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posted by
n1
on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:20AM
from the in-my-day-we-called-it-social-darwinism dept.
from the in-my-day-we-called-it-social-darwinism dept.
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.
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When the Term Meritocracy was Coined in 1958, it was in a Dystopian Satire
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I'm wearing PAMPERS!!
(Score: 2, Disagree) by zip on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:44PM
The author of that article doesn't seem to understand what meritocracy is. It (as a form of government) means that only those who have shown to have merit in a certain field can help decide issues in that same field. For example, most people here would qualify for some sort of technical/privacy committee, but would be hard pressed to get in to something related to agriculture.
Lack of intelligence (as well as awareness) is the cause of most of the issues in society today. We need intelligence to overcome the evolutionary defects that have accrued over millennia (see lack of long term planning). Sure, half of society will always fall below the 100 IQ mark, but that's just due to the definition, it's a relative scale. As long as we get smarter on the absolute scale, the world will only get better. Unfortunately this is not in the interest of those who stand to lose (governments, multi-billion corporations).
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