Warrior Meritocracy

In the “West” we have come to revere individual business “warriors” who have risen to the top of the heap as measured by wealth and power achieved by any means. This is a fantasy meritocracy based on an amoral model of ruthless combat. This Spartan-like model of rightness is compelling, but in some other cultural settings, such behavior is regarded as criminal. Rather than granting status to the most cunning and ruthless in the tribe, these cultures grant status to those who act bravely to further the wellbeing of their communities. In these cultural settings, honor, selflessness, and helping are the measures of a person’s worth and status is granted accordingly.

This difference—societies that embrace ruthlessness vs. societies that embrace selflessness—is sufficient evidence of the capacity of the human spirit to do good works. These models of behavior are not superimposed on human action. They are born of the efficacy of human action. The power of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution have reinforced the reductionistic model of individual action. The technological products of this model have been impressive. Paradoxically, that very technology has created the conditions in which reduction is no longer conducive to our survival. Our technical powers have exceeded our powers of analysis and optimization of the system as a whole. The inability of the reductionistic model to address the problems of optimization now threatens to collapse the system. We are no longer riding the tiger, the tiger is riding us—global economic collapse, self-induced climate change, intractable conflicts of tribal identify, amoral interactions between individuals and groups, etc.

Deming’s model was built on a foundational understanding of the inherent complexity of systems and the necessity of using statistical thinking to address the problem of optimizing THE SYSETM as a whole. What he is proposing has only become possible in our current age in which scientistic-reductionistic reasoning has met its Waterloo.