Negative and Positive Visions

If we do not have one meritocracy we will have another, only changing the definition of "merit." You will get ahead because you belong to the Party or a favored group, or because you come from the right family or school. Someone will lose in every system, so getting rid of one set of winners is (at best) naive or (at worst) mere revenge. We still see this in what is loosely called socialism, though that word has been emptied of most meaning at this point and seems to vaguely mean "making people share."

All of this is long-known and has been said thousands of times. There are always things we can improve in society, but the idea of fixing it is not aspirational and idealistic, however it feels.  Nor is it just somewhat unrealistic but good-hearted. It is ultimately evil, as it misunderstands both individual and social behavior. Communism was called The God That Failed, not The Idea That Was Basically Good and Improved Things but Was Taken Over By Powerseekers Who Look Suspiciously Like Our Political Opponents Today. Someone is going to lose, however you design it. Build in ways to limit the damage and encourage generosity.  

When you try to fix things you very quickly move to tearing down bad things.  It is the myth that everything would be fine if we could just stop a small group from ruining it for the rest of us.  It is an essentially negative vision. "Imagine there's no countries..." no anything, it seems. It misses entirely the idea that stuff is hard to build. 

There is a common belief now that New England writ large, to include the Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest that were settled by New Englanders, still has a puritanical idea to run everyone else's life, places that would do just fine if left alone. It is based largely on resentful feelings, a misunderstanding of the history of puritans (and also every other region), and convenient stereotypes. (Yes, I can defend all those easily, I'm not bothering.) But it does capture one important change in New England over the centuries, the change from the positive to the negative vision. It can be drawn too starkly, as negative vision was presnt in 1620 and positive vision can be found now. But in the main, it is true. The idea of A City on The Hill, that would inspire and illuminate others was very much the dominant idea in Massachusetts. Elected ministers, highly localised power, strong egalitarianism that destroyed rank - American got those (mostly (Take a breath here)) from New England. More important, the rest of the country wanted the institutions of Massachusetts. As they increasingly governed themselves they consciously copied what had been developed here, such as town meetings and meeting houses, expressly designed for the purpose. Massachusetts was determined to build education and commerce that would compete directly with Europe, so that the New World would not be dependent on the Old in any way. The sentiment that these societies should be built to last is echoed not only in official documents, but in diaries and letters of the time. By 1800 this was still strong, but what had come in was a newer "leave me alone" sentiment, stronger in Northern New England.  (Guess why!)

But the vision has indeed turned negative now, geared toward finding injustices and attacking the Baddies rather than building things new. Because it is still hard to build stuff, and those who successfully bring down a Baddie are lauded as having done a great thing. And this is not entirely untrue. Many things need to be taken down. Gardens nedd to be weeded. But there is no point in weeding a garden that has no growing plants.  It is just wrongly-focused.