As to why he is being downvoted, my experience in lemmy has shown me that people here are incredibly sensitive to rudeness (maybe this applies to other social networks, I wouldn’t know). It’s very common to see interactions like this, a person says something awful but they say it in a polite way. Then, someone who understands the awfulness replies with something like “wtf, this shit is awful because …” and they get downvoted even though they are right because they weren’t polite. And the most people just follow the number, like lemmings hahaha. Social networks are just awful to have meaningful conversations I guess.
As to the topic at hand, a part of me kind of misses the pandemic. Of course, the rational part of me understand that this is irrational and another pandemic would be awful. Specially because I lucked out in the last one and me and my family were all ok, but who knows what will happen in the next one. It would be incredibly dumb for me, or anyone, to wish for another one.
But it’s hard not to miss some aspects of the pandemic, specially now that people in charge are forcing all of us to return to the status quo by force and coercion. For example, for me (an autistic person, though luckily I can mask very well) the silence during the pandemic was just life changing. Before then, I didn’t realize just how noisy cars are and how much stress this adds to my life. It’s hard for me to express just how much enjoyable my day to day was just because of that.
And here we are today, as a type this from my home I only hear car after car after car and it’s incredibly annoying and incredibly exhausting. For me, it literally takes order of magnitude more energy and will power to get through my day now. And this is from my home, when I’m forced to go to an office or any other place is just so much worse. And I just have to suck it up and deal with it, society will just not accomodate for me because for most people this is not an issue.
And that’s why you get a lot of people kind of wishing for another pandemic. For a lot of us, it was literally the first time that we saw a society that accomodated us like it accomodates normal people and it was just life changing. Of course, I don’t wish for another pandemic. The amount of suffering it brought is not worth it of course, and the negative impacts were huge too (the social isolation for example).
But I kind of get it, at this point is very clear that society will just go back to the old status quo and we just have to suck it up. In fact, it seems to be getting worse and worse every day with bullshit RTO mandates, and bullshit laws, and people becoming increasingly intolerant to people who are different. And it’s clear that nothing short of another pandemic will force society to acommodate us again. Quite the opposite, everywere it seems like goverments and corporations are just doubling down and quashing dissent. And when you put it all together, it’s hard for a part of me to not miss the possitive changes I experienced during the pandemic. Of course, I also remember what it costed to some of my friends and neighboors and understand that this wish is not rational. But still, a part of me does miss it a bit.
The issue is how do you “meassure” merit? How do you decide who has earned what they have and who hasn’t?
If you are a conservative it’s very easy, the status quo defines merit. Those who have are those who deserve because the system is working as expected. So rich people ruling is meritocracy for them.
If you are a racist/xenophobe/etc then it’s also very easy, those who are in the “good” (read white in the USA) group are the ones with merit, so they are the ones that should rule.
A few years back, when college degrees where just for rich people with connections, merit was having a college degree because that proved you where educated and hard working jajajaja. Now that a lot more people can get college degrees it no longer means that for some reason jajajaja.
Etc, etc. In general, people use meritocracy to justify their own biases and the decisions they make based on those biases. The USA is of course the current poster child of this, but by no means it’s exclusive to them.
The reality is that when you think about it there is no such thing as merit in the general sense. For example, I get paid well by working as a programmer. And I’m the first one to say that I’m very good at it and deserve my pay. Yet, if my toilet is broken I need to call a plumber and defer to them. So, who says I deserve to earn more than a plumber? I do say so because it greatly benefits me of course jajajaja. But if push come to shove I would absolutely prefer to have a society without programmers than a society without plumbers. So who has more merit?
The simple truth is that we are all valuable in our own context and we should try to build a society where we all can participate and contribute as needed. Ideas like meritocracy are used by right wing people to justify the existence of hierarchies and social classes. If there are better people (with more merit) then of course they should be in charge and everyone else must obey. But the more you dig into the idea, the less it makes sense. Meritocracy is just a very easy trap to fall into because it’s the kind of idea that sounds good to people until you really think about it, but in practice it’s just a useless idea if you want to make rational decisions.