{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} :: The Suicidal Erections

Privilege begets privilege and wealth, fame and elite education produce, in the system, the conditions by which they reproduce themselves. The reason why people with posh surnames have been in positions of power for hundreds or even thousands of years, why wealthy accents dominate the media, the arts and elite education, and why top jobs are staffed by elite graduates who grew up in wealthy houses is not merit, and never has been,1 but family connections, social capital (well-connected friends), cultural capital (accent, taste, manner, hyper-literacy and elite styles of thinking), inheritance (and lavish ‘inter vivos’ gifts of money and property to family members) and the constraints of the market (which force the poor and culturally-excluded out of high-cost social networks and unpaid internships), all of which keep power confined to the ambit of the classes which currently wield it.

Elites prefer all of this to be a secret, or, at best, unmentionable. Instead, they like to promote the idea that we live in what they call a ‘meritocracy,’ a fabled land where merit, ability, intelligence, pluck and daring-do determine success. It is not, they want us to believe, through luck, crime, glad-handing, nepotism, and all the massive advantages of family wealth that inept halfmen get their Big Leather Chairs, their exciting jobs as wildlife cameramen, their elite degrees or their amazing breaks in the art world, but through talent, attitude, hard-work and moral fibre. Certainly we should give a few brainy, tasteful and, crucially, ambitious poor people a hand up; get an infusion of new blood into the boardroom, deprive the working classes of their leaders and give the impression of equal opportunity to the educational system. The professional left call this integration, but the correct name is tokenism. But whatever you call it, there’s really only one sort of person who naturally deserves to sit at the banqueting table; the ‘best and brightest.’ In the past it was the divinely ordained, the twice-born and the genetically superior who deserved to rule. Today it is the cultured, the industrious, the upright and, most especially, the qualified.
How the systems-man loves that word, ‘qualified,’ how noble it sounds, how dignified, how redolent of rightful, earned authority. That these qualifications are given by the system to those who own it, or have shown themselves gifted at serving it (see myth 17), this does not occur to him. He has achieved his success, while the multitude are destined for a life of debt-peonage and the misery of actually productive work. All of which is sad, to be sure, but it’s also kind of fair you see, because it’s a meritocracy, and so the excluded, the intractable, the slow and the unlucky kind of deserve it.

Those at the bottom of the Tower of Earthly Delights are there because they do not have enough merit you see. It’s not their lack of security, resources, time or power that has stunted their capacities, it is because they are hedonistic, fatalistic, impulsive, irresponsible, and, the perennial complaint of elites despairing at the weird reluctance of lower sorts to generate wealth for them, lazy. They should study more, plan ahead, defer gratification, raise their expectations, work harder, learn to spell, have a make-over and cook more risotto.

Genuine creative genius, true community spirit, radical generosity, sensitivity, unconditional love, honesty, moral courage, craft-skill, self-sufficiency, spontaneity and responsibility do not count as ‘merit,’ and never have, and so the fact that these qualities, and those who possess them, are punished everywhere in the system is neither here nor there. Prejudice towards white people, that’s a problem (for right wing white people); prejudice towards Jewish people, that’s a problem (for Jewish folk), prejudice towards women, that’s a problem (for feminists), prejudice towards working-class accents, that’s a problem (for socialists), but prejudice towards sensitive people? Prejudice towards independent people? Prejudice towards honest people? Prejudice towards loving people? Hahahaha! Those aren’t problems! You can’t even see those things!

The reader may wonder, as many senior editors, CEOs, upper managers and department heads occasionally do, how this punishment can occur; how it can be that principled, capable, sensitive and honest people are prevented from rising through the system while those at the top are given a free pass. ‘Nobody tells me what to write!’ says the wealthy journalist, ‘nobody tells me what to think!’ says the elite student, ‘nobody tells me what to do!’ says the director general; but nobody has to tell them what to write, think or do — which is how they rose in the first place. Those who reject the cruel and pointless restraints of schooling, the ludicrous assignments and the meaningless syllabuses (see myth 17) are marked as uncooperative, recalcitrant, undisciplined, strong-willed, unable to function well in a team or, in more serious cases, afflicted with oppositional defiant disorder (see myth 18). Those who defy the manager, who seek to circumvent the paperwork, who question the entire point, such ‘difficult’ people are passed over for promotion, their contracts are not renewed, their grip on the railings is released and they are ‘let go’. In a Huxleyan system there is no need for a shady group of evil capitalists to tell people what to think when the system (and, consequently, the self) is structured so as to automatically select for obedience, conformity, mediocrity and, for the top jobs, complete insanity. Because negative personality traits tend to occur together managers, team-leaders and other Heads tend not merely to be cowardly spaniels or cruel monomaniacs, but beset by all manner of weird defects; strangely aggressive, or bizarre, awkward and indirect, or mind-bogglingly boring, or laughably uptight and self-regarding (the David Brent / Alan Partridge type), or skin-crawlingly creepy, or hauntingly absent, not really there. Not that such people don’t usually have a human core, struggling to get out, or that more recognisably human leaders don’t exist; but in both cases the immense pressure that the system puts on such humanity tends in one direction only; to breakdown.