the sociologist

April 12, 2011

Alain de Botton on “A kinder, gentler philosophy of success”, something that is ostensibly missing in capitalist society. Our favourite part? Everything. But the chunk below is just a wonderful argument for people who doubt the benefits of restructuring social policies to be more compassionate.

“Now everybody, all politicians on left and right, agree that meritocracy is a great thing, and we should all be trying to make our societies really really meritocratic. In other words, what is a meritocratic society? A meritocratic society is one in which if you’ve got talent and energy and skill, you will get to the top. Nothing should hold you back. It’s a beautiful idea. The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication, and in a far more nasty way, believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there. In other words, your position in life comes to seem not accidental, but merited and deserved. And that makes failure seem much more crushing.

That’s exhilarating if you’re doing well, and very crushing if you’re not. It leads, in the worst cases, in the analysis of a sociologist like Emil Durkheim, it leads to increased rates of suicide. There are more suicides in developed individualistic countries than in any other part of the world. And some of the reason for that is that people take what happens to them extremely personally. The own their success. But they also own their failure.”

And yes, we love the fact that he is playing on Howard Zinn classic phrase.

(Source: ted.com)

1:38pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZuwNYy4FbLPm

(Notes: 31)