You make good points about a good life. Young, of course, was ennobled. Not exactly an example of modesty. Some years ago, the Telegraph published the names of people who declined knighthoods or ennoblement. That was a small but interesting list. People who really did not seek preferment.
You cite Young: “If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers actually believe they have morality on their side.”
Maybe. I grew up in a poor, fatherless family in impoverished postwar Tyneside. I won a scholarship to LSE (and almost won one to Cambridge: if my teachers hadn’t insisted that I focused on passing Latin, which I hadn’t studied, with an exam shortly before the Cambridge one, I’d probably have got one). I certainly am not as Young described, and did extensive voluntary work from 1973-2019. The same is true of many friends who progressed through merit rather than dynastic background, and are concerned for general well-being rather than their own advancement. The same applies to my siblings, one who became a teacher and the other who worked in the UK Home Secretary's office. (I've been an economic policy adviser to UK and Australian Prime Ministers whilst also chairing a charitable body).
You make good points about a good life. Young, of course, was ennobled. Not exactly an example of modesty. Some years ago, the Telegraph published the names of people who declined knighthoods or ennoblement. That was a small but interesting list. People who really did not seek preferment.
You cite Young: “If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get. They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers actually believe they have morality on their side.”
Maybe. I grew up in a poor, fatherless family in impoverished postwar Tyneside. I won a scholarship to LSE (and almost won one to Cambridge: if my teachers hadn’t insisted that I focused on passing Latin, which I hadn’t studied, with an exam shortly before the Cambridge one, I’d probably have got one). I certainly am not as Young described, and did extensive voluntary work from 1973-2019. The same is true of many friends who progressed through merit rather than dynastic background, and are concerned for general well-being rather than their own advancement. The same applies to my siblings, one who became a teacher and the other who worked in the UK Home Secretary's office. (I've been an economic policy adviser to UK and Australian Prime Ministers whilst also chairing a charitable body).