67 Quotes About Meritocracy

Meritocracy is about building a society which is shaped by excellence and guided by character.

We do not share much in the U.S. culture of individualism except our delusions about meritocracy. God help my people, but I can talk to hundreds of black folks who have been systematically separated from their money, citizenship, and personhood and hear at least eighty stories about how no one is to blame but themselves. That is not about black people being black but about people being American. That is what we do.

Meritocracy seeks to find the violinist in everyone, and to create a human orchestra capable of playing the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres, an orchestra in which humanity has become divine and can hear the music normally available only to God.

Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.

Someone with an inborn knack for mathematics or music may be just as productive as someone who was born with lesser talents in these fields and who had to work very hard to achieve the same level of proficiency. However, we reward productivity rather than merit, for the perfectly valid reason that we know how to do it.

The Omega Point is not a fantasy. We are converging on it. If humanity trusts in its most enlightened, meritocratic, intelligent individuals, committed to helping Society rather than themselves, we can get there in two or three generations. That’s how close we are.

Meritocracy is a sacred cause, not profane. It is numinous. Meritocracy is about the glory and highest aspirations of the human race, not about letting people run around doing their own thing regardless of everyone else, and fretting over which hamburger to choose. If that’s all you want from life, you might as well go and live in the jungle.

If you have no vision of humans evolving into gods – of understanding and mastering the deepest secrets of existence – you cannot be a meritocrat. We are all about metamorphosis and transformation, not about stasis, not about a pathetic notion of humans being nothing more than selfish little units free from government interference. What is glorious and visionary about humans being left alone to pursue their selfish little schemes in their selfish little ways... about “Game Theory” humanity?

Meritocracy is about building heaven on earth, about transforming humans into Gods. If that’s not your vision, meritocracy is certainly not for you.