Meritocracy: A Dream, A Promise, And A Double-Edged Sword
I Came, I Saw, I Succeeded
All of us desire success at some point in our lives. Whether it is winning a competition, achieving good grades, or being complimented for a job well done, we want to be successful in our endeavours.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”. As long as you achieve the aim you set out to reach, you are successful. This means that success can be achieved through small wins, and most importantly, that you have the agency to define your own success. Discussions on an objective definition of success will therefore be unproductive and meaningless. If each one of us views success under different lens, how can we decide on its exact shade?
Despite understanding this logic — whether consciously or not — society has not shied away from dictating what success looks like. Success, we claim, looks like wealth. It looks like fame, talent, and social status. The rest of us who don’t fit the bill are automatically deemed unsuccessful. And because the criteria to be considered successful are so strict, it becomes a rare commodity to be sought after. We become so blinded by the “bigger” and “flashier” successes of others that we fail to recognise our own personal wins. Henceforth, success became not just “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”, but with an added layer of acknowledgement from others.
This evolved into the meaning of successful which we are all so familiar with today — when one “achieves fame, wealth, or social status”. Whilst each of us are free to enjoy our own successes, not everyone can be regarded as successful. “Successful” becomes a coveted title reserved for the selected few who have truly “made it”; The rest of us are just here to ensure the title remains precious.
The future looks pretty grim when the realisation hits. But wait, what if society told you that you could be successful if you wanted to?
Meritocracy, Please.
Citizens in most democratic nations are no strangers to the concept of meritocracy. Meritocracy is defined as “a social system, society, or organisation in which people get success or power because of their abilities, not because of their money or social position”. Simply put, meritocracy rewards ability. As long as you are good at something, you are entitled to the benefits that come with it. Meritocracy endorses the motto — “You can make it if you try”— to the highest degree. It promises the equivalent of “The American Dream” — a utopian ideal that ensures everyone in society will receive a fair chance to climb the social ladder.
It’s easy to see how people may be seduced by the idea of meritocracy. For starters, meritocracy comes from a place of good intentions. It is only because we want to eradicate inequality that we implement a social system designed to fairly evaluate everyone’s abilities. If they didn’t care about equality, democratic nations argue, they would have just established an aristocracy and called it a day.
Secondly, meritocracy is inspiring. Believing that hard work will get us results is a big motivational force behind many of the things we do. Were you born into a poor family? Not to worry! Meritocracy promises to disregard your family background and lift you up so long as you are good at what you do. If you just put in the necessary work, every dog will have its day.
Finally, meritocracy recognises your achievements. It gives you a reason to feel proud of how far you’ve come. If everyone had a fair shot at the prize, the winner is surely deserving of the fruits of their labour. You’ve put in the hard work, and now you have something to show for it. Most importantly, people around you recognise your efforts, and look up to you as a shining example of what they could become.
The Success Equation
At a glance, meritocracy paints a perfect picture for everyone. If the poor and rich have an equal chance at life, people will be naturally sorted according to their abilities. The cream of the crop therefore deserves a larger share of the economic and social pie since they make the greatest contributions to our community. In an ideal meritocracy, everyone has a fair chance to succeed, and everyone is duly rewarded for their work. What’s there to complain about?
Quite a number, as it turns out. But before we deep dive into the issue, we need to first understand the four main components that make up the Success Equation.
Hard Work
Hard work is meritocracy’s favourite word. It is also our favourite word, because the amount of effort we put into a task is entirely within our control, and we love being in control. Since we are the ones who decide how much hard work we want to put in, we have the power to ultimately decide whether we succeed or not. As long as you’re willing to put in an adequate amount of hard work, you will definitely succeed — or so meritocracy decrees.
Privilege
Privilege is a word that leaves a bad taste in our mouths. We dislike it because it is associated with fears of inequality. Privilege is defined as “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”. In other words, privilege is power. In different contexts, your wealth, gender, race, or nationality can grant you special advantages to cushion and catapult you as you climb the social ladder.
Talent
Talent comes in various forms and shapes. Some talents are rare while others are a dime in a dozen. Whilst talents are natural, one’s overall ability can be developed with hard work. The general consensus is that talent is a good-to-have and not a must-have. However, talent still invokes jealousy as it can replace the bulk of the hard work that needs to be put in to compensate for a lack thereof.
Luck
Luck is chance. It is unexpected and unforeseeable, and may be good or bad in different contexts. All things constant, luck is sometimes the determining factor between success and failure. Some of the most significant components of luck include:
- Environment: Being born in a society which values our abilities
- Timing: Being offered opportunities at the right time
- People: Meeting benefactors who can help you
Now that we’re armed with some basic ideas of what determines success, let’s turn to an example that illustrates the dangerous side of meritocracy.
The “Self-Made” Woman
On March 5th, 2019, Forbes released an article titled, “At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever”. When asked about the future of her cosmetics business, Jenner said, “I see it going very far. I work really hard.”
After the article was released, a massive outpouring of praise and criticism flooded social media. Supporters celebrated her achievements as a young female entrepreneur and rallied behind her cosmetics empire. Critics called into question her legitimacy as a self-made billionaire and pointed out the many privileges that she leverages to get to where she is. To diffuse the media storm (but to no avail), Forbes stepped out to define “self-made” as “someone who built a company or established a fortune on her own, rather than inheriting some or all of it”. In the article, Forbes also clarified their scoring system which graded individuals on a scale of 1 to 10 depending on how self-made they were, explaining that “someone who not only grew up poor but also experienced substantial hardships — like Oprah Winfrey — scores a 10”. Based on that scale, Kylie Jenner scores a 7.
The media circus surrounding Kylie Jenner drove home a definite conclusion — privileged people are not self-made. No one took issue with calling Oprah Winfrey self-made because she was born into the bottom rungs of society and had nothing to begin with. To many Americans, Oprah embodies “The American Dream” — the rags to riches story of a poor woman of colour in a period of widespread racism and misogyny who made it solely through her own merit.
You Get What You Deserve
Undeniably, Oprah’s story is an inspirational one for all of us. Her success is a shining example of what we can achieve if we just put our mind (and body) to it. The implied equation, “Hard Work = Success” is an exciting and enticing one, because it means that success will wait for anyone who tries hard enough.
We don’t have to think hard to understand why we have a preference towards stories like Oprah’s — they make us feel good about ourselves. Just like fairytales with happy endings, we look to these “motivational stories” as mental pills to keep us going when the going gets tough. It feels good to know that our hard work will pay off sooner or later if we just keep at it. Success becomes not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
This mindset reveals an inherently toxic side of the meritocratic ideal. When success is equated to the amount of hard work one puts in, it becomes extremely difficult to have pity for those who don’t succeed. Why should we care so much about them, anyway? Those who fail ought to just work ten times as hard as the winners. After all, if successful people put in all this effort to get desirable results, they completely deserve the fame and fortune that comes with it. People who refuse to work hard for their dreams deserve to be left behind.
Viewed this way, meritocracy effectively generates a sense of entitlement in the winners and profound shame in the losers. At the same time, it removes sympathy for those who fail to make it. This mindset fuels many of the prejudices surrounding the poor in our society today, in particular with regard to work ethic. Our belief that hard work guarantees success inevitably leads us to the conclusion that the poor are just lazy and stupid people who have a tendency to make bad choices that perpetuate their poverty. (5)
Meritocracy then becomes a justification of inequality, not a cure.
Same Difference
Supporters of the meritocratic cause claim that meritocracy eradicates class differences and therefore promotes equality. This is an overly simplistic view of class and privilege based on faulty assumptions.
Firstly, it is nearly impossible to calculate the effects of inherited privileges and social connections on one’s success in society. We need not look far to find statistics that challenge the purported equality of our meritocratic education systems — more than two-thirds of the students attending American Ivy League schools come from the top 20 percent of the income scale. (4) In Singapore, 40 percent of the students from elite primary schools live in HDBs (public housing) as compared to 80 percent of the students from other primary schools. Unsurprisingly, the disparity widens the further one journeys through the education system. Despite our best efforts to level the playing field, money and privilege will always have a way of foiling our plans somehow. (Think enrichment classes and expensive tutors.)
Secondly, even if we grant that class differences can be eradicated, it is impossible to ignore the role of luck and natural-born gifts. Harvard Professor Michael Sandel notes that “income inequalities due to natural talents are no more just than inequalities that arise from class differences”. (4) In other words, having talents that we did not choose to possess is no more deserving than having privilege that we did not choose to have. It is merely luck that you were born with a talent that society prizes, and therefore, you are not anymore entitled to the benefits that come from your talents than you are of the rewards that come from your privilege.
“But that doesn’t sound right,” you may say, “Michael Jordan worked his ass off to be the greatest NBA player of all time. He’s only successful because he worked hard.” That’s true. However, we can acknowledge that Michael Jordan’s athletic talents contributed to his achievements without denying that he works hard. What he has done to improve himself is an incredible feat that not anyone can easily accomplish. Yet, lurking in the shadows are countless other nameless individuals who have worked just as hard, if not harder, than Michael Jordan but have not managed to play at the NBAs. On top of his athletic gifts, what Michael Jordan’s success requires is also an enormous amount of luck — the kind of luck that would lead a 23-year-old unpaid intern to draft him into the Chicago Bulls during the 1984 NBA season.
It is also true to say that Michael Jordan was blessed to be born at the right time into the right society. If he were so unlucky as to be born just a century earlier — come on, we know the history — he might have ended up a slave on a cotton plantation. And what if he were born into a world that despises sports? Could he have made a name for himself against all defying odds?
No one knows the answer. This is true of any person, good or bad (*ahem* Hitler), who has left their name in our history books. So, while it is true that “effort matters, and no one, however gifted, succeeds without working to cultivate his or her talents” (4), the example of Michael Jordan illustrates the point that none of us is entirely deserving of the successes that come from our abilities. Instead, it is dependent on so many things — the right people, the right environment, the right time, and the right attitude*. It’s good to know this before you are one day forced to eat humble pie.
*American political philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) argues that people are born with the aptitude to work hard. This means that whether you are hardworking or not is encoded in your DNA, not determined by you. Further evidence supporting this point comes from many studies on the effects of birth order. During one of Professor Sandel’s philosophy lectures, he also observed that more than half of the students who attended were first-born children. (4)
Am I God?
How do our mindsets differ when we consider the concepts of success and failure? Let’s begin with a little thought exercise.
Think about the last time you succeeded at something. Did you feel a strong sense of accomplishment or pride? How much of the work do you think can be attributed to your own efforts? Overall, do you think you were deserving of your success?
Now, think of the last time you failed at something. Were you entirely responsible for it, or were there some other factors that caused you to fail? Did you put in the necessary hard work? When you look back at it, do you think you are personally responsible for not achieving your goal?
When asked to think about their own achievements, many people tend to inflate the importance of their own work. Humans are uncomfortable with acknowledging the contributions of privilege or luck, often justifying their achievements through glorifying their efforts. On the other hand, when asked to think about their failures, people tend to push the blame onto external factors. A quick Google search will return numerous examples of failed investments being blamed on the volatile market whilst big returns get credited to the “smart thinking” of their investors.
In the face of failure and embarrassment, humans like to “inflate [the] moral significance of effort and striving” (4). No one, no matter their social standing, wants to be told that their success is not their doing. We desire to be in control, to chart our own courses, and to see our plans to fruition. There is a basic level of pride that humans possess over our own efforts. Beyond that, it infringes upon our dignity as intelligent beings.
This inclination finds its roots in an egocentric view that we humans have of ourselves. For millenniums, we have regarded ourselves as superior creatures capable of higher-order thinking. Our remarkable achievements in the arts and sciences have also given us the illusion of total control. As time passes, we develop this God complex — this belief that we can do anything if we wanted to.
Before you leave passive-aggressive comments about how untrue the above paragraph is, let’s turn to the results of the thought exercise. Did you rate yourself highly for your success? Did you push the blame unto others for your own failure?*
If you answered yes to at least one of the questions, maybe it’s time to reflect upon your views towards success and failure. Also, delete that draft comment.
*There is an irony here. Even as we desire to be in control, we refuse to take blame for our failures. This is a quintessential characteristic of a person with the God complex — they believe they are infallible.
Imagined “Aesthetics”
Initially, I thought that was all there was to it — that humans are afflicted with the God complex and therefore have a preference for certainty and agency. After reflecting upon this again, I found another reason that explains why stories like Oprah’s are so important to the common man. We have fallen too deep in love with the “aesthetics” of striving.
What do I mean by that? Let’s take a moment to picture this. When you think of someone hard at work, what do you picture? Is it the beads of sweat rolling down their face? Or their bent-over backs toiling away in the sunset? Or do you picture them trading stocks in an air-conditioned room?
If I were to guess, that last scenario would probably never appear in your minds. It’s not so much because we don’t enjoy stock trading (though this is mostly true), but simply because we don’t like to think that hard work can be done in comfort. Our sadistic nature desires to see the suffering that people go through for their successes. We demand to witness the sacrifices they make in exchange for the luxuries they get in return. If we can’t be successful, well then at least we want to see the pain and suffering that people endure to earn their wealth and honour. There is no such thing as free lunch in this world, right?
This line of reasoning also explains why we are so in love with stories of poor people doing charity work but could care less when wealthy folks donate a million dollars. Both parties are doing a good deed, but the difference is in the amount of sacrifice they make for the benefit of others. Even though a rich man’s million dollars would certainly have a much bigger social impact on the lives of others, a poor man’s dollar is worth more than that in terms of its psychological impact because the act is deemed to be selfless. For all the good that he has done around the world, Bill Gates also receives a proportionate amount of hate and criticism. In this world, poverty is the “aesthetics” of kindness.
What then is the “aesthetics” of hard work? I’m tempted to say that it’s suffering. The fact that we get turned off by the idea of someone making fortunes in an air-conditioned room speaks volumes about what we think constitutes the concept of hard work. Our collective belief that pain has meaning has pushed us to believe that suffering is the necessary by-product of good things. After all, if you didn’t “work” for it, what makes you a deserving recipient of the sought-after reward that others are working their asses off for?
Our constant obsession with the imagined “aesthetics” of striving is dangerous because it turns us into bitter individuals over time. Beyond the curated feeds of our perfect online lives, we are the only ones who know what exactly goes on behind the scenes. We’re curious to know what others are doing yet simultaneously afraid of appearing stupid if people are putting in less effort for the same returns. When we cannot see behind the curtains of people’s lives, insecurity builds, and bitterness dominates our judgement. In the end, we don’t only end up losers, but become bitter losers who resent anyone better off than us.
Serenity in Stoicism
Epictetus (AD 55–135) is a Greek philosopher and an exponent of Stoic ethics. Although the circumstances of his education are unknown, it was believed that he studied for a period of time under Musonius Rufus, a Roman senator and Stoic philosopher who taught at Rome. Epictetus was born into slavery. He eventually regained his freedom sometime after AD 68 and began to teach philosophy in Rome, where one of his students transcribed his lectures into the widely popular books of Discourses. Epictetus’s teachings later on inspired Emperor Marcus Aurelius’s (reigned AD 161–180) book on stoicism entitled “Meditations”.
Born a slave, his stoic philosophy revolves around the idea of mental freedom — a psychological achievement which he regards as the ultimate guide to living a good life. For Epictetus, freedom is achievable so long as one does not imprison themselves in others’ opinions of them. He writes, “It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions about things.”
The essence of Stoicism lies in treating whatever we cannot change with equanimity. To Epictetus, death, illness, longevity, or beauty are neither positive nor negative, as they are “not up to us”. As rational beings, we should only be concerned with things within our control, such as our motivations and emotions. Even in slavery, Epictetus believes that people can be truly free. He notes, “Don’t ask for things to happen as you would like them to, but wish for them to happen as they actually do, and you’ll be alright.” This idea is also echoed with a religious spin in American theologian Reinhold Neibuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”, which reads, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change / The courage to change the things I can / And the wisdom to know the difference”.
We can employ Epictetus’s stoic wisdom as a psychological remedy for meritocracy. Since privilege, luck, and talent are beyond our control — or “not up to us”, as Epictetus would put it — it is a colossal waste of time to frustrate over it. The only things that matter are what we can control — namely, our emotions, motivations, and hard work. By training ourselves to be stoic in the face of adversity, we can learn to navigate any hardship that life throws at us with relative ease.
Powerless But Powerful
A decade ago, when I was still in secondary school, I hated learning. It wasn’t because learning wasn’t fun, but because learning was extremely stressful. Everyday I would dread going to mathematics class because everyone else seemed to be able to keep up — save for myself. I didn’t have the means to go to tuition classes then, and my parents were unable to help me with my homework at all, so the only thing I could do was to beg them to buy me assessment books so I could practise. For months I kept at it, determined to study hard so I could learn at the same pace as my peers. Yet, every time I finally understood what was being taught, the class would have already moved on to subsequent chapters. I felt so demoralised over the years that I eventually gave up on trying. I realised that not trying and failing was so much better than trying and failing, because then it doesn’t mean that I’m stupid — I’m just lazy. This toxic mentality followed me throughout the rest of my school years and have occasionally surfaced during my time in university when I’m feeling stressed out.
The point of this story is not to seek pity or praise. I simply want to illustrate the despondence I felt when I believed that success or achievement was completely up to me. I was blind to the privilege, luck, and talents that my peers were born with which were unreachable to me. I thought that being good at math was a guarantee with adequate hard work. Being good at Mandarin myself, I failed to realise that it was the other side of the same coin — I did not choose to be good, my environment made me so.
In the end, this essay is an appeal for humility. Whether you are a billionaire investor or a regular office worker, know that you are where you are not only because of your own efforts, but because of unexpected opportunities and selfless people who have supported you. We need to “[recognise] that, for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient, [and] finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents is our good fortune, not our due” (4). Be grateful for all that you have, and at the same time don’t judge yourself too harshly when you fail. Life is an unpredictable thing, and it would be extremely foolish to think we can be in control all the time.
I’ll leave you with this quote from our favourite stoic philosopher, Epictetus:
Wherever I go, I will be fine, because I was fine here — not on account of the place but as a result of my principles, and I am going to take them with me.
Meritocracy and inequality are topics I care deeply about. I give thanks to the following authors and books for inspiring many of the ideas explored above:
- How To Be Free: An Ancient Guide to the Stoic Life by Epictetus — Translated and with an introduction by A. A. Long
- How to Die by Ray Robertson
- The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits
- The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel
- This Is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo You Yenn
*Quotes used in this essay are referenced to their assigned numbers when the author is not explicitly mentioned.
