I have a problem. Elitism is arid. I do not mean this in a self-deprecatory way. I have done reasonably well academically, and I hope to say professionally, but I ask myself often if I have made as much of a positive impact on society as I possibly could. It is what I was taught, what I have thought about, and what I continue to believe in. I have also been taught to strive for excellence. Excellence and honours can go hand in hand. They are not one and the same. Often, excellence derives from receiving honours.
No, this is not a case of chicken-and-egg. Or asking whether one is putting the cart before the horse. One receives awards because one is excellent. Or so the traditional logic goes. But how often does one go chasing after awards rather than excellence, and how often is the converse true? I ask because I hope excellence leads to some form of positive impact, whether for the individual or society. Excellence is also often distinct from service. Awards, as an end in itself: I have my doubts. Awards that happen at the same time as service, rather than being for service: even more.
I have my heroes, and I’m sure you have yours. I’m not sure if either of us cares much about their grades, or their awards at the end of the day. If we do, I’m sure it’s because they also did something more, if not for us, then for us all – the awards are but a signifier.
There is another way of looking at the problem. When a millennial goes “Ok, boomer”, or when a boomer says “What a strawberry”. Some things go unsaid. The millennial means “Life is not as you know it”, but the boomer means “If only you know life as we knew it”. This is a failure of empathy that goes both ways, but where does that bring us? How does this link to elitism? Your elites are different from ours, and face a very different set of problems that cannot be put down to such simple reasons as strawberries and boomers – but they are different. This much should be acknowledged. Seldom is it a simple problem of individual resilience, or extreme social change.
Perhaps what I really want to ask is this: is the good life possible without excellence, in spite of excellence, or because of excellence? Has it changed? Does excellence require a slog? What type of slog does it require? Does it require the same slog from one generation as it does another? From a societal perspective, this is not clear. Meritocracy is based on at least one form of excellence – academic. And academia has changed. At least, exams have. So has how we measure it. How many of you tremble before the bell curve? If it doesn’t make you tremble, then you should at least know that it governs a big part of many lives.
It governs them on the basis that resources are scarce, and scarce resources have to be allocated according to some metric. If you do not tremble, you probably were not measured according to the same metric, or you do really well on the metric anyway. If you also attest to having gone through the “school of life” – you are lucky. Large parts of society now equate the end result of the school of life to the measurement of that metric that produces a bell curve. That metric is not the same as how good a life you have lived.
Whether excellence (according to that metric) can be achieved even without some form of prior advantage (e.g. were you exposed to academic debates at the dinner table on a regular basis?), or ongoing economic assistance (e.g. tuition) is one thing. Whether academic excellence exhausts the whole range of excellence is another. The answer to this last question is clear to me: there is a lot more to excellence than just an academic idea of it. We would do well to remember it. I think at least 70% of what makes life livable and good has nothing to do with academic excellence. This is different for everyone, but I think a few minutes of quiet will tend to lead one to see the 70%, and reflect on the things that bring one the most contentment. But I do think academic excellence does tend to some goals of a good life (e.g. profit as a supposed means, at least until it becomes the end, as a mark of excellence), to the exclusion of other equally important markers of a good life.
A common train of thought proceeds like this: one needs academic excellence , in order to get a good job, to work hard at, in order to earn money, to enjoy that 70% of good things in life. Better if it’s 90%. If it’s 100%, well, you have achieved the dream because you have the 5Cs. Some of this good life also has to do with people not taking away the percentage that is rightly yours. Whether it’s because they can afford to earn less money than you, and therefore force you to earn less. Or whether it’s because they seem to enjoy life more than you, even though they earn less. There’s also the idea that you put up with work, insofar as it enables you to live a good life.
Questions abound. Are you actually living a good life? Do you think you are living it? Do you want to? Do you deserve to? Is it possible?
But I drag on. Ultimately, I think there is an important bait-and-switch: suffering now for the good life later – delayed gratification – is usually confused with something else. It is satisfaction of the ego now, because consequences always come later (but I am not discounting delayed gratification for one’s kids or dependents: that is altruism at its finest).
Don’t wait for the consequences, please. Our problems are urgent. They have everything and nothing to do with the ego.
(You may quibble that I have not defined the ‘good life’. My thesis would still hold even if I say, in a very minimal way, what it does not mean: it does not just mean economic profit or career progression.)