I read an article in Le Monde recently which made me give a more thorough thought to whether meritocracy is the beau idéal it claims to be: La méritocratie est la «bonne conscience des gagnants du système». If you don’t read French, here’s a short summary:
David Guilbaud, the author of ‘The Meritocratic Illusion’ (L’Illusion méritocratique), suggests that meritocracy has become a sort of narrative the young intellectuals (political sciences students, in this case) tell themselves in order to appease their conscience. A magic word that lets them imagine themselves worthier of social and financial advancement than other members of society.
He also discusses how the ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’ discourse often heard among young students collides ever more violently with the realities of social rigidity and the labour market. While the young imagine that their academic prowess is a sign of future economic and social success, the emergence of the ‘yellow vests movement’ flies against meritocratic slogans such as ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’. The modern idea of meritocracy (success no longer being decided by one’s origin, but by one’s efforts), Guilbaud says, affects one’s perspectives on society, but the reality of social rigidity (and irregularity, as the mobility is both ascending and descending, making it even more treacherous) should give us pause to think – not only about a short-term solution as providing ‘equality of chances’ but also long-term solutions to reduce overall social inequalities.
The interview is a thought-provoking read on a seldom posed question, but I also felt it tells an incomplete story. Going slightly deeper into the issue of social mobility the meritocratic system still provides, I feel there are other issues with it also. Even when successful, when this model allows us a fairer chance in life and brings benefits to society overall, it still comes with some caveats we need to keep in mind.
In all honesty, as someone whose parents were obstinate enough to provide me with an education beyond their own, my first impulse was to dismiss the issue in its entirety as unfounded. But take a closer look, and it’s scary to see how much of education is still very much a financially-driven privilege. I often wonder what my life would have been like if not for my parents’ immense sacrifices. We were a family of limited means – neither of my parents had a university education, and my father himself had to work through high-school to sustain himself financially. And he barely had the chance even to do that. When he was only 14, he had to run away from home to convince his parents (both simple peasants) of his determination to study in Bucharest (the capital city of Romania). He had been expected to stay close by and start working full-time in the fields with the family. There are some people like these, who are driven enough or lucky enough to pursue their dreams and make a slightly better life for themselves. But that’s only a minority, and social mobility as a phenomenon is still very much limited (the article in Le Monde gives an 18% rate for France, not even taking into account the even lower rate of dramatic upscale mobility).
In most cases, good quality education is still reserved for those who have an economic (and sometimes geographical) advantage. And that is yet another point where our judgement and use of meritocracy (as a system) needs some scrutiny. When education is just another means for the rich (or well-off) to become richer and to further inequality, it seems to me we have to examine the system and ourselves a little more thoroughly. At a very personal level, when we use a label such as ‘stupid’ or ‘inferior’ to describe individuals who did not have the luxury to access the same sources of information as we did, maybe we are doing meritocracy, education, leadership (and ultimately ‘civilisation’) wrong.
At the moment, meritocracy remains our best chance to further professional excellence, social mobility and overall individual growth in society. There is no doubt about it. But we need to tread carefully, as recent events in Europe and the U.S. have been showing us that we are still missing the mark to make this world a fairer place for all its inhabitants. The treacherous rift between the feudal financial (and cultural) elites and the ‘masses’ has only been partially overcome, and most times only rebranded to include meritocratic sounding terms. Although in many developed countries education is partially subsidised, its remaining costs make it accessible to only a few, still; and the knowledge gap is ever-widening, leading to further inequality and frustration on both sides of the aisle – both the well-off, well-educated new middle-class on one side and the poorer and less educated population on the other. The recent populist resurgence all over Europe and the USA – from the “glitch” of Trump’s election, to the ‘gilets jaunes’ (the yellow vests) movement in France, the right-wing Five Star government election in Italy and the massive political battles regarding immigration throughout Europe – is at least in part fueled by economic frustration, a failure of the meritocratic mantras of efforts = success and an ever-growing rift between a progressive, liberal-leaning ‘new meritocratic elite’ and the rest of the population.
When devoid of context and mindfulness – on both an individual level and in larger contexts (be it professional context or society at large) – meritocracy falls prey to the same corruption that befalls all systems. It hardens into a sort of ready-masticated recipe for success which turns our interactions with our peers into an untenable and unhealthy rivalry, which stifles creativity, risk-taking and well-being. It turns our world into an unsafe space, a dog-eat-dog kind of system where we need to function as unbreakable machines, where we force our children into strict training regimens throughout their childhood, we sacrifice joy, laughter and experience for future (and sometimes simply unattainable) goals of financial gain and a ‘better life’. A world where there is no room for mistakes or weakness. And it turns out it doesn’t even work for most, as recent events unfolding around the globe are demonstrating.
Moreover, in this world, we risk losing the very connections that make us human. We lose the joy of working, learning and creating together, of simplicity and of well-being. We go through life depressed and continuously anxious about our increasingly uncertain futures, and we unlearn how to teach our children anything else. And to top it all off, we also forget that on the other side there are still those who didn’t quite have the chance to get a life like ours, imperfect as it may be; we label them as ‘unworthy’ without an ounce of thought and discard them from our consciousness. When in fact we should use our newly privileged position – as unstable as it is – to fight for all of our well-being and financial gain. Maybe human advancement does not mean advancing independently and in spite of each other, but advancing together.
Returning then to the initial question – is meritocracy THE answer?
The answer is yes and no. No, not as it is. Not as a mantra used mindlessly in our chase for an increasingly better but isolating position in society. But yes, insomuch as it contains a ‘plus alpha +α’ element, as the Japanese say. Meritocracy with a big gulp of humaneness, one that brings with it not only rights, but also moral obligations. The solution to this meritocratic ‘mal de nouveau siècle’ is not solely political but dwells within all of us. We can easily find it if we try to exercise a little mindfulness, if we learn to look back into our past, recognise all the help we received and return it to those around us. It’s in our determination not to brush our success with the too easily available paint of entitlement. It’s in our love of each other, and in our basic human instinct of cooperation. It’s in the determination of a good leader to help their colleagues catch up and even surpass them, in a teacher’s willingness to coach and advise a less experienced colleague, or in a student’s commitment to tutor the kids in his neighbourhood. It’s in our determination not to let fear of each-other overwhelm us, and in our understanding that experience, knowledge and success come with a moral duty to not abandon the less privileged, to teach and help them walk alongside us. The answer is in the understanding that we are in all of this together.
Confucius himself tried to tell us as much some 2500 years ago:
‘Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others. To be able to judge of others by what is nigh in ourselves – this may be called the art of virtue.’ (Confucius, The Analects, trans. by James Legge).
Author: Alexandra Mustatea
Note: This post originally appeared on the author’s personal website and has been reproduced on this blog with the author’s permission.