
The Moral Peril of Meritocracy - bookofjoe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/moral-revolution-david-brooks.html
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hirundo
I'm not finding a case for the moral peril of meritocracy in this essay.
Whatever the differences between the second versus the first mountain, isn't
the ability to climb either of them a kind of merit?

Is cleaning a hospital room to make it clean a form of merit, but cleaning it
to calm a fraught parent not merit? Why would that be?

It's not that Brooks is making an inadequate argument against merit, but that
I can't find one in there at all.

~~~
webmaven
Broadly speaking, I think "merit" is being used by Brooks here as a vague
stand-in for extrinsic motivation.

In his terms, being motivated by getting to the top of the mountain isn't as
good as being motivated by the climb, and for that to happen, the climb itself
has to be meaningful in some sense besides just as a means of getting to the
top.

IOW, he's comparing someone trying to do a good job in order to get a
promotion (which will make them feel good) with someone doing a good job
because _doing a good job_ makes them feel good.

There are various related metaphors (eg. journey>destination, etc.), he could
have used and most of them resonate to some extent, but I am not sure I buy
the further connections he's drawing to the surrender of ego/self, I think
there is some correlation but not necessarily causation.

IOW, there is some correlation between people who are intrinsically motivated
and people who are motivated by working for a larger cause, but
selfless/egoless causes can be extrinsically motivating too (think of
volunteering for a political campaign, for example).

Finally, for this site's audience, the janitor story might make more sense if
cast in terms Ulwick's jobs-to-be-done framework.

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maxxxxx
Whenever I read David Brooks I always hear "bla bla bla" but written in a very
pleasant way. Has the guy ever produced anything interesting or thought
provoking?

~~~
vorpalhex
"Pleasant sounding noise" as my literature teacher would quote on the regular.

------
smacktoward
At some point, David Brooks will presumably stop writing columns of the type
whose subtext is explained so well here:
[https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-
brooks-...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-dont-think-david-brooks-is-
okay-you-guys-1702674607)

(But then it's been four years since that was written and he's still writing
them, so maybe not.)

