coromandal

Too much belief is a sign of our times, belief in markets, merit, credentials, competition. We think we’re free but we’re trapped in a dark age captured by limiting ideologies, in perpetual struggle against each other, without the skills to free ourselves. One way out is to know the insidious nature of the beliefs that hold us captive. To know that merit for instance is a lie. Worth also to know that it’s a lie that holds us in a system that is damaging to many lives. If you’re on the top you’re smug, if you’re on the bottom you’re in a desperate angry place. Is too much belief part of a consuming feedback loop: belief makes us passive to understand its corrupting nature and to act to free ourselves?

There is no fair way to create a meritocracy. This is because the notion of “merit” is itself loaded with unfair premises. People will always have differing life histories, capacities, and opportunities, and so any assumption that those who “rise to the top” of a competition have superior deservingness will be false. That doesn’t mean that everyone is equally qualified to be a surgeon or a structural engineer or a social worker, or that there should be no evaluations to make sure the people who have certain jobs can do them. Instead, it means that we can never conclude that people got those qualifications did so because they “earned” it more than others, and we should be skeptical of any idea of a “fair competition.”

Admit Everyone, Nathan J Robinson, Current Affairs, March 2018