I am sharing here a somewhat longish video on Youtube.
Loved the extremely thought provoking and insightful conversation between Prof. Michael Sandel, author of ‘Tyranny of Merit’ and Yuval Noah Harari, author of best seller ‘Sapiens’.
The conversation covers the following aspects:
- What is behind the recent phenomena of the spread of authoritarian popularism and the rise of authoritarian hyper-nationalists?
- What has led to the increasing divide between Winners and Losers and the rising socio-economic inequality over the last four decades of Globalisation?
- The increasing support for Meritocracy has a dark side. The strain between the hubris amongst Winners versus the resentment amongst those left behind. Unfortunately, the created Inequality of Income and Wealth has in fact led to a much serious issue of inequality of Honour and Esteem. What could be a way forward to decouple this strain?
- The study of History has been such that we can very accurately explain WHAT happened but not WHY that something happened.
- The urgent need to reconceive and reimagine the mission of social democratic politics of today.
- The increasing obsolescence of the classical Nation State model due to the easy movement of Capital, Technology and Labour across the globe. What could be done to prevent the collapse of Nationalism in its true sense?
My Sensemaking:
If one were to accept the core premise of the conversation, it would imply that Meritocracy, which dictates that a few succeed and the balance fail, is not compatible with democracy which is about majority decision making.
A more worrying aspect seems to be loss of political space by left of center parties who have been espousing the cause of the masses but have supported the meritocracy structure in their socio-economic decisions.
In Learning………….
Shakti Ghosal
A New Beginning 