Thursday, April 11, 2013

Meritocracy impostor syndrome

I'm dredging up the Meritocracy business so put on your big kid pants and get ready for some more thought provoking crap. In this particular installment I thought I would cover a topic that was brought up somewhat passingly in Round 4 of the Rise of the Meritocracy, the impostor syndrome, well summarized here in comic form.

Chicken Fraud

In short you feel as though you are not as good as people have come to believe you are, and are certain that everyone will realize that you are not as skilled as you've led them to believe. A perennial favorite time waster of mine Lifehacker posted an article about how this sensation may actually be a good sign of both your competence and your intelligence.  In Rise of the Meritocracy the gifted members had no reason to doubt themselves or the spoils that they got for being better than others, every step of the way they had to prove and reprove themselves to take what they got. In effect the constant testing created a vanity and entitlement that prevented the Meritorious from really evaluating if they where in fact as smart and worthy as they believed themselves to be.

Sound familiar? I'm sure people of both political spectrums would be quick to point at one another, but I think we can find plenty of examples in business, education as well as in government.  In some ways you could almost point to the entirety of your country... but I'll leave that for bar room discussions.

1 comment:

  1. I guess it's good to know that doubting my abilities from time to time is a sign of competence and intelligence. I've often asked myself that question - am I just really good at faking this?

    A sense of entitlement does often lead to laziness. You have no reason to grow. All you have to do is remain at the level you're at now and you'll meet people's expectations of how good you are.

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