My last post was pretty bleak - I cited a few indicators of how broken we are. And there are plenty more aside from those.
But I’ve been wanting to highlight one of the real, and unexpected, arenas from which I glean hope, and that is TV competitions: bake-offs, Chopped, Cupcake Wars, Dancing with the Stars, the various “Got Talent” shows from around the world, Top this and top that, Ninja athletic shows, and so on.
WHY? Because these are one of the few places where meritocracy still lives.
Schools are increasingly rejecting grading systems; universities are turning away from any objective measures of qualification - to be one of the “oppressed” groups is to be assured of admission, and to be admitted is to be assured of a diploma, even in the most prestigious of institutions; airlines, hospitals, engineering firms all hire on the basis of criteria that have nothing to do with the skills required, thus endangering all of us, in the name of equity. Heather Mac Donald’s new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, addresses this in eloquent detail.
But truly, have you ever watched Chopped? Or Cupcake Wars? Or Winner Cakes All? Nothing, I mean NOTHING, gets in the way of objective, harsh, true judgement based on MERIT. Nothing. And these are among the most popular shows on television.
What does that say: people recognize the need for excellence, they love legitimate competition, and when the people have a voice, they are willing to embrace criteria that are relevant to the issue at hand: taste, composition, dancing ability, ability to get through an obstacle course in record time, etc. We believe that the best should succeed, we believe, in short, in winning.
We the people recognize that our chefs should be judged, even hired, on the basis of excellence, not race. And I believe, too, that we prefer pilots to be hired based on their ability to fly and be, in their core, committed to being responsible for the hundreds of “souls” on board, rather than simply be a member of a particular race (or, more specifically, NOT be a member of a particular race, the white one); we want bridges to be built to hard, real-world constraints rather than by people chosen according to criteria irrelevant to the issue at hand; we don’t ask the race, gender, sexual preference of our brain surgeon, our air traffic controller, our architect. We just don’t care, nor should we. And we need to have those things be made just as irrelevant in those jobs as they are in cupcake-baking competitions.
And just as an aside, by imposing hiring practices that put those issues front and center, it does a huge disservice to those of those groups. Don’t tell me YOU don’t look with suspicion now at a doctor, engineer, pilot if they’re in one of those groups given preferential treatment. When the bar to admission is lowered for “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion,” we of course wonder how qualified the admitted or hired actually are. Shame on those who do this, who believe that only by lowering the bar can certain groups achieve. That kind of bigotry is insulting and an outrage. We all lose, those groups more than anyone.
That said, take heart, and know that it is humankind to want the best to succeed.
P.S:
The best competitive cooking shows to watch in 2023 - The Manual
10 Best Reality Competition Shows Returning In 2023 (collider.com)
Simon Cowell Shows | List of TV Series Created by Simon Cowell (ranker.com)
Survivor