Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. Mark Twain
The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. Thomas Carlyle
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving. William Shakespeare
It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman. George Santayana
The sufficiency of merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient. Francis Quarles
Not too long ago, I get an interesting email from a longstanding African colleague complaining about the decline in performance in both public and private sectors in his country. His concern was with a growing number of people who want a job, but don’t particularly want to do a job. The frustration at this state of affairs is understandable but, like most of our frustrations, this one also has a context.
In my country at the moment, one of our challenges is actually related to people wanting to do a job, trained to do a job, but who are prohibited by their own government from doing a job. One of the many unilateral Trump policies and related orders that I have deep problems with is the notion of “merit” thrown around mostly in the context of dismantling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Such programs have been under attack in favor of a definition of “merit” which is ascribed mostly to white people – indeed white men – based on the “insufficient” and largely misguided assumption that the problems we face as a country are due to a bending the rules for “not-white men” who then transfer their erstwhile “incompetence” into the public domain.
There is so much wrong with this notion, one for which there is no viable metric and which seeks to pin the blame for our numerous social ills on some alleged retreat from those who can meet the standard (select white men) and those who must be accommodated to standard (pretty much everyone else).
When I spell this out in black and white (which I have had trouble doing of late) the absurdity of it becomes unmistakable. For one thing, it presumes that “merit” can be divorced from privilege and the role of “good fortune” in preserving and even expanding access to opportunity only for some and not for others. Moreover, it assumes that (in the case of the US) agencies responsible for training air traffic controllers or marines or surgeons or agricultural inspectors would make the conscious choice to deviate from their training standards to fulfill some unspecified DEI agenda, thus contributing to those quite happy to conflate admissions access and standards compliance.
Finally, it presumes that many of us are not looking askance at the inadequate “merit” of our erstwhile political leadership, people often without backbone, without principle, and without a lively sense of how their lofty positions are themselves the result of the privilege they are hell-bent on denying to others. From my vantage point, attacks on the competency of mostly women and minority interests have actually served to expose the fallacy of white male “merit” based on some alleged “right” to be the decisionmakers regardless of how cruel and incompetent such decisions turn out to be. We are seeing yet again the challenges associated with merit based solely on genetics and their social determinants rather than on hard evidence related to performance in the public interest.
Those of you who read these posts know where I am likely to stand on this. I have seen over the years people of diverse backgrounds who possess far more potential than opportunity, who must too-often wait in a long line behind those who continue to claim without shame “merit” based in large measure on some combination of family riches and connections, or even on race-based entitlements. I have long believed that we create the “merit” we need and desire for our societies to be prosperous and resilient, and that such creation fundamentally requires inclusion of access. Entrance doors to opportunity must remain open, and that can be (and largely has been) ensured without compromising the training, standards and capacities needed for exit.
The “equal opportunity” and “upward mobility” which constitute an integral part of our national mythology is being compromised at so many levels as ethnic and ideological conformity – and the grievances which now proliferate – “trumps” time after time, the need to ensure the full development and utilization of all our skills and capacities in whatever human package life has situated them. And that of course includes the “white male package.”
But how to move in that direction in these ethno- and gender-repressive times? There is a commercial I have seen once or twice and which I particularly appreciate, the tag line for which is “the key to riches is knowing what counts.” Knowing what counts. In my experience I don’t think that most people pay enough attention to this, pay enough attention to the specifics of how they define success, how they define riches, indeed how they define a life worth living for themselves and others. If they did so, maybe they would be more respectful of the “knowing” of other people, recognizing that there are many paths to living a successful life.
But even beyond this, we are not paying enough attention to the ways in which privilege bends the arc of access in the favor of ourselves and our circles, allowing us to indulge the fantasy of pursuing what counts based solely on merit utterly divorced from social and political context. Playing the game, if you will, without understanding the degree to which whatever success we have attained has been to one degree or another “gamed” in the direction of the interests of people like me and so many others.
With regard to the prescient Mark Twain, I’m not sure any longer that I can count on some notion of “heaven” to rescue me from the pretenses of my own life, including inadequate assessments and applications related to “what counts.” But I know that if there is such a reality, the thought that pets might deserve to enter before me and other humans is certainly a wakeup call. For me, this represents a call for greater inclusion, a call for eliminating ideology-based entitlements to practice division and cruelty, a call to make this plane of existence more like the vision of heaven which so many are seeking in another life.
Moreover, I remain convinced that our now highly-skewed notions of merit have no value in eyes of the creator who, if our religious traditions are to be believed, sees clearly the motives and intentions we largely hide from the world, putting forth instead the face that seeks to convince others that we have sufficient merit relative to our chosen tasks in the world and that, moreover, we sincerely intend the best for other people. Despite the ideology-based madness which characterize this moment, we can do better at ensuring that both our public and private “faces” convey merit which faithfully attends to task and which serves a larger public interest. The rest, at least in my view, is mere distraction.
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