Ideological oppression imposes not direct physical but indirect psychological terror on the victims. Instead of concrete and obvious coercions, incitements, threats and stigmas, ideological fanaticism gives us the impression that all our personal suffering generated by not following or by being incapable of fulfilling demands maintained by the given ideology are the result of a superior law or an universal truth.
As an abstract ideology like meritocracy cannot be tied to certain groups of rulers or even institutions thanks to it employing an allegedly flexible and dynamic ruling class, punishments resulting from not living up to our potential under meritocracy might give us an impression that all our struggles and failures are more like the natural order of things. Being incapable to thrive under this system feels like God’s punishment for our sins, where, although no physical retorsion is present, our conscience sends us the message that we have committed a cardinal sin which can only be redeemed through confession and by promising that next week we’ll be even more determined to sacrify our lives on the altar of impeccable work ethic.
As an ideology, meritocracy perfectly replaces the traditional moral order inherited from Jesus Christ’s teachings, and puts into its place an abstract morality derived from a few people’s mind ramblings, because – let’s remember – meritocracy is an invention of very few people, and the term itself in its current form was written down by a sci-fi author to demonstrate a dystopian authoritarian society emerging from an ideal model of society where the most educated, intelligent and diligent workers have the opportunity to emerge to the top.
The terror of believers in the power of the mind is not hindered by conscience, nor by the empirical justification of their accomplished harms. Meritocracy has to work, as – according to its own terms – it elevates the talented and diligent to the top, and who’s more suitable for leading our society to glory, if not the ones currently posing at the top? The fatal logical fallacy residing in the minds of religious „meritocrators” is that the naming of a given phenomenon automatically provides its essence upon which the beloved ideal just functions by itself perfectly like clockwork.
The mindset of a standard cheerleader of meritocracy might be compared to a primitive computer, which makes value judgments only based on the set of concepts and data fed into it. Like a computer, they are incapable of interpreting ethical, moral, or legal questions, as well as evidences proving a given ideology’s self-contradictiory and inherently self-absorbing (ouroboros) nature.
The dictatorship of meritocracy
In the wake of the processes discussed, the dictatorship of meritocracy over the entire population is unfolding. The possession of tangible properties and the accumulation of credentials give the elites at the top of pyramid an automatic and subject right to do what they want with the society.
Through their position of power, they are capable of preventing anyone else coming after them from climbing up the ladder. From character assassination and economic destruction to the complete discreditation of their victim by propaganda media, they can utilize many means to thwart potential competition.
Once they are allowed to remain at the top thanks to their violent behavior, they are entitled to confirm the truth that there is still no worthy challenger of aequate moral and spiritual standards against them. And so – what is there to do – they are forced to reign over our heads as untouchable Gods and dictate how the foolish and inferior henchmen beneath them must exist.
Only one task is left to the populace, forever and ever: to serve the interests of the lordship without condition, excuse, or objection, and to build the realm of Pharaoh, who then, lifting himself up on the shoulders of the broken-spined servants, chants the following:
I have built all this with my own hands, as proof of my genius! Worship your lord and emperor, without whom you’d all just eat soil and insects!
In the second half of the 20th century, meritocracy has carried out an elite switch, then, citing its own principles, the new elite consolidated its order of lordship. Meritocracy successfully built a bridge between an emerging society free from dependence on a ruling class and its redirection back to feudalistic aristocracy.
Meritocratic dictators, whatever it costs, push even their dumbest kids through college, so the ruling class will be able to pass on its power to its own successors against those who seek to break up from below, who would also carry out the redistribution of wealth and available positions (look after college admissions scandal for examples).
As the accumulated facts and logical derivations of its basic idea suggest, meritocracy is after all not a guiding principle of pro-freedom societies, but of the oligarchy. This ideal provides a powerful jolly joker to justify the superiority of the powerful, to bully and discriminate the oppressed and those who despise competing for positions. By eliminating the dependence on personal cult characteristic of contemporary dictatorships, it provides an ideological justification of permanent oppression that never go away on a spiritual basis.
While the former Nazi, communist, capitalist ideologies praised the power of will and strength, meritocracy has brought us the era of domination by the mind.
The fall of meritocracy
No unnatural system can reign forever, so the dictatorship of meritocracy is doomed to death. As with all totalitarianisms, the body of meritocracy is being gnawed to death from within, originating from the way the system operates.
First, this system, with a small number of exceptions, only produces losers who are unable to meet the system’s standards that are completely absurd and subjective, sometimes also totally unpredictable.
Those who cannot adapt and fall out of the system, also give up the struggle and stop working on building the Tower of Babel empire. In the same way, intellectuals and workers who do not wish to accept a system which is automatically pushing them to a predefined, rigid position through the occupations successfully cultivated by their talents, also decide to leave the system or at least become an independent thinker or creator (eg. freelancer, digital nomad, minimalist).
This way, their empty chairs are being overtaken by those who, just by their given position, may consider themselves superior. These people give themselves the right to rule over people wanting to operate freely, and in case of refusal to impose bullying or even violent acts against them. The means of doing so are nowadays not mainly physical. Crippling laws, seemingly impersonal legislations written against a certain group of people, disabling regulations, confiscations, fines, incassos.
The ruined peons have no chance but to completely withdraw themselves from feeding the system that’s robbing them through their work input. They give up the fight for wealth, rank and position forever, and embark on the path of spiritual ascension.
Here’s the curse of ideologies: occultist brainwashing only works as long as there’s a buyer for it. There have been several exoduses of the plebs throughout history – the oppressed, afflicted people have left Roman cities, leaving the elites to rule over themselves.
One would think that the system is unlivable only for the oppressed people stigmatized as losers, but the untouchables sitting at the top of the pyramid are in huge trouble as well. They are pressed to keep the system under control, but in a way that the fact of dictatorship doesn’t become apparent.
Thanks to the plebs fleeing from the bottom of the pyramid, although the Tyrannos can control unlimited material resources, there is no longer a sufficient number of people to help in keeping the dictatorship stable, as the inept losers no longer struggle to win the right to kiss the butts of powerful people. More or less a stagnant number of apparatchniks choose to belong under the rule of feudal landlords, whose perfect contraselection – immorality, ethical inferiority, inability of independent action – guarantees that they remain eternal subordinates to the kaiser. In case of crisis, they sink to the bottom together on the deck of the decaying system’s Titanic. Wherever they go, they would be incapable of prospering thanks to their lack of independent thoughts and mental faculties.
At the same time, a huge overproduction of elites infighting each other is forming. Nobody from the kaiser’s faithful subordinates want to see their offsprings sliding down on the pyramid’s hierarchy.
So the emperor is forced to bring his best servants into the elitist circle, or at least near it, and place their children into a designated velvet chair. The continuous struggle for retaining power thoroughly exhausts the state treasury, as the ever-shrinking number of corruptible servants demand ever-greater appanages to mitigate the consequences of the caustic guilt that comes as the result of self-betrayal.
After all, the demands of meritocracy are being met, just in an inverse way. Morally inferior servants get near the top of pyramid, while the neglected or sometimes pursued, trampled free thinking and diligent beings slowly disappear from the system, or at least give up the fight to prevail.
