The culture of meritocracy
In this talk, David Brooks says the first lie of meritocracy is that career success makes you happy. He continued with:
"The culture of the meritocracy is that you are what you accomplish and that you earn dignity and respect by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love: you earn your way to be loved. The anthropology of the meritocracy is that you are not a soul to be saved, you are a set of skills to be maximized. And the big lie at the head of the meritocracy that is really corrosive is that people who have achieved more are worth more than other people."
This applies directly to music. At the very least, it reflects my experience through conservatory training and working in the profession.
It explains why I have this unexplainable desire to achieve more and more - to prove my worth, to gain approval, to seek permission, to earn the right to be loved by the industry. I say unexplainable because sometimes I didn't even want those things nor did they make me happy. But I went for them anyway. I bought into the story that if I just achieved these things, I'll deserve to be here. What I found is that the more I achieved, the less "enough" it was.
Brooks' words also support my suspicion that support in music is conditional: we tend to give support to those who already support themselves, typically in the form of high self-confidence - whether real or feigned. The world also operates in a way where those who are the loudest are the ones who get heard. And most people won't support you until they see it's popular to support you.
This "culture of meritocracy" corrupts not only our mindsets but our hiring practices, branding and promotion, as well as our collegial relationships. The more we gravitate toward these lies of meritocracy, the less effective we are as individual artists and as a collective.
Brooks offers (here) three "traits of humanity" we can focus on to steer us away from the culture of meritocracy: hunger - the drive to keep working and learning, the ability to work in teams, and character.
He shared that a study done on why people are fired found that only 11% of the cases were due to lack of knowledge or ability. The other 89% have to do with other things that revolve around these three traits.
I wonder if this statistic resonates with us in music?
How are we complicit in upholding the culture of meritocracy? And how can we focus on the three traits to change our culture moving forward?
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