Combatting Materialism in a Meritocratic Society

When we think about our society today, we must consider how certain political philosophies combine, and how they impact our perspectives, psychologically. Through studying Marx and Engels, and even Menand, we as students are taught to understand the fundamental values of meritocracies and materialistic societies, but only by actually living in today's world can we fathom the impact these ideologies have upon our lives in the way we are viewed, and in the way we view the world. Only by living, can we see the inner-workings of materialism, and actually feel the responsibilities of a meritocracy.

Materialism (Courtesy of: http://worshipdrummerblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/materialismmaterialistic.html) 

This Ted Talk is one of my favorites. I couldn't help but think about it as we learned about all of these ideologies, and I strongly believe that this is one that really is worth watching and deeply considering. Alain de Botton is a Swiss philosopher who in this video, discusses the idea that in the meritocratic world that we live in, we celebrate our success, but we also own our failure. He argues that one cannot and should not be judged based on their social standing because there is far too much that we don't know about a person. They say we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but according to de Botton, society today is filled with snobs. There is this phenomenon called "job snobbery," in which people make snap judgements of your societal standing based on your career. The issue with job snobbery is that in a meritocracy, we all feel the spirit of equality in that we all have equal opportunities to get ahead in life. The problem with that, is that we are not all really equal (there is too much randomness in nature for us to all be exactly equal). Because we are not equal but we feel that we are, we tend to be envious of one another when we see others succeeding. We attach emotional rewards to luxury goods, which usually arises from success in our occupation, and that's where the materialism comes into play. A materialistic society is a result of a meritocratic one, essentially because we are so harsh on ourselves. De Botton speaks of the world as a school in the sense that we all think that we're equal from the beginning, but in reality that is simply not possible. 

Courtesy of: http://julianajimenez.com/2012/01/17/ted-talk-atheism-2-0/alain-de-botton/

Meritocracies are not absolute and in fact are far from perfect, because they do not leave room for luck and chance. Now, de Botton does not envision a more socialist society; rather, he argues for one with less judgement, and more sympathy. I think this is fairly interesting. The fact is that our world has undergone centuries of societal evolution in that what people used to consider fate, or a result of God's will, is now more secularly believed to be what we have made for ourselves. De Botton points out that in ancient society, those who "failed" in any sense would be considered less-fortunate, whereas today, he accurately yet less politely puts them as "losers." If one believes that each of us have the potential to rise to the top, we also, by implication, believe that those who are at the bottom are there as a result of their own doing. This is far too harsh because of the randomness of circumstances described earlier, and it is the source of the faults in our materialistic and meritocratic society. It comes to no surprise that these types of societies have higher rates of suicides, as the blame is put on ourselves rather than God. De Botton's points have left a huge impact on me in that if we leave some room for chance, and adapt a more gentle perspective of success, we would be better off living in such a materialistic meritocracy. We should take ourselves less seriously, and we should pursue our own beliefs of success, rather than what society imposes on us.