “self-made” get so acrid, Marks explains. We are not talking about merit or work ethic. We’re talking about identity. To challenge the meritocratic faith is to suggest luck has something to do with success. That is insulting to those dedicated to the proposition that shit does not happen and that all men are not created equal. Their wealth is proof some are more equal than others as much as a megachurch preacher’s is proof God has rewarded his faithfulness. The prosperity gospel is meritocracy clothed in ecclesiastical robes. Wall Street is the megachurch without Sunday services.