The Misguided Perspective of Meritocracy

We might think the success we’ve achieved has been entirely through our own efforts, but that’s rarely true.

What I watched: “The tyranny of merit” by Michael Sandel for TED.

In my book, The Art of Self-Education: How to Get a Quality Education for Personal and Professional Success Without Formal Schooling (paid link), I use this quote in a section titled “The Rise of Meritocracy.”

Meritocracy is a good thing. Whenever possible, people should be judged based on their work and results, not superficial qualities.

– Eric Ries

As I hope I will do as I learn and grow over time, I regret using that quote or elevating the concept of meritocracy as always a good thing. It’s not.

After watching the short video of esteemed political philosopher Michael Sandel explaining the downsides of a meritocratic mindset, I hope you’ll agree.

Meritocracy naysayers aren’t new. Several voices have risen in recent years denouncing the worship of meritocracy that pervades much of Western culture, especially the United States. We’re a country that extols the vision that you can be and do whatever you want, be whoever you want to be, but the truth is that’s not true for everyone. Until we disconnect the much touted “American dream” from reality, we won’t implement any viable solutions to the underlying problems of meritocracy.

In “The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?,” by Kwame Anthony Appiah, they explain the concept of meritocracy this way.

What would supplant the old, caste-like system of social hierarchy? For many today, the answer is “meritocracy” – a term that Young [Michael Young] himself coined 60 years ago. Meritocracy represents a vision in which power and privilege would be allocated by individual merit, not by social origins.

In their article, “The Myth of Meritocracy Runs Deep in American History,” based on his related book The Myth That Made Us, Jeff Fuhrer explains the gaping plot holes in the meritocracy narrative.

I find The Myth, which to a large extent accepts the current economic setup as it exists, dismaying. To my eye, it simply cannot be right that a country as affluent and wealthy as ours leaves so many hopelessly behind, without any real opportunity to succeed. A narrative that accepts that, to any degree, seems cold-hearted, mean-spirited.

In “How meritocracy harms everyone — even the winners,” Sean Illing leads with this.

The belief that we live in a meritocracy is one of our oldest and most persistent illusions.

It justifies the gaping inequalities in our society by attributing them to the skill and hard work of successful people and the incompetence and shortcomings of unsuccessful people. But this has always been a fantasy, a way of glossing over how the world actually works.

Sandel’s short TED talk encapsulates much of what the plethora of published articles have articulated as the negatives of embracing meritocracy as always a good thing for our society. In light of the recent American election outcome, perhaps it’s important to listen to Sandel now more than ever to ensure that the realities of systemic inequalities start to be appropriately corrected because they deeply influence our country’s current state of politics.

In recent decades, the divide between winners and losers has been deepening, poisoning our politics, setting us apart. This divide is partly about inequality. But it's also about the attitudes toward winning and losing that have come with it. Those who landed on top came to believe that their success was their own doing, a measure of their merit, and that those who lost out had no one to blame but themselves.

This way of thinking about success arises from a seemingly attractive principle, if everyone has an equal chance, the winners deserve their winnings. This is the heart of the meritocratic ideal. In practice, of course, we fall far short. Not everybody has an equal chance to rise.

Let me get personal and let’s assume I’ve had at least a modicum of success in my life. Did I work hard for it? Yes, I did. But the hubris to believe it was all entirely of my own doing would and should be embarrassing. I know we’re told individual effort and moxie are all that’s needed to succeed in life, but that’s not true.

I’m white. That right there is a huge leg up in a culture steeped in systemic racism. I’m a man. That is also a big advantage in a culture still dominated by men in too many positions of power. My father was middle-class, and I was an only child by him. That meant he could funnel his financial resources to send me to a private school for grades 1-8, buy me the mountain of books I consumed under his tutelage, pay for college outright, and so on. Plus, my father was a famous Ph.D. academic in his field. I benefitted from the sheer luck of being born to such a well-educated man.

Despite some health challenges, my overall health has remained fairly steady even at my current age of 70. Some of that’s my chosen lifestyle, but much of that is pure random luck. Being an out gay man since a young age, I chose to live in dense urban areas in which I was more readily accepted, but this also tangentially advantaged me in terms of employment and social opportunities, advantages rural people don’t always have.

Then there is plain old unadulterated luck. When I started to hook up with a popular gay bar owner, that led to me bartending at an extremely popular bar which injected lots of cash directly into my dance studies. Those dance studies were spawned by me randomly taking a dance class in college only to be told by the teacher I was good and she nudged me into becoming a dance major which I did the next semester.

When I left my career of dance in the early 1980s, I was temping at a bank in an administrative position. The department procured a then cutting-edge small mainframe computer because they had to spend their end-of-year budget or lose it. I asked who was going to run it. The woman who was the Vice President of that area of the bank told me they had no one in mind, and she generously allowed me a week’s time to pour through the manuals and learn how to run it. That resulted in my first IT job. Admittedly, I grabbed the ring of opportunity when I saw it, but were it not for all those pieces falling neatly into place, the computer and software career that funded my life for decades, especially for someone without a college degree, might never have happened.

Even my writing has random luck as its origins. Yes, I was the sports editor for my high school newspaper and wrote a bit when younger, but it was ending up in a relationship with a famous psychotherapist who specialized in and was famous within certain sexual subcultures that led to my sexuality writing which eventually led to writing about all sorts of things.

I could go on. The point is, you are not where you are today entirely because of your efforts, no matter how much you might believe that. Certain inherent privileges along with a decent dose of luck were likely involved. The more we acknowledge this, the less we’ll see meritocracy as the barometer by which we judge all success.

Please watch Sandel’s video. It’s short. It’s important. Sandel ends with this.

Is it my doing that I live in a society that prizes the talents I happen to have? Or is that my good luck? Insisting that my success is my due makes it hard to see myself in other people's shoes. Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility. There but for the accident of birth or the grace of God or the mystery of fate, go I. This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now. It's the beginning of a way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart It points us beyond the tyranny of merit to a less rancorous, more generous, public life.

Reflect on whether you attribute your success only to your own efforts and not at least facilitated by forces and situations outside of your control. Humbleness is a trait most of us should foster.

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