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The Myth Of Meritocracy

A pervasive falsehood perpetuated for control

By SNROCINUTAFPublished 3 years ago 17 min read
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Written by: TJ Hyland - January 10, 2021

I want to talk about the Meritocracy that we live in, how it's related to our belief in a higher power, and why it's such a pervasive concept and a sham. Meritocracy is a social system where success and status depend on the individual's talents, abilities, and effort. It's supposed to be a system where elevation happens because of personal merit. If you can't explain why something is without referring to omniscience, that thing doesn't exist. Omniscient creators as a concept was created by those who sought to consolidate power, and rules from a higher power were the excuses they used to explain away the injustice that others feel when they are suffering in poverty. A higher power is the ultimate appeal to authority that can never be surpassed. An omniscient magical all-powerful ruler is like that argument we had as kids where we cry out, times 1 million, times 1 trillion, "times infinity!" because nothing tops infinity.

A higher power excuses the exploitative practices of those in power positions, so both those in power and those without power refuse to seek to change. Belief systems maintain the system by squelching acts of consciousness before they become a problem. The church says, keep your faithful thinking caps on everyone. We can't have you thinking about things on your own. You need to think only the way we tell you to. "Captivate your thoughts for the supreme leader," they say, and by far there is no single belief system to use this tactic. What belief system teaches is a mythical ordained talent or merit-based system where if you are enlightened ordained or approved of by this magical entity, you will do well in life, and if you are not, you will do poorly. If you do poorly and you love your supreme leader, he is testing your love and devotion because you are a sinner, and if you do well, it's because the all-knowing one has bestowed gifts of extreme virtue, talent, and merit of achievement unto you. It's all garbage, now let's talk about why.

First, to help understand how the Meritocracy concept became ingrained in our minds as a pervasive concept that we think still exists today, we need to discuss how belief systems came to be. Imagine our motherland African clans from tens of thousands of years ago, before white man lived. If they wanted something, they relied on the cooperation of others to make it happen. Humans could not defeat the wild without ingenuity and collaboration, and from that, natural leaders emerged. With leadership came jealousy, as those who wanted something needed the people to follow them to make it happen, paving the way for the first Alpha males who would kill a natural leader to take their place and force the people to follow them out of fear. This was the death of Meritocracy, and brute force rulership took its place. Yes, the Meritocracy we pretend we live under today died that long ago with the first alpha male's birth. The tendency of people to pontificate in storytelling was one of the primary drivers in writing stories. With the rise of the alpha males, who ruled without merit, glorification was born.

To escape the tyrannical rule of alpha males, tribes split up, going off to start their civilization. People would follow a natural leader away, and generations later, the ruling style of the neighboring tribe would inevitably appeal to someone who felt they were strong enough to rule by force. So, they would, seeking evermore resources and social clout. These ancient tribes' scribes became cryptic to those outside each tribe because as their languages evolved, separated by space and time, as did their writing styles. As the collective tribes grew and their writing became more advanced, the tribes with more advanced writing, who were able to pass down the most detail in the clearest format, were most successful. Think about that. They developed a system to write down something they did, step by step, to recreate things by others who had never done it or seen it done before. That's magic to someone from another tribe with a less evolved written language.

Which came first, the writing or the belief system? Arguably, the leaders of the ancient tribes glorifying their lives in hand became the first legends of humankind and deities in their own right. The words used to pontificate their history and praised their achievements caused people to worship them as lords, and many told their people they were immortal, but where does an immortal being go when their time expires on earth? It was only a matter of time before someone seeking to consolidate the power of language wrote a book for the masses. That changed the concept of higher beings - from the former tangible creatures like the old Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Roman Lords that were attributed their titles because of their accumulated wealth and power, to that of a higher power that can't be seen or spoken to and therefore is truly immortal. After centuries of brute force rule, they finally figured out a way to use tribal superstitions to create the first organized belief systems that endowed only a few with a higher power and ordained the right to lead regardless of their ability or strength. The more a civilization educated others in their community, the more they grew, expanded, evolved, and prospered, the more it was revered by outsiders as magical. In time, other civilizations caught onto the trick and used it for their own cultures and thus began the battle of the theologians. Initially, the new churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples were forced to recognize the tyrannical alpha male rulers as ordained by their supreme rulers. This meant bestowing a privilege to their lineage that passed down to their kin, and overtime, thus began the death of the alpha male rule. From then forward, there has been a struggle between theology and governance over the people's minds and productivity. Still, all the holy books and history books were written by those in power, created to maintain the way of life that suits them, and excuse the poor treatment and suffering created by their exploitations.

In reality, the Meritocracy died by the alpha male, and royal lineage ordained by belief systems killed the alpha males. What we have today aren't people who are ruling over us because of any merit or talent, but people who have hoarded wealth from countless generations of enslaved people locked out of the pyramid, Ponzi-Scheme system because of their birth. You see, the system was created to benefit the few and exploit the rest. Inheritance laws consolidate wealth over time through the generations. We have evolved away from royalty systems because we've come to recognize that a deity endows no one's blood with special powers. No one is granted a gift by their sky daddy, making them more qualified to rule. But instead, the system we live in creates chaos, and with it, a ladder of bodies appears for those ruthless enough to climb it. We have a separation of church and state so that no church can force the government to contribute to the church and so that the church can't be forced to contribute to the government. They are distinct governing bodies separate from each other but working in unison. Then comes the corporation. The corporation is a business that received human rights as if all the humans working for the corporation are equal to one more powerful being. Who rules? The corporatocracy? The theologians? The government? They all work in tandem as the governing triad. We're seeing things unfold now with anti-trust laws brought against the corporate giants by the government. They're telling the CEOs it's time they fall in line with the will of our religious and political rulers.

It may be possible for some to make it to the top in this exploitation system if they can figure out how to exploit more people and resources than the next person. For the vast majority of us (the 99%), social mobility is not only limited but because of FICO and systemic discrimination, it's impossible. Social mobility in this system isn't possible without others' help through charity, a miracle like winning the lottery, or social welfare programs that boost those currently locked out of the system. Those are now the only measures that stand and give us lower-classes the opportunity to compete on some level of merit. Even then, the ability to climb the social hierarchy is limited to one socioeconomic tier from their parents. This is why we see some people make it to the top who previously considered themselves inferior. They were once at the top of the lower wage-earning families that we call the upper-middle class. Poverty is subjective in this way because the income disparity is so broad. When they make it to the upper-class's bottom tier, they look back on their situation as the top of the lower-class and think they were poor. That also makes them feel it wasn't so bad, and I don't know why people are complaining because I learned a lot of life lessons that the rich people surrounding me now never knew.

The rich use the elevated poor to pretend that we can also achieve what they have. They do it in the same way they point to a few indoctrinated black folks like Candace Owens, who propagate white supremacy and the wealth equals merit system to validate their arguments. As if a person's skin color validates their idea. Yes, we see a few examples of people from the top of the bottom pile sifted into the upper classes. We do see the so-called merit-based created by the rich in their philanthropic charities explicitly designed to identify those who they can exploit the most, and thereby those people get a little bit more. To us, that little bit more is millions of dollars. To them, that little bit more is chump change. Imagine the population as a pile of sand poured into a cone with the most impoverished people at the bottom. The richest of the poor people are at the top. A few straggling sand pebbles around the outer edges are the homeless and incarcerated because they're separate from society. Only a few grains of sand from the top of the pile will ever make it to the upper-class, and when they do, you better believe those from the upper classes, the old money, don't think it was because of their merit. The rich think the only way the poor classes make it into the upper classes is their charity or state welfare, both of which they consider an unfair advantage. We can never truly become one of them because of that belief. They pity us for imagining we could ever be accepted into their world.

The rich created a world for us exploiting our belief systems, where philanthropy is cherished, and to both taxes and welfare programs, they frown. Duty is a concept for the poor. The idea of taxes as our duty, and our responsibility, was created by the rich when they created money. They sold us on the idea that taxes are our duty to society. We all have to pay into society to have the things we need, provided by the rich who govern us. We give them the money, and they manage it to ensure the social programs that benefit our lives are funded. They never meant to be included in that system because it's used to steal money from the poor to feed the rich through administrative fees. That's why the rich don't want to pay any taxes. To get around their duty to pay taxes, they sold us on a new concept, philanthropy. You see, philanthropy is a choice. Shouldn't they have a choice if they want to contribute to society? If you were in their shoes, wouldn't you want the option? They want the choice not to pay into the system that they feed on like vampires, and they think we don't have the right to make their contributions to society a duty as it is for the rest of us. Why is the responsibility essential for us and unimportant for them?

They control our jobs, livelihood, and ability to survive, but when we ask them to do their duty and give back for us, making them rich, they say there's no duty. We owe your community nothing. We built your community; we don't have to contribute to it beyond that. But it wasn't their labor that built our communities. It was our blood, sweat, and tears that made our communities. Not their fragile, delicate hands. They may choose to donate some money to help our communities, but they will also decide who's eligible for support. This allows them to perpetuate our communities' religious leadership to keep as many people as possible indoctrinated into their lies. According to pewforum.org, atheists are only 3.1% of the US population. There also appears to be around 20% give or take overall that may lean slightly toward atheism. Still, the most significant population of atheists is part of the scientific community. So it makes sense why there are so many out there who are science deniers and who try to claim science is just another belief system. It's likely the 20% aren't mentally prepared to move toward atheism because they know they'll be attacked by all the religious folks in their family or community.

Atheism is just a lack of belief in the existence of supernatural personas. Science is about finding empirical evidence and data to prove the existence of something, so it makes sense why most scientists are atheists because there's no proof that an all-powerful being exists. Empirical means verifiable by observation or experience rather than by theory or logic. Theism or the belief in supernatural personas is a direct contradiction to that process. Belief systems are the theistic practice of worship based on zero empirical evidence. It's the practice of concluding based on one's desires and using cherry-picked passages from a storybook written in the dark ages of civilization when people were allowed to kill each other to settle a dispute. There were many reasons each society deemed justifiable murder. Belief systems sought to consolidate some of society's belief structures to make sure people agree on what constitutes good and bad behavior. It corralled people into like-minded thinking so they would behave in a manner that suited the land's rulers. The war on science is raging because the atheistic approach to obtaining data replicable and repeatable using specific parameters to verify something is true goes against the religious world view of believing something is true without evidence to prove it. What can we do when 80% strongly believe in something there is no evidence but refuse to accept things where there is enumerable evidence? What can we do but try to educate more people?

Now that I've walked you through the history of Meritocracy and showed you how you might have been tricked into believing it's real while all the empirical evidence goes against it from:

• The creation of language

• The evolution of writing

• The origins of governance

• The birth of kings

• The consolidation of power from language and governance into belief systems

• The invention of sovereign rulers

• The framing of taxes vs. philanthropy

• The rejection of atheism and how that's fueling science's denial as just the latest form of mind-warping indoctrination

Let's talk about why it's so pervasive.

It suits the ones who benefit from it. If you are told you're the greatest at something, it's a real let down to hear that you're not the best at that thing, but you are just the only one who had the opportunity to get there. No one has been able to challenge your position because of the system that keeps them oppressed. Someone who has met the system's requirements to be considered an expert can be labeled as such. Still, someone with greater knowledge and better perspectives can be labeled as underqualified because they haven't met the state's requirement for recognition. This goes along with the merits of educational requirements for recognition, which I'll touch on more in a moment. The rich and powerful want to think they're rich because they earned it. They want to believe they're unique and entitled, not privileged. This is not to say they didn't put in hard work, or that the work they put in wasn't hard, or that they didn't earn some of the achievements they accomplished, but only to point out that they are unchallenged because some are unable to compete. I would like to plant this concept into your mind to think about it a little more deeply.

First, being a productive member of society still requires a buy-in. To work to earn money, you still need to buy in to get to work. It costs money for transportation to work whether you're driving and paying the road tolls, the registration fees, and parking fees, or using public transit, bicycling, or walking. There is always an expense associated with travel, even if buying a pair of walking shoes.

Second, we need shelter, a place to shower, groom, and brush our teeth to make sure we're presentable for work. No one will hire us if we're not presentable to the public or stink so severely because of our lack of access to hygiene products and resources. And none of that bare existence prepares us for work. We still need education and training.

Third, education costs money. The internet costs money. We need at least a phone with a data or Wi-Fi signal to access the internet. So no, education is not free, no matter how much free content there is. Our adolescent teachings are inadequate for modern society, where more and more jobs are being automated out of existence. We must have higher education to compete in the global market.

Meanwhile, capitalism is restricting our access to information rapidly. If you've looked at an article online only to be stopped by the subscription page, you know what I'm talking about. If I try to look up a scientific study, there's another paywall. We're seeing more and more ads and less and less free educational content that is valuable in teaching us new things. We may learn a new skill online by watching videos, which is useful for passing the time. Those skills do not always translate into high paying jobs as more automation takes over our employment industries. It's great that you can bake a cake or change a tire, Suzie, but can you understand the human psyche's intricacies to help people overcome their feelings of hopelessness, deep depression, and suffering? Do you know why they're feeling that way? Can you find a way to end poverty, exploitation, and abuse so we can stop the suffering? Or are we headed toward a world where only a few families are thriving and living in luxury while the rest of us are outside the wall, starving and dying of preventable illness?

Fourth, even if we manage to educate ourselves for free, we're still locked out of achieving higher-paying jobs because of the certification, licensing, and diploma recognition systems that also require money. If you want to get a diploma, so the state recognizes your education level as valid, you must pay into the system that grants you that diploma. Otherwise, no matter how educated you are on any subject, your education will never be recognized as valid.

If all forms of education aren't free to all, how can we possibly have a meritocracy? Suppose one person is prevented from educating themselves to achieve whatever level of knowledge they can obtain on any subject there is to learn. How can we truly know what they are capable of? And how can we say that those in power are the ones with the most merit to hold the position they do if 70% of the population will never achieve the level of greatness they may be capable of because of their financially based lack of opportunity?

Mull over that concept and leave a comment below. Do you still think the Meritocracy is real? If so, why? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[email protected]

Reference:

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

https://www.thoughtco.com/meritocracy-definition-3026409

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-meritocracy/2019/09/13/4d90d244-d4cd-11e9-9610-fb56c5522e1c_story.html

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About the Creator

SNROCINUTAF

Anti-Authoritarian Making Gandhi Sound Like Rush Limbaugh

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