When Michael Young, a British sociologist, coined the term meritocracy in 1958, it was in a dystopian satire. At the time, the world he imagined, in which intelligence fully determined who thrived and who languished, was understood to be predatory, pathological, far-fetched.
Today, however, we’ve almost finished installing such a system, and we have embraced the idea of a meritocracy with few reservations, even treating it as virtuous. That can’t be right. Smart people should feel entitled to make the most of their gift. But they should not reshape society so as to instate giftedness as a universal yardstick of human worth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @07:01AM
Damn it, I'm ugly and I know nobody. The only solution is a killing spree. Death to the beautiful well-connected people!
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Saturday June 18 2016, @09:43AM
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956