All my life, I’ve been taught to believe in some amount of meritocracy. While that’s been tempered by the idea that we should have compassion for the poor and downtrodden, it’s always there. We tend to think that if smarter, stronger, faster people rise to the top, because of their natural talents, they deserve it. The ominous corollary would seem to be that people who lack inborn traits that we value they don’t deserve better. It becomes all too easy to start thinking that the poor and downtrodden are somehow inferior, or that charity should be given out of pity, rather than that our society should empower everyone to be their best selves.
I woke up this morning with a realization. None of us did anything to earn the natural gifts that we were born with. We may be lucky to have our inborn traits, but we didn’t actually make any decision or take any action to have them. Likewise, any weaknesses we’re born with are not because of any poor decision we made. We can’t our natural inborn advantages or disadvantages. It’s not to our credit that we have good inborn traits. It’s not our fault that we have inborn weaknesses.
So, I’m starting to doubt whether or not we really deserve better, if we have marketable inborn traits or deserve worse if we don’t. I question whether or not people with inborn weaknesses deserve less. In fact, we all have strengths and weaknesses. Shouldn’t we all let our strengths shine and work around our weaknesses?
Now, to some extent, all this seems obvious. I’m writing as if this is a new revelation, but that’s not really true. Of course, I value the preciousness of all human beings. I always have. It’s more like we forget. Somehow, our culture keeps on asserting these strange notions of meritocracy. Our brains fog. We think that makes sense, and then we wake up. We have to keep reminding ourselves of these things, because there’s an intense push from our culture to cloud the truth.
I’m not saying that software should be coded by people who have low IQ or that therapy should be handled by people with poor emotional intelligence. And I’m not saying that none of our strengths are based on choices. We can choose to be studious, to work hard, and to be virtuous. So, maybe people should be rewarded for doing the best with what they have.
My point is that I think we often get confused about who deserves what in society. Every human being is born fundamentally precious. Every human being has inborn strengths and weaknesses. I think we should rethink meritocracy, as we realize this. Every human being deserves to be empowered to be their best selves.