Arrogance and Meritocracy

The fall 2012 issue of The City includes a review of the book Twilight of the Elites:America after Meritocracy. The reviewer, Walter Russell Mead of Bard College, finds himself not as far left as the author but agrees with the author that the idea of rule by 'the best and brightest' doesn't work out the way we hoped it would. Jefferson thought that this would be a 'natural aristocracy' and would be the democratic alternative to the European inherited-aristocracy approach. The book points out that this natural aristocracy may not be as democratic as he hoped.

One key reason for this, according to both the book and the reviewer, is arrogance. The reviewer summarizes this point from the book like this: 'The new elites don't feel guilty about their power; they didn't inherit it. They earned it. They are smarter than everybody else and they deserve to rule---and in their own minds at least, they also deserve the perks that power brings. Money, fame, access: bring it on.'

This kind of arrogance strikes me as part of what I find so loathsome in the political left. As the reviewer above points out, there have been mostly 2 groups in the left: the populists and the social technocrats. The populists have tended to be working class or agrarian 'little people' who felt a need to band together against the 'monopolists' like Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie, while the technocrats tend to be upper middle class or upper class reformers (many of them in the university). It is the technocrats that end up as the 'meritocracy'.  The 'little people' don't seem to recognize the disdain in which they are held by these technocrats. I have said before that some of my extended family who grew up during the Great Depression seem to still be voting for Roosevelt, and they are to my mind in this 'little people' populist stream who do not see how their values have been abandoned by the meritocracy.  The arrogance of the success of these technocrats along with the power that has resulted from their success at being 'the best and brightest' demonstrates that, as always, 'power corrupts'.

The review does not mention this but there is a similar arrogance on the political right, by those who earned their success in business rather than in the government meritocracy. Just as political elites feel no guilt about their power, these feel no guilt about their wealth. They earned it, they worked hard for it, they didn't inherit it, so bring it on! This is a different kind of  'meritocracy', one based on hard work and entrepreneurship rather than education and political savvy. I also find this kind of 'self-made man' attitude disgusting, and I have seen it too often in business executives.

 These 2 forms of arrogance, one on the political left and the other on the political right, seem to be two sides of  the same coin. That coin is arrogance based on the idea that we are the prime mover in life. The left hurls accusations at the business world that they 'did not do it' (in Obama's recent words); the right hurls accusations at the government technocrats for ever more efforts to remove freedom of decisions from the legislatures or individuals and into bureaucracies. Both sides have a point, but both sides are guilty of similar sorts of arrogance. Both kinds of arrogance have been all too visible in the current presidential campaign. Both are a danger to anyone seeking to follow Christ.

'Blessed are the poor in spirit' says Matt. 5:3; 'I am gentle and humble in heart' says Jesus in Matt.11:29. Humility displaces arrogance. The reviewer above, in discussing  the arrogance problem, points out that Thomas Aquinas noted that in the light of God's presence everything he had ever written was so much straw. Humility is based on recognizing the truth that God doesn't think any of us is all that smart, and the difference between the greatest and the least of us is quite small from His perspective. None of us has room for arrogance in God's presence, and that should enable us to see how very equal we are from His point of view. Humility is not based on some greatness of attitude on our part, but rather is based on the truth of how small we are compared to our Creator. 

Were we to recognize how small our differences are from God's viewpoint it would be a great equalizer and a great unifier. Unity demands humility. Our nation is very divided currently.  The sin of  arrogance on both sides of the political divide strikes me as a big part of the problem.