Our Meritocratic Malaise
This week, Ross Douthat and I offer columns about today's troubled elites.
"In hereditary aristocracies," Ross writes, "debacles tend to flow from stupidity and pigheadedness: think of the Charge of the Light Brigade or the Battle of the Somme."
[...] In meritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks that lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world.
Inevitably, pride goeth before a fall.
What happens to the self-regard of our elites after (or during) the fall Ross leaves up to our imagination. My take? Welcome to a cultural pity party so intense it's the political equivalent of resentment repellent:
“Optimism and self-pity [as Orwell’s contemporary Cyril Connolly once put it] are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.” Caught pathetically between, our elites have turned out to be the real bitter clingers.
Not much fodder for envy, is it? I'd say the real political vitality is in the hands of smart pessimists -- populist and otherwise -- as short on resentment as they are on pity. But they're still marginal figures. Our brooding elites are not about to take flight from their perches. From Obama to Berlusconi and far beyond, all indications are they'll have to be pushed -- by people, yes, but, more fundamentally, by events.
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Feb '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
The first job of an elite is to be competent. This goes doubly so for an ostensibly meritocratic one that claims competency as its justification for telling us what to do. You can get away with the appearance of competence, but that is not a permanent solution, especially if the trend lines diverge. As anyone who has been in marketing knows, your marketing image cannot be too far off from reality, or else you lose it all.
The baby boomer elites have displayed singular incompetence and don’t show any sign of being willing to change. The “shame” PC culture of the liberal left seems to be overwhelming any sense of self-preservation. Or maybe they’re just not too bright...
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
Great post. Do you know what Connolly meant by "optimism?" It made me think of the optimism of technocrats, the Obama-style belief that the government should run things -- I would equate that with arrogance, which is the term Douthat uses at the end of his column. But I'm not sure that's what he was driving at.
In any event, I also like smart pessimists, but that doesn't make for good retail politics, does it? Was there ever a time when a smart pessimist could win an election in the US?
Edited on November 8, 2011 at 8:41pmJul '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
You may find the following item interesting in this connection:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
Adam Freedman: Great post. Do you know what Connolly meant by "optimism?" It made me think of the optimism of technocrats, the Obama-style belief that the government should run things -- I would equate that with arrogance, which is the term Douthat uses at the end of his column. But I'm not sure that's what he was driving at.
In any event, I also like smart pessimists, but that doesn't make for good retail politics, does it? Was there ever a time when a smart pessimist could win an election in the US?
Thanks, Adam. The traditional pessimist's view of optimism is the creed that everything which troubles us can be identified as a problem set that we can understand, address, and ameliorate -- which I take to be the conceptual prior to the technocratic science you're thinking of. I think Ross is focusing on the arrogance of self-entitlement -- exacerbated, to be sure, by optimism (if that critique is at all sound).
Arguably, Nixon was the king of smart, populist pessimists...
Aug '10
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
James Poulos: This week, Ross Douthat and I offer columns about today's troubled elites.
"[...] In meritocracies, though, it’s the very intelligence of our leaders that creates the worst disasters. Convinced that their own skills are equal to any task or challenge, meritocrats take risks that lower-wattage elites would never even contemplate, embark on more hubristic projects, and become infatuated with statistical models that hold out the promise of a perfectly rational and frictionless world.
This explains why Bill Buckley would have preferred to be governed by the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory.
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
James Poulos
Arguably, Nixon was the king of smart, populist pessimists... · Nov 8 at 11:58am
Of course! I hadn't thought of him, but it fits.
Dec '10
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
Douthat is simply restating the Peter Principle. Meritocracies are liable to two main pitfalls: when the merit of a candidate for a higher position is inferred from his excellent performance in a lower or qualitatively different position (rather than evaluated by tests and trials that simulate the higher position's demands), or when a person is deemed to have merit on the basis of factors that have nothing to do with his knowledge, skills or experience (as when a lightweight transfers from Occidental to Columbia and then goes on to Harvard Law, all because others want to create a successful case study).
Apr '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
James Poulos
Adam Freedman: Great post. Do you know what Connolly meant by "optimism?" It made me think of the optimism of technocrats, the Obama-style belief that the government should run things -- I would equate that with arrogance, which is the term Douthat uses at the end of his column.
In any event, I also like smart pessimists, but that doesn't make for good retail politics, does it? Was there ever a time when a smart pessimist could win an election in the US?
Thanks, Adam. The traditional pessimist's view of optimism is the creed that everything which troubles us can be identified as a problem set that we can understand, address, and ameliorate -- which I take to be the conceptual prior to the technocratic science you're thinking of. I think Ross is focusing on the arrogance of self-entitlement -- exacerbated, to be sure, by optimism (if that critique is at all sound).
Arguably, Nixon was the king of smart, populist pessimists... ·
I'd have thought Bush 41. Nixon was a huge government problem solver (wage controls, China, etc.), whereas Bush really tried to limit government distortion of markets.
Nov '10
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
I do not think that the comparison of the Somme battles with the Charge of the Light Brigade is an apt one. Both were costly and had disappointing endings, but the Somme sapped the Germans in a way that the Light Brigade's action did not affect the Russians. And, the Somme (see, Winston Groom, A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918), though a horrible battle, was part and parcel of the whole WWI experience: the defense, with the Maxim gun, was vastly superior to the offence, and nobody had then figured out how to deal with that. In any event, the destruction of significant elements of the German Army there was a long unknown or ignored aspect of the fight. Not until the interwar years did the British and then the Germans take to the mobile armored thrusts that changed warfare in the 20th century.
I know that the decisions of the generals of WWI have long been derided (see, for example,, The Somme, Prof. Robin Prior, Professor Trevor Wilson ), but later scholarship does not seem to bear out the initial judgment.
Jan '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
It's easy to tell how shallow our so-called elite is by counting the number of times it applies the adjectives "smart" and "intelligent" to itself and its worldview.
Like the Hillary cover of Time Magazine.
And like above, for instance.
Aug '10
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
I think he's saying something rather different. The point of the first quote, in my opinion, is that elites, unlike ordinary folks, are uniquely susceptible to the particular vice of thinking they are cleverer than they really are. Or more precisely, thinking that the job of remaking human society is simpler than it is, within the range of their cleverness, when in fact it is always way beyond the mental capacity of any individual, committee or organization. That is the fatal conceit of socialism, liberalism, leftism, progressivism, call it what you will.
Sep '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
The Charge of the Light Brigade did result in the Russian guns actually being taken (for a while) and it put the wind up the Russians who couldn't believe what they were seeing. It swung the campaign in favor of the British who won a decisive battle a few days later.
So not a total debacle.
jus' sayin'
Jan '11
Re: Our Meritocratic Malaise
"Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor and not aspired to be the master." (Italics added)
Edmund Burke, "Reflections on the Revolution in France"