Meritorious or meretricious?

It is sometimes hard to distinguish between ‘natural’ inequalities, that is to say the unequal distribution of positive human characteristics – intelligence, creativity, beauty or strength of personality – and those that are socially determined – power, wealth or privileged education. Most discussion about ‘equality’ focuses on the latter, since it is virtually impossible to alter natural attributes that favour some people in the world over others.

Attempts to reduce inequality base themselves on raising the life chances of the socially disadvantaged, so, in that tiresome cliché, they can compete on a ‘level playing field’ with more fortunate peers. ‘Equality of opportunity’ is supposed to compensate for all social, educational and cultural handicaps endured by those not born to privilege. This is a shallow and meretricious approach, since the only way in which actual equality of opportunity could be achieved would be by raising everybody to the level of the most advantaged. The idea that ‘education’ can make good all deficiencies is a sentimental, or ideological, fiction.

Establishing ‘equality of opportunity’ is the flimsiest justification for a society that likes to think of itself as rewarding ‘merit’. For its notion of merit is overwhelmingly concentrated on those favoured either by birth or by endowment. In other words, society more or less faithfully reflects profound natural and human-made inequalities. When people rise in what is labelled a meritocracy, the meritorious look with complaisance on the rewards that their ostensible worth bestows on them.