The English Puritans who settled in North America in the 17th century thought you could build a new Jerusalem on Earth by literally building a city upon a hill. American meritocracy may be a consequence of this belief: Everything is possible here if you just work hard. We tend to miss the perturbing insight that success is merited, but so is failure. This produces intolerable psychological pressures. Failure is crushing if you believe in meritocracy. Let us get there slowly.
If we owe the contemporary United States to the Puritans, we owe contemporary Europe to less optimistic tragedians. This is an obscene oversimplification, but let us start there. The ancient Greeks were obsessed with the arbitrary nature of fate because they believed gods control human destiny, not humans. The scaffolding of antediluvian European culture is the belief that human beings are inherently flawed, the playthings of gods, unable to master the show until, if lucky, the next life, but certainly not in this one.
What this does, according to philosopher Alain de Botton, is “immediately create a comedic modesty around the gap between your aspirations and your reality.” To abbreviate sharply: melancholic dark humor. I cannot help but relate. My homeland of Sicily (and to an extent, Italy more broadly) may not do many things well, but it undeniably excels in this kind of comedic cynicism.
In the United States, a child is told to aim big because the sky is the limit. In Sicily, the ceiling is already too high. I grew up being told that there are no opportunities, everyone takes corrupt shortcuts, and I will inevitably end up unemployed. The only sophisticated response to such a pessimistic truncation of aspirations is a rich and somber laughter. Like all generalizations, this is horrible, but partly true. Ask exchange students from Europe how often Penn professors encourage students, and you will see my point.
The United States radically changed the planet because of this belief that anything is possible. You do not have to wait until the next life for Eden; you can build it here and now with the help of some tools. Drive to Silicon Valley, and off you go. The disabled refugee can earn a full scholarship to Harvard University and then start the next Amazon if he so wishes — and, of course, if he works hard enough.
The temptation to misinterpret me is irresistible. Of course meritocracy is a brilliant idea; it quite literally birthed the wonders of the world. Nowhere else can this happen so poetically. The difficulty emerges when you consider the psychic implication. The toll is enormous. What de Botton wishes to point out to us is that in meritocracy, everybody is put under stifling psychic stress and is forced to measure themselves against a punishing ideal. In his words, “The secret sorrows of the American heart is a volume without end.”
When you build a meritocratic society where everybody gets to where they deserve to be, you will have a really hard time explaining why someone fails. In the modern American view, you control your destiny, so you are responsible for it.
Where I am from, no one fully believes in meritocracy. We think the system is random at best, rigged at worst. The poor used to be popularly known as “unfortunates” — souls to be pitied by the gods of fortune. They were subjects of charity, not objects of accusatory moralism. The modern world deprives us of such consolations. In the American language, the only word assigned to laggards is not based in pity — it’s “loser.” The loser plays a game with fair rules, messes up, and has only himself to blame for his failure.
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The result? A culture of victimhood. The ubiquity of the victim identity is the flip side of the heroic image of the self-made man who carved destiny with unwavering grit. The proclamation of opportunity and the condemnation of failure are two sides of the same brightly gleaming coin. It is another way of stating the irreproachable rule of capitalism: If everybody wins, the game stops.
To limit myself to a lamentable tone neither respects nor reflects my holistic view of my time in the United States. I am here because of meritocracy. Yet I have no desire to offend the basic facts of existence. It is time to backpedal and accept the truth unflinchingly: Eden cannot be found on Earth.
The only redemption we are entitled to is relief from the distorted belief that we were ever meant to be successful gods. We cannot work hard enough to build Eden because we are inherently flawed. Our flaws do not revoke our claim on existence, but rather reaffirm it. We are tiny, inept human puppets. Maybe this is what is divine about us after all.
FRANCESCO SALAMONE is a Wharton senior from Palermo, Italy studying decision processes. His email is frasala@wharton.upenn.edu.
