Pour la mérite

Yes, the other name of the Blue Max! But not actually related to that one bright spot in the darkling history of the Prussian Empire!

I was thinking more about the fallacious idea of "meritocracy", which automatically creates abuse of power—if, even in theory, you think you deserve your power, well then obviously you're better than those who don't have it, and have rights they don't. You can see the mindset in the Gospel of Prosperity, you can see it in Confucianism, you can see it in the fatalism of South Asia that responds to girls being sent into brothels with a shrug, you can see it in the 9th chapter of John.

It is a lie, and the second the West began to believe in it, our doom was sealed. Why? Let's let Chesterton explain it:

If we ask a sane man how much he merits, his mind shrinks instinctively and instantaneously. It is doubtful whether he merits six feet of earth. But if you ask him what he can conquer—he can conquer the stars. Thus comes the thing called Romance, a purely Christian product. A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.

...How different the Pagan and Stoical feeling was from this has been admirably expressed in a famous quotation. Addison makes the great Stoic say "'Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."

But the spirit of Romance and Christendom, the spirit which is in every lover, the spirit which has bestridden the earth with European adventure, is quite opposite. 'Tis not in mortals to deserve success. But we'll do more, Sempronius; we'll obtain it.

It is not our way (nor is it the way of any Buddhist who accepts the Mahayana sutras—it is not Christendom that created Sun Wukong) to take only what we can earn; it is the whole point of our two great faiths that man is not saved by works.

I have a discussion of it in one of my SF books, about how, the minute you talk about meritocracy, you are not only lying, but you are handing tyrants the best sophistry they ever had. Joseon Korea used it; the Nazis and Soviets used it; Anglo liberals still use it. We did not inherit our power—so plainly, we must've earned it. You actually get the madmen acting like their thefts, or inheritance of stolen goods, are signs of the Mandate of Heaven.

And then one of the felinoids says how their system, though professionalized, still retains one key idea from feudalism: the idea of all power being contingent on the performance of obligations. Since the power is avowedly, indeed emphatically, a gift, there is no illusion that one deserves one's rank. Rather than leaders viewing their power as a bauble, given as payment for their lofty achievements, it is the future, not the past, where they "earn" it: feudal gift is forfeited if one fails in the attendant obligations. But, though they no longer think of their rank as a reward, ambition for promotion remains as an incentive—obviously the basis for bestowing a rank is the likelihood of being able to fulfill its duties. And past performance is the most reliable (or, well, least unreliable) indicator of future performance.

Late Addendum: Holy mackerel, this is my 108th post this year. I'm on fire, huh? It's not even August.