The Decline of Social Mobility
The last few years have seen a marked decline in social mobility in the UK, accompanied by an equally steep rise in the number of the super rich. The two trends are of course connected. Social mobility is directly proportional to the extent to which ‘markets’ (in the widest sense) are unrigged (read meritocratic markets). Social mobility declines when cronyism and nepotism are allowed to flourish. Cronyism and nepotism (drivers of rigged markets) allow the gilded few to pay themselves whatever they like (since there are no meritocratic mechanisms to increase competition and make inappropriate payments impossible). Hence we see the emergence of an increasingly large class of super rich – the extreme beneficiaries of cronyism and nepotism. Meritocracy is the antidote.
Inheritance Tax – How the Rich get the Poor to Cut their Own Throats
"All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man: but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed."
-- Hume
The vast majority of people will never pay inheritance tax. It’s a tax on the exceptionally wealthy. Yet these stinking rich individuals have managed to convince ordinary people that they should be angry about inheritance tax. Either you admire their brilliance at psychological manipulation, or despair at the stupidity and gullibility of average people. Some commentators ridiculously call it a tax on the dead. How can the dead be taxed? They’re dead. It’s asset disposal. Why shouldn’t the state dispose of a dead person’s assets as it sees fit? When a poor person dies, leaving a stinking mess behind, do the rich come round and clear up the garbage, or do they leave it to the state to perform the dirty work? Yet when there’s anything worthwhile to be handed out then suddenly the rich are claiming it’s none of the state’s business. Funny, that. That’s the trouble with the rich – they want the state to handle all the nasty stuff and they don’t want to contribute a penny towards the cost. Selfish to the bitter end. The rich like to believe that they make their money in some miraculous manner that’s entirely independent of the state. Yet even if most of the rich have gone to private schools and make use of private health care, they still operate within a business and social environment constructed and maintained entirely by the state. The vast majority of their workforce will be state educated, and will rely on the NHS. The state pays for the army, the police, law and order, social services, community services. It maintains and improves the country’s infrastructure. Yet somehow the rich expect us to believe that they make their wealth in a state-free environment, and owe nothing whatever to the state. In fact, they owe all of their wealth to the state. Without the business environment provided by the state, they wouldn’t have earned a single penny. So why shouldn’t the state take all of a person’s wealth when he no longer needs it (by virtue of being dead). Why should people who didn’t create the wealth (the family of the deceased) benefit in any way at all? Some commentators call it a tax on parental love. How preposterous. How disgracefully arrogant. Don’t poor parents love their children? The desire to abolish inheritance tax has nothing to do with parental love and everything to do with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It’s about denying others a fair chance in life, about trying to establish a permanent, unassailable hegemony of rich families.
The Paris Hilton Phenomenon
Paris Hilton, an ill-educated, uncultured, barely literate bimbo, is an ‘heiress’ who will inherit a vast fortune. What sort of occupation is an ‘heiress’. Such people wouldn’t exist in a meritocracy. Those who wish to abolish inheritance tax want a million Paris Hiltons. Isn’t one more than enough? "The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death."
Pascal
Oxbridge Blues – the Heart of the Anti-meritocratic Engine
Oxford and Cambridge claim to be our best universities. However, if you have ever attended either of these universities, you will be struck by the complete absence of any sense that you are in the midst of intellectual powerhouses, illuminating the nation with the quality of dazzling minds passing through their august and ancient colleges. No, what you are instantly aware of is the reek of privilege, the sight and sound of thousands of spoiled middle and upper class students much less concerned about the subjects they are studying than with their social networking opportunities. Oxford and Cambridge can barely be called universities at all. They are actually finishing schools for the children of the wealthy. They provide the environment in which massive transactions in cronyism and nepotism are conducted. All the best jobs are allocated here; not on the basis of merit, but on who has the right accent, the right background, has gone to the right school, is ‘one of us’. Oxbridge provides a disproportionate percentage of our political, legal, business, media, medical, art and science leadership. Let’s not deceive ourselves. Oxbridge is the engine of anti-meritocracy. It is precisely here that the privileged carve up the top jobs amongst themselves and exclude everyone else. Nepotism and cronyism ooze out of every old brick in Oxbridge. Given the influence of these universities over British life, we are entitled to conclude that the myriad problems in the British way of life can be laid fairly and squarely at their door: every problem in Britain can trace its origins to the colleges of Oxbridge. Reform Oxbridge and our nation might stand a chance of a meritocratic future. Oxford and Cambridge universities will be amongst the first targets of the Meritocracy Party. We now know that the vast majority of Oxbridge students come from a small number of elite independent schools. Funny, that. The Meritocracy Party has a simple method to smash Oxbridge cronyism while promoting the highest intellectual standards. All of the secondary schools in the UK will identify their five most meritorious final-year students and these will be offered their choice of the six ‘top’ UK universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. A ‘merit panel’ will be in charge of the admissions process. Oxbridge and the other top universities will have no say at all over which students will study there. Overnight, these universities will lose their connection with privilege. They will be an accurate reflection of the backgrounds of the whole country, and they will not be able to complain that they aren’t getting access to the best students the country has to offer. They will become genuinely meritocratic institutions devoted solely to the pursuit of academic excellence. A side effect of compelling the top universities to accept the top pupils from all of the country’s secondary schools will be to deal a potentially fatal blow to private schools. These schools operate synergically with Oxbridge, and are joint conspirators in rigging the system. Break the connection between the two, and suddenly private schools have lost their raison d´être. Elite universities should have no connection with social networking for the children of the most privileged families in our society.
Rewarding Failure
Hey, I want a job where if I cock up totally I walk away with a fortune. How about being the manager of the England football team, for example? Catastrophic failure to qualify for Euro 2008? – no problem! – here’s two and a half million pounds. Well, that’s what they said to Steve McClaren. What is it with the England job? Likelihood of failure? – very high. Guaranteed pay-off? – you bet. Does it never occur to anyone that if you incentivise failure, you make it much more likely? At the back of Maclaren’s mind was always the thought: Oh well, even if they sack me, I’ll be walking away with £2.5 m. I’m made for life. How lucky can I get? Wouldn’t his attitude have been rather different if he thought he wouldn’t be paid a penny if he failed? Jose Mourinho leaves Chelsea with a 20 m severance package. Nice. Charles Prince, the CEO of Citigroup Inc, recently ‘resigned’ after disastrous financial results (losses of approximately eleven billion dollars (!)). He walked away with his head bowed…under the substantial weight of a one hundred million dollars payoff. Sorry?!…run that past me again!! Yes, that’s right – penalty for financial meltdown is one hundred million dollars. Isn’t that a financial meltdown by itself?? Mr Prince probably felt hard done by. After all, Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch generated losses of some twenty-seven billion dollars, and he was fondly waved goodbye with almost one hundred and sixty-one million dollars. Obviously, Mr Prince hadn’t failed nearly spectacularly enough. If he’d enjoyed the same scale of disaster as Mr O’Neal he might have doubled his payoff. No doubt he’ll bear that in mind next time! The convicted media tycoon and notorious robber baron “Lord” Conrad Black must be supremely miffed at being banged up for his gangsterism. Given that he’s spent his commercial life amongst fellow big business gangsters, why is he off to the clink while the others continue just as before? These crooks are the Sun Kings of the 21st Century, upon whom the sun never sets, unfortunately. Nice work if you can get it, eh? And who are these people who do ‘get it’? Well, they’re not you and me, that’s for sure. Back to nepotism and cronyism – the evil twins of anti-meritocracy. Meritocracy’s rules are very simple. Top rewards for top performance; no rewards at all for failure. When anyone walks away from inept performance with a bulging wallet, that’s the clearest sign that you’re living in an anti-meritocratic society. No meritocrat would ever wish to be paid extravagantly for failing. In fact, they wouldn’t wish to be paid at all. They’d have it written into their employment contract near the very top that they’d get nothing if they were fired after demonstrable poor performance. If you don’t insist on such a clause, you’re not a meritocrat. It should be an industry standard. A meritocratic government would demand it. Greedy cartels of bosses mutually scratching each other’s backs in the name of ‘market forces’ will be swept away for good. The only market those people have in mind is the unregulated, rigged market of nepotism and cronyism. Don’t let any of the big bosses deceive you that they’re in the meritocratic game. They don’t know the meaning of meritocracy. When they and their fellow cronies engineer their contracts so that they profit just as much from failure as from success you know you’re in the presence of carpetbaggers, charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. Their primary concern isn’t their self-confidence in their own merit, but in designing their escape routes for when it all goes wrong. The contracts these people sign are the equivalent of pre-nuptial agreements where, before the marriage has even begun, its end is the focus of attention. Likelihood of such a marriage failing? – one hundred percent!
The Family: the Natural Enemy of the State
The great intractable problem of political philosophy, so deep-seated that many political philosophers have avoided any consideration of it, is the unbridgeable gap between the basic functional unit of the state (the family) and the state itself. The aim of the state, most people would agree, is to serve the interests of all of its members – to treat them as fairly and equally as possible, to show no favouritism, and to do what is best for the population as a whole. The family, on the other hand, seeks to always serve the interests of its own members, to show blatant favouritism towards those members, to try to secure the best possible treatment for itself (and screw everyone else). So the state’s functional unit (the family) and the state itself are mutually incompatible. The Tory Party seeks to minimise the state and maximise the self-interested behaviour of families (all well and good for the successful families from which the Tories garner most of their support). ‘Old’ Labour sought to redistribute wealth and generate a more equitable society. The state, under Old Labour, was quite willing to dictate to the family. ‘New’ Labour has abandoned the Labour project and is now just an alternative Tory Party (with practically identical policies and outlook on life). No state can ever be successful until it resolves the tension between family and state. The meritocratic state is a possible solution, providing the family buys into the concept of merit – that it’s ultimately in everyone’s best interests, including the family’s – for everyone to promote the interests of the most meritorious individuals in society, regardless of which families and backgrounds they come from.
When David Cameron exhorts families to do their best for their children, what does he mean? What does he really mean? In a world of limited resources, anything that one person has is denied to another. There is cut-throat competition for the best jobs, houses, partners, schools, medical treatment. Who sponsors this dog-eat-dog world? Why, families, of course. When you do the best for your family, you are ensuring that another family fails in this zero sum game. You win: they lose. It’s a simple as that. As Gore Vidal said, ‘It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’ That is the motto of the average family. To do the best for your children is to do your worst for someone else’s. People should bear that in mind next time they hear one of Cameron’s simple family homilies. Do you really want to live in a society where other families are actively out to harm yours, to metaphorically slit your throat so that their children can prosper at the expense of yours? Families should be doing what is best for the state, and that will also be precisely what is best for the family, assuming that the state is run by the most meritorious individuals: the best people the state has to offer. A very simple question arises. What is the best conceivable state? Some might take the anarchists’ stance and claim that we shouldn’t have states at all, but anarchists run don’t run any country on earth. We all live in states, and therefore we have to return to the question. Can any state be better than the one run by its best people? Is it better for a state to be run by its richest citizens, or its poorest, or its most average? Quite simply, if the best people do not govern the state then it cannot be the best state. The rich would run the state to enhance their own wealth, and to hell with the poor. The poor wouldn’t have a clue how to run a state. As for the most average, what do they know about anything except how to infect it with mediocrity? Their motto, that of cowards and sheep is: “It is better to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” (Keynes). We’re crying out for those who know how to succeed unconventionally: the leaders of men, the best.
Community: An Alternative to the Nuclear Family When a family fails, society often pays the penalty. The children are likely to end up poorly educated, with mental health issues, low self-esteem, and behavioural difficulties. They frequently become unemployable and prison fodder. Society pays out vast amounts on benefits to single parent families. Those children from disadvantaged homes who end up in state care usually have negative life outcomes. The usual ‘solution’ proposed by politicians (especially Conservatives), is to promote ‘family values’, and to try to provide incentives to prop up the family via special treatment, including tax breaks. A ludicrous attempt to defend a failing institution, of course. The age of the family is coming to an end. Family life is incompatible with the modern age. With so many choices available, with religious and social prohibitions regarding ‘alternative’ lifestyles no longer taken seriously, with women increasingly financially independent, all the main pillars that supported the nuclear family are collapsing. Nothing can be done to rebuild them. The way forward is to find a replacement for the family. The obvious choice is the community: groups of fifty to a hundred like-minded people with mutual respect for each other, a lot in common, a desire to help each other – to provide friendship, companionship, and a secure, loving, nurturing, supportive environment for every member of the community. The Israeli Kibbutz provides a plausible starting point for the UK communal family model. Social isolation, millions living on their own, millions of struggling one-parent families, millions of conventional families doing their utmost to protect their own selfish interests is the shape of modern Britain. The community model would revolutionise the country and help solve many of our most glaring social ills.
Marriage
Marriage will be an endangered institution in a meritocratic society. The emphasis switches away from couples, families and groups to the individual: the new functional unit of the state. Marriage would then become simply a private arrangement between individuals. It wouldn’t be acknowledged by the state, and certainly wouldn’t attract any tax privileges or preferential treatment. The state must define itself as an entity populated by citizens, not by couples and families. The state should feel no compunction about removing children, or even adults, from unhealthy family environments. The individual’s interests are paramount. The state has a duty to the individual, and none to the institution of marriage. The state cannot stand by and let families raise children badly so that they become a liability to the state. The under class exists precisely because the state adopted a hands-off approach to the family and let it churn out poorly-educated, disruptive, unemployable individuals, sure to be a constant drain on the resources of the state. The state should apologise to those individuals for allowing their parents to ruin their lives, and should take all necessary measures to stop any more children being damaged in this way.
Religion: the Worst Form of Child Abuse?
Just as the family is fundamentally at odds with the state (since it seeks to put its own interests above those of the state), so is religion. Religion aims to promote its own inflexible agenda, which is not that of the state (unless the state happens to be a theocracy). There are religious communities in Britain in which children are compelled to wear a certain style of clothes, eat certain foods and avoid others, shun children who do not belong to their religion, go to their own segregated schools, be taught material that is entirely contrary to science, and so on. They end up dysfunctional relative to the state and their neighbours. They are frequently hostile to the state, and resent and oppose any state interference. They are isolationist, anti-social, intolerant. Children brought up in these communities are marked for life. They will never recover from their upbringing. What right do parents have to destroy their children’s lives in the name of their own personal religious beliefs? This is child abuse of the very worst kind: denying a child any realistic hope of living according to the child’s own values and desires. To strip those from a child is to metaphorically strip the child of its very life. And children brought up in this way almost never make a positive contribution to the state. Why does the state tolerate it? The state cannot make any progress while its efforts are sabotaged by these two most insidious fifth columns: family and religion. Often, the very people who lead the state are family-oriented and profess religious beliefs. Is it any wonder the state doesn’t work? The state must assert its authority if it is ever to achieve the sort of society it wishes to build. It cannot succeed if it allows factions within the state to pursue separate and opposed agendas. In the immortal words of Rousseau, people should be ‘forced to be free’. This phrase often shocks people, but in fact it’s the only game in town. Religious parents who brainwash their children are forcing them ‘to be free’ (in their conception of freedom). Families raising their children in non-state-sanctioned ways are also forcing them to be ‘free’ (again, according to their peculiar values). Why should they be allowed to do it, and the state denied the right when it’s the state that will have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong? Only the state can impose the uniform ‘playing field’ that’s required to allow meritocracy to flourish. Only the state has the right to force anyone to be free. It has the right for the simple reason that it, and only it, seeks to promote the interests of all of its citizens. Families give their own interests paramount importance, regardless of the needs and merits of other families. Religions give their own beliefs paramount importance, even though they are usually entirely at odds with the beliefs of everyone else. To allow families and religions to dictate how children should be brought up amounts to a form of state suicide. People who are not supportive of the state cannot conceivably make a positive contribution to it, so ought to be excluded from it. It’s time for the state to draw up a formal social contract. You sign up or you don’t. If you don’t, you must leave the state because you have no right to be there.
The Benefits of the State over the Family
Imagine I could offer you the choice between having your life irrevocably moulded by two average office workers or by hundreds of elite individuals with breathtaking talents. In the first case, of course, I’m referring to a typical family upbringing; in the second, the sort of upbringing a Meritocratic state would offer. Parents, on the whole, aren’t greatly educated. They haven’t, for one thing, attended classes on optimal strategies for raising children. Disgruntled football fans like to chant, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing,’ if they think their team’s manager isn’t up to the job. Shouldn’t the state chant the same thing at many parents? Parents, in a host of cases, are a catastrophe for their offspring. It actually amounts to state-sanctioned child abuse to allow such people to bring up children. And, in the end, it’s the state that’s forced to pick up the bill via crime, prisons, police, the welfare state, social workers, care homes, the judiciary, low productivity etc. Why bother with all of these costs of failure (to use management speak), when we could simply address the root cause and take children away from inept parents who don’t know or care what they’re doing? The state can call on the skills of millions of remarkable individuals. It has at its disposal brilliant scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, engineers, economists, teachers, academics, psychologists, sociologists, surgeons, consultants, GPs, nurses, carers, artists, charismatic youth workers, child experts etc. It can use this vast pool of skill to bring children up in the best possible way – as creative, constructive, inspiring individuals who can make a full and dazzling contribution to the state. Why should children instead be condemned to the dreary boxed environment provided by the average family; to be raised by two untalented, bored and boring adults known as parents? It’s crazy. The Meritocratic state would like to send the vast majority of children to boarding schools, where they can escape the parental environment. Parents will have the burden of raising children removed from them, will have much more time to themselves (much more time to develop themselves?), and can be proud that they’re doing the best possible thing for their children by turning them over to the experts. Parents, it has to be admitted, have one vital function that the state can never hope to perform. Parents love their children in a way no one else could. This element has to be protected as far as possible, so children will be encouraged to spend as much time as possible with their families outside term time. They will have the best of both worlds: quality time, quality love with their families during the holidays, and a quality meritocratic education at boarding school away from their families during term time. The perfect formula. If we could identify the ‘most average’ family in Britain (the median family) then half of Britain’s families would be above this average, and half below. Now, if the ‘most average’ family were affluent, cultured, highly intelligent, disciplined, hard-working, then even the below average families might be of high calibre. However, if the ‘most average’ family are in fact poorly educated, ignorant of culture, obsessed with property prices and having multiple cars, dismissive of intellectuals, keen to binge drink at the weekend, keen watchers of soap operas and dumbed-down TV in general, greedy consumers of junk food, eager shoppers etc then what on earth might the below average families be like, especially those near the bottom of the range – the under class? A simple question – in present-day Britain, does the ‘most average’ family resemble the former or the latter? Can anyone be in any doubt about the answer?
Social Engineering
People often describe explicit programmes to change society as ‘social engineering.’ This phrase is invariably delivered in a sinister sense. Yet we are being socially engineered all the time. If we were living in a world dictated solely by market forces then those forces would be bringing about social engineering. Social engineering is always taking place, whether it’s following anyone’s explicit agenda or not. Is it better for the social engineering to be spelled out, or for us to remain blind to what’s happening?
Ending the Housing Crisis (while simultaneously addressing the major cause of lack of Community)
The UK is a nation obsessed with houses, property prices, getting on the ‘ladder’. This tells us a great deal about the values of the average UK citizen – materialistic, unintellectual (and anti-intellectual), trivial, unambitious, lacking in any kind of vision of greatness. Houses, for most people in the UK, are small anti-social boxes, isolating them from their local communities, reinforcing a mindset of ‘them’ (out there) versus ‘us’ (in here). The same thing applies to cars – people cut themselves off from others and revel in putting themselves in a private little bubble where they can indulge their selfishness and ignore others. This is the attitude that leads to phenomena such as Global Warming – billions of selfish decisions by individuals (and states) leading to catastrophe for human civilisation; no ability to see the big picture ahead of short-term self-interest. How to change this mindset? One of the easiest ways is to revolutionise the UK’s housing policy. Instead of building boxes for families, we should turn to an entirely new model – community housing. This is based on existing well tried and tested examples – hotels, halls of residence for students, and retirement homes for the elderly. These are predicated on single, en-suite rooms, with residents having easy access to communal areas – e.g. a lounge, a dining room, a kitchen etc. They save a huge amount of space in comparison with traditional houses and, above all, they foster community living. People, by having to live with many others, naturally have to pay more attention to others. People are no longer socially isolated if their family situation collapses. Crime would fall because a good, helpful community would inevitably address many of the social issues that lead to people embarking on criminal lifestyles in the first place. Criminals are frequently those who have acquired the belief, perhaps justified in many cases, that the rest of society is their enemy rather than their friend. They have no sense of community, and feel no compunction about committing offences against others. These factors would vanish if they were members of strong communities that stood up for them and protected their interests. As always, the selfish, self-interested family is the root of all evil. Community must replace family. Communal living spaces must replace family boxes. We must escape from property prices and ‘not in my back yard – nimby’ considerations. In the Middle Ages, community and the family were practically synonymous, but nowadays community and the family have next to nothing in common. (Neighbours barely acknowledge each other's existence.) One has to go. Which are you going to choose?
Ants and the Elderly – Abolish Retirement
In the ant world, ants take more risks the older they get. Why isn’t it the same in the human world? We should forget cosy retirement. There should be no pensions. The old should take more risks, not fewer. We have an increasingly ageing society. Great. All forms of discrimination against the elderly should be savagely penalised. People should work – and play – until failing health makes it impossible. It’s not as though office jobs justify a long retirement in any case. Maybe coal miners deserved and needed a long retirement, but certainly not office workers. And who wants to retire anyway? It’s one foot in the grave for most people.
The Incompetence of Privileged Institutions
"Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there."
-- George Orwell
“Success has always been the greatest liar.” “One must push what is collapsing.” All empires fall. Success creates complacency. Empires become arrogant. They lose the ability to criticise themselves, to see their inevitable flaws. They believe their own propaganda. The same is true of institutions. They are inept at self-renewal, re-energising themselves. They are never associated with radical change. How telling is Orwell’s remark? – the very success of Eton becomes the cause of subsequent calamity. If we wish to avoid the disaster of privileged institutions that have grown fat and tired, we must promote ferocious competition that pushes over anything that carries too much weight. Meritocracy is the mechanism. It’s a permanent challenge to privilege; the sword of Damocles hanging over the bloated, the smug, those wallowing in their own imagined success. The greater the competition, the greater the merit of the winners. In the UK, a few institutions have become untouchable, and our nation has stagnated as a consequence. We never achieve anything great and inspirational. Privilege kills talent and vision. It seeks only to maintain itself in its decadent comfort. There should be no sacred cows. Survival is not compulsory. Meritocracy will sweep away the incompetent institutions that are holding back the nation and its people.
-- Nietzsche
-- Nietzsche
Conspiracy Theories: Hyperreality’s Religion "Simulation
is the situation created by any system of signs when it becomes
sophisticated enough, autonomous enough, to abolish its own referent
and to replace it with itself."
-- Jean Baudrillard Baudrillard tells us that we’ve entered hyperreality,
sometimes defined as the more real than real. It seems an odd concept,
yet perhaps we can find a good illustration in the proliferation of
conspiracy theories. ‘RL’ – Real Life – is often associated with
accidents, cock-ups, laziness, ineptitude, bad luck, unforeseen
circumstances, unintended consequences, coincidences…a miasma of mess,
muddle, disorder, chaos, unconnectedness. Cause and effect exist, but not in a simple, satisfying way. People
don’t like the unadorned real. We’re always looking for patterns that make sense: easy-to-understand cause and effect. Even when we look at the clouds, we imagine
we’re seeing definite shapes (like faces or animals) rather than
amorphous blobs. We can’t help ourselves – our minds are wired that
way. When we can’t find obvious cause and effect, we’re left baffled. Even
distressed. But our anxiety is relatively easy to cure. We simply
invent an appropriate cause and effect and impose it on the problematic
situation. The more cause and effect we can cram in, the happier we
are. We feel we are understanding the world. We resist the notion that the truth, in a form we can grasp, is not out there. There must be some comprehensible pattern of cause and effect that explains everything. Enter
conspiracy theories. Nothing’s an accident. Nothing’s a cock-up. There
are no lone nutters with high-powered rifles. Mad people don’t do mad
things. Instead, everything is rationalised, put in a nice, tidy box
and tied up in a lovely pink bow. The gift-wrapped parcel is presented
to the world and everyone nods and smiles because now the world makes
sense. Sanity restored. Everything does have a sensible cause. Of
course, there may be many inconvenient facts that don’t support the
various conspiracy theories. But isn’t it those who are in on the
conspiracy who manufacture those ‘facts’? Six million died in the
Holocaust. 'Who says?' the Holocaust deniers ask. 'Jews say,' is their answer. Why?
To promote a Zionist agenda. And aren’t the Jews secretly controlling
the world? Weren’t we told so in the secret protocols of the elders of
Zion? Those were forged, of course. But by whom? Well, by the elders of
Zion, naturally, to cunningly disguise the truth. To
tell the truth of the 'Jewish conspiracy' is, according to the Holocaust deniers,
to be accused of believing in a ‘proven’ forgery, which was not forged
at all, but deliberately distributed as a simulated forgery. Nowadays,
no one can ever discuss the 'Jewish conspiracy' for fear of being branded
anti-Semitic, and credulously and perversely accepting forgeries…which
was the whole point of the forgery in the first place. Except, as
noted, it wasn’t a forgery, but merely a simulation of a forgery. The genius behind this conspiracy! Well,
that’s how some people see it, and there’s nothing you can say or do to
change their minds. And even to try is to demonstrate that you’re part
of the conspiracy. There
are those who claim that facts can dispel conspiracy theories. What
planet are these people living on? As Nietzsche said, ‘There are no
facts, only interpretations.’ He might have come up with an even more
extreme formulation: ‘There are no facts, only misinterpretations.’ Facts
have long since stopped being objective, real things. (They are
ultimately nothing but electrical signals in the human brain in any
case, assuming we accept the facts of science.) Facts, we now realise,
are beliefs. They can be used to support anything. People hold
religious beliefs precisely because ‘facts’ are so malleable. You can
pick your own from all those on offer. You can disregard every fact you
dislike. It’s a precondition of faith. (Was Jesus Christ the
Son of God? The Son of Man? Did he raise people from the dead, and rise
from the dead himself? Are these facts? Or was Jesus Christ
actually Yehoshua ben Yosef, and didn’t perform any miracles, and was
an ordinary human being? Did he even exist?) Conspiracy
theories operate in the same territory. These are belief systems too.
Nothing can overcome them. Indeed, it’s a prediction of Festinger’s
cognitive dissonance theory that the more conclusively people’s beliefs
are refuted the more likely many of those people are to redouble their
faith in their disproven beliefs. You
see, it’s all hyperreal. Conspiracy theories, like religions, offer
much more emotionally satisfying explanations. They close the big,
scary, open-ended questions. Who, other than rational people, wants to
believe that a drunk driver in a Paris tunnel killed Diana Spencer? Her
followers won’t accept that. So all hail the elaborate conspiracy
theory. She died for specific reasons, for a rational agenda – not
because of some cheap and vulgar automobile accident of the type that
happens scores of times a day all over the world. No, that simply won’t
do. The
dinosaur thinkers who write books ‘disproving’ conspiracy theories
better get real. Or rather hyperreal. Their ludicrous facts became
extinct long ago, assuming they ever existed in the first place (which
they didn’t.) There’s no point in discussing the truth or otherwise of
conspiracy theories. It’s as futile as trying to disprove religions. Religious
believers often say, ‘But you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.’ They
never tell you what they would accept as proof. And in fact, they would
accept nothing. Same game with the conspiracy theorists. Of
course, we’re all familiar with the very first human conspiracy – when
the first woman talked the first man into stealing an apple from a
special tree: the Tree of Knowledge. The facts never got in the way of that conspiracy, did they?
In a nation of appallingly selfish people who’d do anything to get ahead, there’s an absolute need for TV charity shows like Children in Need. People who spend 364.5 days a year contemplating property prices, how they can get their children into the best schools at the expense of other children, and who they can shaft at work to get a promotion, need their half a day a year when they can pretend to be interested in the welfare of others. Pretend to be human, perhaps. Charity events are the obscene means by which the uncharitable masses worship their shameless pretence of altruism. They are playgrounds for nauseating extraverts to inflict themselves like the worst bullies on hordes of introverts, forcing them to have ‘fun’. Vain, egomaniacal celebrities are permitted to feign that they have some interest in the lives of those less fortunate (as if!). And it’s so good for their media profile, of course. Their publicists and agents never tire of telling them to get their faces in front of the dumb public, and these are the opportunities par excellence. And did you see the sales rocket of all those bands that took part in Live Aid? You can’t manufacture ‘selling’ events as good as big charity shows. (Isn’t that the real purpose of charity?) Even debutantes (or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays), get in on the act with their swanky charity balls – the places where you must be seen if you’re anyone. If God existed, only he would know what any of these events has to do with charity. Next year, keep your collection cans and fancy dress costumes. Go out to Africa and actually do something charitable, or face the fact that you’re totally selfish, and a hypocrite into the bargain. Anything that’s worthwhile should be funded by the state. If it’s not worthwhile it shouldn’t be funded at all. So what’s the point of charity?
The Cult of the Professional (Charlatan/Bullshitter)
‘We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.’ In The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen laments the opportunity the Internet has afforded any Tom, Dick or Harry to place their thoughts, movies, music tracks, stories etc in the public arena. As more people access this free material, fewer pay the traditional content producers (newspapers, magazines, book publishers, film studios, record companies, TV and radio companies). Where will it all end? The collapse of civilisation? That appears to be Keen’s hypothesis. Keen is in no doubt that the amateur efforts that abound on the Internet are rubbish. The commercial material, on the other hand, is held up as something of the highest calibre. Who is this guy kidding? He obviously hasn’t watched many Hollywood movies, or much TV, or actually read any newspapers or magazines, or listened to the junk on the radio. Almost all commercial content is garbage, to a quite extraordinary degree. And don’t forget – people are actually being paid, often ridiculously well, to produce it. The vast majority of people in the media got their jobs through nepotism and cronyism. They’re not professional paragons: rather they’re professional charlatans, bullshitters and arse lickers. They have no talent at all, apart from managing to get someone to pay them for producing junk. Keen is a snob, a slavish worshipper of the myth of the ‘legitimate’, ‘professional’ expert when virtually no one, outside the world of academics (and scientists in particular), is worthy of that description. The Independent used to be a good newspaper, until it became a viewspaper. Why should I pay to read the views of some commentator in The Independent when I can just as easily freely read the blog of some person on the Internet who may be much funnier, more controversial, more radical, more interesting, more intelligent – and a better writer? Newspaper commentators are simply bloggers who get paid: grandiose, self-deluded bloggers in other words. Keen argues that the conventional producers of paid content are the gatekeepers to some Promised Land of standards, taste, and high quality. They filter good from bad, true from false. Yeah, right! All they do is promote their own agendas. Their ‘good’ is nothing more than a reflection of their personal tastes. Their opinion that something is ‘good’ doesn’t render it so. Equally, their ideas of true and false are simply perspectives from the viewpoints that prove most advantageous to them. Try reading Nietzsche if you want the ‘truth’. Try reading Baudrillard. The last person you should go to is one of the chattering classes, one of the media gatekeepers. Another obvious point to which Keen is astoundingly oblivious is that the Internet merely reflects the culture that the ‘gatekeepers’ created. The gatekeepers were the Frankesteins who gave life to the monster. If the gatekeepers had engineered an entirely different culture, one that lauds all the values that Keen claims to admire, then the Internet would be a paradise. That it isn’t is thanks to no one but the gatekeepers who pursued a relentless agenda of producing dumbed down content to chase ratings and higher profits. It’s old-fashioned justice that their monster has turned on them, and they surely deserve to perish. They chose to worship the Lowest Common Denominator, and they have reaped their moronic harvest.
-- Baudrillard
Psychology, Design, Ergonomics
All Government projects should compulsorily involve psychologists, designers and experts in ergonomics. It’s extraordinary the extent to which badly designed schemes are imposed on the public and on workforces (both private and public). Psychological, design and ergonomic considerations are usually given low priority, with the inevitable disastrous consequences. Cheap projects are frequently given the go-ahead, for reasons of cost alone, even though they are inevitably counter-productive.
Devil’s Advocate Department
A Government should at all times seek to challenge its own decisions. If it can address the objections of its sternest critics, its policies are more likely to be successful. The Government should actively seek out talented ‘awkward squad’ individuals to question Government policies. The Devil’s Advocate Department will be composed of philosophers, scientists, psychologists and mathematicians, with the specific remit of identifying flaws and inconsistencies in Government policies, and likely unintended consequences. As with scientific theories, policies become more robust the more they are challenged and subsequently refined. Far from being ‘negative’, doubts, suspicions, challenges, attempts to refute are all positive activities that should be actively encouraged. The House of Commons or the House of Extraverts?
If you want to be an MP, what are the requirements? Well, you almost certainly have to belong to an established political party. So, freethinking, independently minded individuals can forget it. No outsiders, thank you very much: the in-crowd only. You will have to be chosen by the selection committee of your constituency party. So, you require a talent to get on well with tedious, local bureaucrats. No don’t suffer fools gladly types, I’m afraid – those who’d have nothing but contempt for petty politickers. To impress the selection committee you will have to be respectable, with a good job. You probably went to a nice school and a good university. You’re likely to be married with a family. In other words, all interesting people, anyone who hasn’t played ‘the game’, anyone who resists convention, can put away their application forms. Oh, and you probably have to be not too young and not too old, preferably quite presentable, probably not handicapped. You’ll be superficially charming. You won’t be outspoken or have any radical opinions. Mustn’t upset Mr and Mrs Average, must we? In fact you should really be as similar to them as possible, but just a touch better. If you clear all of these hurdles, what then? Well, you can start campaigning for election to the House of Commons. And to succeed at that you have to be a competent public speaker – but not too good because then you’d be unusual. You have to be happy to shake hands, kiss babies, visit hospitals, have your picture taken with the disabled, have a nice cuppa with the elderly. You must be a ‘people person’. To sum it up: you have to be an extravert. The entire process by which MPs end up in the House of Commons is a textbook case of how to strip out anyone different, anyone unconventional, anyone too talented. Above all, it’s practically impossible for introverts to become MPs. What sort of political system is it that proclaims how fair and accessible it is, yet ruthlessly prevents many of its most meritorious citizens from having any reasonable chance of being elected? Want to be an MP? Introverts need not apply. Geniuses need not apply. Heretics, hermits, visionaries, revolutionaries, misanthropes – don’t even think about it. Perhaps the House of Commons should be renamed the House of the Commonplace, the House of the Trivial, the House of the Bland and the Banal. Above all, the House of Extraverts. But one day, hopefully soon, it will be the House of Merit.
"An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy." -- Mao Zedong
Napoleon once said that Britain was a nation of shopkeepers. These days, he’d describe it as a nation of shoppers. Our purpose in life, it seems, is to shop. Our education system churns out fresh, eager shoppers, keenly receptive to the latest advertising. Our status is determined by how much we can spend when we go to the shops. Permanent window-shoppers are the lowest of the low. Parliament exists to frame the laws in which we can maximise our shopping. The City handles the finances of our shopping trips. Can’t afford it? – no worries – here’s loads of credit. You can’t afford that either, but who cares? Just keep spending, for God’s sake. The economy will collapse if you don’t. It’s your duty to shop. Shopping – the categorical imperative, the basis of our modern morality. Why not replace humans with androids? They could shop 24/7. Perfect shopping machines that don’t have to take any breaks. Commercial Britain – a nation with a clockwork heart. The nation’s soul, such as it was, has expired. Can we resurrect Britain? Can Commercial Britain be replaced by Cultural Britain? Dedicated to art, science, knowledge, architecture, ideas, creativity, experimentation, adventure, beauty, aesthetics. The Meritocracy Party seeks to bring together the entire cultural community of the UK – scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, academics, artists, designers, architects, writers – and to promote the idea that a society without culture is a desert. Can the cultural community of the UK become a power block to influence Government policy? Would the Government have any credibility if it were opposed by the cultural community? Imagine a Government unsupported by a single intellectual. Is such a Government possible? Wouldn’t it be a laughing stock?
There’s a bigger question – would a nation based on culture rather than commerce be more successful, more intelligent, more prosperous, freer, happier, healthier, more soulful? Would crime rates plummet? Could we practically scrap the welfare state? Would our town and cities be architectural wonders, our schools the envy of the world? Culture beats commerce hands down. So what’s stopping us? The Death of Art
Damien Hirst’s Skull. What does it represent, this diamond skull that cost £14m to make (funded by a consortium) and was sold for £50m (to generate an agreed profit for the consortium)? Death by bling, the extermination of culture by celebrity, the elevation of commercialism to the supreme aim of art. When businessmen become artists there is no art. Zamiatin said, ‘There can be a real literature only when it produced by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers and sceptics and not by patient and well meaning officials.’ What would Zamiatin have thought of art being run by business consortia with the sole aim of generating a tidy profit? Art or capitalist consumerism? Is there any difference now? Where are the madmen, hermits and heretics? Capitalist Consumerism is associated with Vulgarity, the Lowest Common Denominator, Dumbing Down, Celebrity Culture, 24/7 Shopping, Materialism, Tabloid Newspapers, Tittle Tattle, Malicious Gossip, Prurience, Reality TV, Soap Operas, Anti-Intellectualism, Illusion, Delusion, Lies. Meritocracy is associated with Intelligence, Talent, Quality, Refinement, the Elevation of the Human Spirit, the Higher Self, Good Taste, Nobility, Honour, Integrity, Truth. Which side are you on?
The political debate in the media is controlled by a small number of individuals (no more than a hundred people, all of a similar ilk). They drive the agendas to which politicians (or rather the pathetic excuses for politicians we’re forced to endure) respond. You know exactly who the small group of commentators are. You see them on TV, you hear them on the radio, you see their columns in the newspapers and ‘political’ magazines – I’m talking about the same people each time. They are everywhere, expressing their tiresome opinions over and over. No other opinions are heard. No outsiders are admitted. The debate is devoid of intellectual content. You will never hear any of these people mentioning the great political philosophers of history, just as you never hear politicians mentioning political philosophy (which you might naively consider their stock in trade). Instead of hearing the great opinions of great thinkers, we’re bombarded with the petty thoughts of intellectual pygmies. One prominent political programme refers constantly to Itchy and Scratchy. It’s funny on The Simpsons – it’s frightening on a political TV programme. The same programme regularly features such giants of the political scene as Peter Stringfellow (accompanied by pole dancers; free entry to Stringfellows for the presenter as a quid quo pro perhaps?). Is this what we’ve come to?
Vote for the Meritocracy Party and get rid of all of these idiots. Let’s have proper intellectual engagement with proper intellectual ideas.
Often, when faced with a difficult issue, we may find that we lean 55% (ish) towards one view of the issue and 45% (ish) towards the diametrically opposite view. In other words, the answer is rarely obvious. Yet when people come down on one side or the other, they soon imagine that their decision is 100% correct. They have entirely forgotten that it was a marginal decision and there were strong arguments on both sides. They forget the powerful contrary arguments, and remember only the considerations that supported their decision. The truth – that there are two sides to every story – is replaced by the false certainty that there is only one right answer. Ambiguity is dispelled. Black and white replace grey. And therein lies most of the problems and disputes of the human race. When anyone puts forward any argument, they could just as easily, if they put their mind to it, endorse precisely the opposite position almost as convincingly. So why don’t they? Those who support the abolition of inheritance tax, for example, could probably find excellent reasons for raising inheritance tax to 100% for everyone i.e. no one can inherit anything. All resources accumulated by an individual are given to the state when the individual no longer requires them. That would be the ideal meritocratic outcome.
Yet people put so much effort into selectively marshalling the ‘facts’ in favour of a certain view and ignoring the other facts that point the opposite way. We’re designed this way – it helps us to make decisions, and life is all about making decisions. But shouldn’t we be concerned about making the right decisions, not the decisions that are most convenient for us.
"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."
The Meritocracy Party promotes the Law of Neutrality. In a public space, what is the least objectionable, most neutral, behaviour for a person to display? The answer is simple: no one could find fault with a person quietly walking along a street, minding his own business. The further a person’s behaviour strays from this neutral behaviour, the more he will be in breach of the Law of Neutrality. Minor breaches are rude; major breaches should be subject to formal legal sanctions. So, what sorts of behaviour might constitute transgressions of neutrality?
1) Noise: A person yelling into a mobile phone, yelling to friends, carrying a pounding ‘ghetto blaster’, wearing a headset from which music is blaring out – these are all provocative, non-neutral behaviours.
2) Mobs: Large gangs of people swarming around, forcing people to get out of their way, shouting and screaming and fooling around – these are all provocative, non-neutral behaviours.
3) Intoxication: Drunks and drugged people behaving erratically, often with a threat of violence. Throwing up, urinating in public. Hysterical, uncontrolled behaviour.
4) Litter: People dumping their rubbish wherever they feel like it, often in the middle of the street. Similarly, discarding their used chewing gum and cigarette butts anywhere they please.
5) Animals: A person walking a dog. Many people hate dogs. Why should they be subjected to an unpleasant encounter with a dog because a dog owner is incapable of going for a walk on his own?
6) Bikes: A person on a bike in a public place is always a nuisance. At any moment, the cyclist could collide with a pedestrian, causing serious injury.
7) Street People: Beggars, Big Issue sellers, charity workers, professional interviewers for marketing companies, fly-leaf distributors, religious preachers – these activities are all a serious breach of neutrality and should be banned.
The Patron Saint of the Greediest Industrialists
In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote a fictional account of what would happen if America’s top industrialists went on strike. America’s capitalist leaders love Rand because she portrayed them as brilliant, inspirational heroes, without whom the country would fall apart. How to reconcile Rand’s paeans to these 'masters of the universe' with the adage that the graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable? The Meritocracy Party would welcome a strike by top industrialists. They would instantly be replaced by much cheaper, and vastly more talented, individuals. Who is it who promotes the myth that industrialists are indispensable? Well, the industrialists themselves, of course – and their cronies in the media. It’s all part of the rigged system. CEOs have created a system whereby they can pay themselves any salary they like – and they like extremely large salaries, out of all proportion to their talents – and they ‘justify’ these exaggerated earnings on the back of the ludicrous claim that it’s their market rate and talent moves where the money is. Why not test this hypothesis? Let them leave the country and go ‘where the market takes them’ and let’s get new people in, chosen meritocratically. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Emperor’s New Clothes is one of the most instructive pieces of psychology ever written. Can an entire population be conned into seeing the stark naked (i.e. the supremely untalented) as fully clothed in the most stylish apparel (i.e. the abundantly talented). The answer is unquestionably yes. When are people going to look and see that these top industrialists are a joke? They’re just ordinary people who have benefited from a rigged system. It would be facile to bring in new people to replace them. Headhunters will tell you it’s almost impossible. Well, they have to justify their obscenely high commissions for identifying these unicorns, don’t they? Succession planning doesn’t come cheap because you have to find exactly the right type of crook, the perfect carpetbagger, the snake oil salesman par excellence. If you simply had to find a talented person deserving of the job, life would be so much easier.
David Cameron is an Old Etonian (and studied PPE at Oxford). His shadow front bench is jammed with Old Etonians (mostly Oxbridge, too). He says he’s proud of his education (read cronyism) and his family (read nepotism). He will do anything for his family. Yeah, Dave, such as rig the system to ensure that they get the best treatment – treatment denied to others. You’ll be happy to give your own children the same education that you enjoyed (that you’re so proud of). How many other children in the UK can get their parents to lavish £23,000 a year school fees on them? It’s not as if you want equal treatment, do you, Dave? Your family comes first. You approve of privilege. You promote it. You’re proud of it. Not a meritocratic bone in your body. For the working classes to vote for you would well and truly be on a par with turkeys voting for Christmas. Vote for the Meritocracy Party. Vote for an equal chance.
(John Major, a former prime minister of the UK, did not hold a university degree. He left school at sixteen with three O-levels in English Language, English Literature and History. He later gained three additional O-levels in Economics, Mathematics and ‘British Constitution’. Major held the posts of Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer before becoming Prime Minister. He is now ‘Sir’ John Major KG, CH, PC. His leadership of the country is regarded by many as catastrophic, and led to Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. In what way was Mr Major qualified to be Foreign Secretary, Chancellor and PM? Are six O-levels sufficient for holding the three great offices of state? Why not appoint schoolchildren with six GCSEs and an A-level or two?)
*****
Some commentators have cited the spectacular rise of John Major as the final proof that we live in a meritocracy. Unfortunately, this is not a thesis that bears close inspection. Meritocracy means “rule by the most deserving, the most worthy”. In what way does Mr Major deserve to be the political leader of fifty-five million people? Has he left us stupefied at the inimitable brilliance of his intellect? Is he an artistic genius, creator of peerless masterpieces that capture the eternal truth of the human condition? Is he a superbly skilled orator in the same mould as Demosthenes or Cicero, someone whose merest word can induce ecstasy in us? Is he a saint-like figure who pursues a life of such unswerving asceticism that no ordinary mortal could ever hope to emulate him?
Well, regrettably, the answer would seem to be a resounding NO to all of these questions. So, returning to our original enquiry, in what way is Mr Major deserving? It would seem that the answer is a most depressing one. He is deserving precisely because he is supremely undeserving.
This manner was of paradox was examined in painstaking detail by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche’s analysis, ideologies such as Christianity, democracy and socialism have eroded and finally destroyed the traditional hierarchical division of mankind. In the days when that division prevailed, the idea that a peasant and a king were in any way equal was literally unthinkable. Nowadays, it is just as unthinkable that the Queen would appear on our televisions and tell us that she was superior to us in every respect.
To be sure, the notion that anyone should be deemed superior because of family history is one that fully deserves to perish – but it does not follow that the concept of superiority per se should be abandoned. Some human being, by virtue of what they have done or tried to do with their lives, ARE of vastly more worth than others, although it has become the ultimate taboo to say so.
The truth is that the average man has been told so often that no one is, or ever can be, superior to him that he has become the most deluded and arrogant creature on earth, incapable of admitting any deficiency whatsoever. His vanity makes him blind to the fact that there are others who are much more talented, much more deserving, much worthier.
To the average man, the opinions of a philosopher, for example, are just another set of opinions, no more valuable than those of a checkout girl. This grotesque view is enshrined in the democratic principle of one-man-one-vote, surely the supreme triumph of wishful thinking over stark reality.
John Major is the ultimate product of democracy, ascending to the highest heights precisely because of his exquisite ordinariness. The conclusion, however, is not so much that we are witnessing the fruition of a meritocratic society as its extinction.
Membership Requirements
There are no requirements. The Meritocracy Party has no members. No one pays any subscriptions. There is no party organisation. It’s a virtual party – a party of the mind – promoting the merits of intelligence and culture. Anyone can join, but it’s up to them to decide what it is they’re joining. Particularly welcome are all of the country’s intelligentsia and lovers of culture. ‘Shoppers’, Conservatives, Monarchists, Religious Fundamentalists, Freemasons etc. would be unlikely to be attracted to the Meritocracy Party. You don’t have to agree with all or most of the opinions expressed on this website. In fact, you definitely shouldn’t. You should have your ideas, your own opinions, your own solutions to the ills of the nation.