step 1: Highlight in one color the significant, non-trivial, signal words and logical (premise and conclusion) indicator words. Common signal words show Emphasis Addition Comparison or Contrast Illustration Cause and Effect Step 2: Highlight in another color the main or central concepts. Step 3: Highlight in a different color the main point or topic sentence of each paragraph. Do not over highlight. Indicate only the topic sentences. In the following [1] Six decades ago, a British sociologist named Michael Young anticipated the hubris and resentment to which meritocracy gives rise. In fact, it was he who coined the term. In a book called The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), he asked what would happen if, one day, class barriers were overcome, so that everyone had a truly equal opportunity to rise based solely on his or her own merit. [2} In one respect, this would be something to celebrate; the children of the working class would at last compete fairly, side by side with the children of the privileged. But it would not, Young thought, be an unmitigated triumph; for it was bound to foster hubris in the winners and humiliation among the losers. The winners would consider their success a “just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, for their own undeniable achievement,” and would therefore look down on those less successful than themselves. Those who failed to rise would feel they had no one to blame but themselves. [3] For Young, meritocracy was not an ideal to aim at but a recipe for social discord. He glimpsed, decades ago, the harsh meritocratic logic that now poisons our politics and animates populist anger. For those who feel aggrieved by the tyranny of merit, the problem is not only stagnant wages but also the loss of social esteem. [4] The loss of jobs to technology and outsourcing has coincided with a sense that society accords less respect to the kind of work the working class does. As economic activity has shifted from making things to managing money, as society has lavished outsize rewards on hedge fund managers, Wall Street bankers, and the professional classes, the esteem accorded work in the traditional sense has become fragile and uncertain. [5] Mainstream parties and elites miss this dimension of politics, like archers shooting at a target. They draw their bows, aim at the problem, and miss by thinking the problem with market-driven globalization is simply a matter of distributive justice. Their misguided arrows decide that those who have gained from global trade, new technologies, and the financialization of the economy have not adequately compensated those who have lost out. [6] But this misunderstands the populist complaint. It also reflects a defect in the technocratic approach to governing. Conducting our public discourse as if it were possible to outsource moral and political judgment to markets, or to experts and technocrats, has emptied democratic argument of meaning and purpose. Such vacuums of public meaning are invariably filled by harsh, authoritarian forms of identity and belonging—whether in the form of religious fundamentalism or strident nationalism. [7] The best sociologist agree that is what we are witnessing today. Four decades of market-driven globalization have hollowed out public discourse, disempowered ordinary citizens, and prompted a populist backlash that seeks to clothe the naked public square with an intolerant, vengeful nationalism. [8] To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic striving on the social bonds that constitute our common life.
step 1: Highlight in one color the significant, non-trivial, signal words and logical (premise and conclusion) indicator words. Common signal words show
- Emphasis
- Addition
- Comparison or Contrast
- Illustration
- Cause and Effect
Step 2: Highlight in another color the main or central concepts.
Step 3: Highlight in a different color the main point or topic sentence of each paragraph. Do not over highlight. Indicate only the topic sentences.
In the following
[1] Six decades ago, a British sociologist named Michael Young anticipated the hubris and resentment to which meritocracy gives rise. In fact, it was he who coined the term. In a book called The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), he asked what would happen if, one day, class barriers were overcome, so that everyone had a truly equal opportunity to rise based solely on his or her own merit.
[2} In one respect, this would be something to celebrate; the children of the working class would at last compete fairly, side by side with the children of the privileged. But it would not, Young thought, be an unmitigated triumph; for it was bound to foster hubris in the winners and humiliation among the losers. The winners would consider their success a “just reward for their own capacity, for their own efforts, for their own undeniable achievement,” and would therefore look down on those less successful than themselves. Those who failed to rise would feel they had no one to blame but themselves.
[3] For Young, meritocracy was not an ideal to aim at but a recipe for social discord. He glimpsed, decades ago, the harsh meritocratic logic that now poisons our politics and animates populist anger. For those who feel aggrieved by the tyranny of merit, the problem is not only stagnant wages but also the loss of social esteem.
[4] The loss of jobs to technology and outsourcing has coincided with a sense that society accords less respect to the kind of work the working class does. As economic activity has shifted from making things to managing money, as society has lavished outsize rewards on hedge fund managers, Wall Street bankers, and the professional classes, the esteem accorded work in the traditional sense has become fragile and uncertain.
[5] Mainstream parties and elites miss this dimension of politics, like archers shooting at a target. They draw their bows, aim at the problem, and miss by thinking the problem with market-driven globalization is simply a matter of distributive justice. Their misguided arrows decide that those who have gained from global trade, new technologies, and the financialization of the economy have not adequately compensated those who have lost out.
[6] But this misunderstands the populist complaint. It also reflects a defect in the technocratic approach to governing. Conducting our public discourse as if it were possible to outsource moral and political judgment to markets, or to experts and technocrats, has emptied democratic argument of meaning and purpose. Such vacuums of public meaning are invariably filled by harsh, authoritarian forms of identity and belonging—whether in the form of religious fundamentalism or strident nationalism.
[7] The best sociologist agree that is what we are witnessing today. Four decades of market-driven globalization have hollowed out public discourse, disempowered ordinary citizens, and prompted a populist backlash that seeks to clothe the naked public square with an intolerant, vengeful nationalism.
[8] To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic striving on the social bonds that constitute our common life.
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