Read on Twitter
I enjoyed Micheal Sandel's @ubcSPPGA #LIND21 talk this evening on points related to his book, The Tyranny of Merit. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374289980. A threat on some points that stood out:
The ideal of meritocracy is flawed and corrosive of the common good. It leads to hubris among the winners and to humiliation among those who lose out. It leads elites to look down on those less fortunate than themselves.
Meritocratic faith has come hand in hand with faith in markets to define & achieve the public good & the idea that those best qualified to govern are those with the most technocratic expertise, divorced from moral & civic virtue. Yet meritocratic elites haven't governed very well
We need to rethink:
1. The role of universities
2. The dignity of work
3. The meaning of success
1. The role of universities
2. The dignity of work
3. The meaning of success
We need to rethink the role of universities as the arbiters of dignity and success. It is folly to create an economy that requires a university degree for dignified work and pay. Universities are not a solution to inequality or a way of empowering people across society.
Around 2/3 of people do not have a university degree. At Ivy League universities, there are more students from the top 1% of the income scale than there are students from the entire bottom half.
We have converted higher education into a sorting machine that encourages universities, students, parents to regard universities as a credential -- distracting us from their intrinsic purpose of cultivating a love of learning, scientific inquiry, moral and civic education, etc.
We need to rethink the dignity of work, so we focus less on arming people for meritocratic competition and more on arming people for contributing to the common good.
The point of work is not only about making a living, it is about contributing to the common good in a way that earns us recognition, appreciation, honor -- as a mode of participation in social life, the civic and political dimension of work.
As Martin Luther King said to striking sanitation workers in Memphis 1968, they are as important of contributors to the common good of health as doctors: “whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth.”
As this pandemic has revealed and made clear, we deeply depend on workers we usually overlook -- delivery workers, warehouse workers, grocery workers, farm and food processing workers, childcare workers -- indeed we depend so much on them they are called "essential workers."
Finally, we need to rethink the meaning of success. We need a moral, spiritual turning -- for those of us deemed "successful" today to question our tendency for meritocratic hubris, to appreciate the role of luck, contingency, and fortune in our lives.
