Whatever merit is, I seemed to have lost it with my next door neighbor. One time I ordered worms for my worm farm and they got delivered to her by mistake. “Snakes!!!” she shouted! Then, she trusted me to babysit her dog with newborn puppies and one puppy died. It had some kind of epileptic fit and died. So now, evidently, I killed her puppy. Sending her snakes and killing her puppy has lost me merit points. Now, she won’t say “Hi” to me. ——- Oh well.
I tend to give people a chance at merit points. Most people don’t do things to lose merit points. Turning on me, cheating me, using me in a way that leaves me saying, “What the hell?” will lose points with me. Even then, I try to understand why they did what they did. Our yard and the next door neighbor’s yard had lost a lot of rocks and had bare spots. I ordered two tons of rocks for our yard and we raked them evenly in our yard. Now, the neighbor’s yard looks worse in comparison. I told Immortal Pirate that I would not be surprised if some of our new rocks end up covering bald spots in the neighbor’s yard. Humans being human, they may take the easy way out and steal rocks from our yard. I am just waiting to see if that happens. If they do that, they will lose a few merit points —- but no biggy. I will give them the phone number of the rock yard where we ordered our rocks from.
Merit is trust. You trust someone not to do you dirty.
I guess a group can have merit and win your trust, as long as they don’t try to cheat you, or do you wrong.
@ladybarbara
Consider that merit is for the individual. A group is more like a thing than a person. The constituent parts can change practically overnight (like when the kids take over a business from a parent) and then it becomes an entirely different thing.
A group known for high-merit people, can quickly become populated with flakes.
If one lacks merit having underlings of high merit casts you in a very bad light. Plus a person of true high merit (and not just an opportunistic chameleon) won’t be able to work for such a person/company for long without either supplanting that person via social or market pressures; or abandoning their own value of merit.
That you’ll do what you say, when you say it, in exactly the time frame you say it. If there is any alterations to any of these, merrit may be gained or lost. It doesn’t matter if you did 100 things right, the one thing you do wrong is what others will remember. If you say you’ll get things done in x time, and deliver earlier, that sets a subconscious precedent that others will hold you to no matter what you say. People, organizations, and movements can all have – and lose merrit based on sometimes the stupidest of factors. At day’s end it’s sometimes not worth kow-towing to public whims.
@Jear77
That’s the reliability and predictability and accountability aspect of merit. Society rewards them because you cannot play social games with someone who is unreliable unpredictable and unaccountable (Good reason to reconsider a hypocrisy defense )
But there’s also a competency aspect to it. What’s good to do exactly what you say when you say you’ll do it, if the end result is shoddy?
These are not whims; but the very things that hold a meritocratic society together.
Someone who refuses to recognize merit walks the sociopath’s path.
And someone who tries to demerit others for invalid reasons, walks the path of the psychopath.
Each may get away with it a few times. But a healthy Society soon recognizes what they’re up to: and they will find they have to move away to places where people don’t know their tricks to regain any social merit for themselves.
Or else have to resign themselves to living a miserable life with no friends and no contacts within the society.
Dee@griz how many times do i need to remind you, i’m talking philosophy, not real life?
yet you understand from the social context god, if it exists, fails ALL social contexts! And it’s my humble opinion that any social structure based around a god who can’t / won’t fulfill the parameters i set forth will ultimately fail… Because god can’t put a timeline for his promises NOR spell them out in minute detail. And since it seems that god considers all actions, persons to be without merit without his son, god, should it exist, should be seen as the biggest sociopath of all!
@Jear77
A philosophy that does’t have some traction where the rubber meets the road, is simply speculative imagination. Elevate it to the status of something religious or “salvational”, and you have a recipe for bitterness that the real world doesn’t seem to “comply”.
I still think you’re confusing “social context” with the context the man-made religion has tried to apply.
And that this ties into a very common process where the key question is, “Which God” gets to set the “Divine” standard?
2@griz so… let’s put this into real world perspective. what if we communicated the way god did? Vaguities about what we needed done, when, or how. We wouldn’t communicate directly outside the written word for millenia. Would we be able to get anything done?
@Jear77
What if we communicated like chimpanzees? It’s no more helpful a flight of imagination.
I understand your question. It approaches “convenience” and “negative utility”. (And my grandpa used to say “Any fool can misuse a tool”).
We need to take things farther (past what is convenient for the ego) into positive functional utility — unless we want to live in a hellish state of resentment and bitterness.
There are the “tools” provided for the task. It’s perhaps not easy or convenient for a reason (as in, how many things of true value and meaning even in temporal life are easy or convenient?
Consider that this is less about God’s Nature or how Reality was constructed . . . than about just WHO GETS TO BE GOD!
People get pissed off because their ego cannot be — at least not for very long before things start falling apart, losing all meaning, and driving them into resentment then bitterness.
@griz but this is exactly what we have to work with. And it’s not ego. It’s the literal truth. You may counter by saying god answers prayers. See a person who was born without limbs (yes it happens) or those who have them removed by some mishap get new ones (i’m not talking prosthetics either) due to the influence of prayer. Or let’s talk about hose who are parapalegic able to spontaneously walk again by people (or even themselves praying). What about the people who have some disaster happen – a fire, a flood, or wind damage will prayer miraculously restore what was lost? Finally, what about raising the dead, can most people of faith do this (doctors and medicine doesn’t count). No. It can’t do any of these things. Sorry, if it can’t, and this is reality, guess what, if there is a god, it’s useless to worship, pray to it. I have better things to do with my time.
@Jear77
This is exactly PART of what we have to work with.
But that is confounded if we mistake our ego for literal Truth.
There is the very real probability that God answers prayer that is an exercise of proper fellowship with Life. Expecting a physical function of an organism that it is not designed to do is not proper fellowship with Life. It’s just flight of fancy.
And in what reality should we expect flight of fancy to be honored by all Reality? Would we really want it, ie, would we survive it? (Consider the various sci-fi movies where wishes and reality get all mixed up).
Some people are handed special challenges. (Including yourself and I!?) And then how we deal with those challenges indicates whether we are seeking proper fellowship with Life as first priority or not. Are we using those special challenges to disrupt proper fellowship with life and create our own little pocket of personal hell that will grow to subsume us?
The people who REALLY captivate us — are those with profound challenges who still make a splash that all of the species feels (Like Stephen Hawking, Joni Erickson, Christopher Reeve) and remain a positive force for good in the process.
Cosmic justice shall be what it shall be. We seem to have some choice of which side of it we fall upon. Even when everything around us blows up.
Provided all our energy isn’t put into complaining how unfair the system is to our delusions of god-hood — and the profound position that if Life won’t do what our ego wants, we’ll embrace death and dissolution.
In a way it’s like suicide of all aspects of the sovereign individual that are not just the fleshly casement. It keeps shambling around for a time seeking out new ways to create hell-on-earth for self, loved ones, and perhaps even strangers.
@griz not ego l, but “greater things!” Or, once again, the bible should be more explicit in its language. These types of things only scratch the surface of the things expected. And the only reason why it should not be expected is if god were a jerkass genie (something where the exact wording of the wish is granted and there are disastrous results, but not the intent behind it. Dungeon masters in tabletop RPG games tend to do this.)
@Jear77
Trying to control others to our liking is a losing game.
And if you’ve not noticed, our species doesn’t like to be “told things”. We like to find them out for ourselves. And the language and delivery of the Bible seems to recognize and honor this.
Throughout most of the spiritual wisdom traditions I’ve explored, the idea is there that we are an image (spark) of the Divine. Not that the Divine is just a “bigger us”.
Expecting God to be like a jerk Dungeon master or manipulative tyrant or lazy contractor is trying to just make God a “bigger us”. This is where the foolish exercise of ego confounds the quest for/seeing of the Greater Transcendent.
Rather than recognizing/reaching for the absolute best we can be, we’re left pouting at the speculation that God represents the absolute worst of us, only bigger.
@griz if god exists, it made us like this with the full knowledge of having done so… which likely means that instead of being created good, the story has it wrong, we were created evil.
@griz actually, for the most part context mstters. In this instance (and this alone) it doesn’t. The bible says throughout that man is irredeemable. That is its message through and through. You are dirty. Worthless. A fuck up. That’s why i’m so generous to offer grace. No, that’s not the message mankind needs. A god who truly “so loved the world” and wanted its salvation (or rather the salvation of the people… it’s linguistic nonsense to say a hunk of rock hurling through space needs to be saved) wouldn’t need to send his son… because forgiveness would be automatically granted without his sacrifice.
@Jear77
One can cherry-pick context too.
The whole thought is that en seul we are insufficient to the task of transcending the things that hold us back. But that the story doesn’t end there. A way has been provided that bridges that gap.
But there’s issues to be explored in the desire to just stop at the absolute worst partial definition so one can blame the very nature of reality as we experience it.
@griz only because we were made thus. Once again, you can’t create something knowing everything then complain about it. It’s a bit hypocritical. Accept it, don’t punish people for being as created, or don’t create it to begin with!
@Jear77
Exactly!
We were made with the ability to cherry-pick unto the worst and the negative, BUT WE DON’T HAVE TO!!
Just as we are made with the ability to set ourselves aflame or pluck out our eyes to spite ourselves, but we don’t have to.
And we could do great malicious evil to self or others, but we don’t have to . . . .
unless it is a spirit we have been grooming in ourselves through a progression of resentment, bitterness, and starting to actually believe the convenient partial truths (ie, lies) that enforce that process.
Then one may well get to a point where they “have to”.
As in the various mass murderers. One could psychologically argue that they “had to” do those things — but they didn’t “have” to arrive at the point where they had to. Choice either expands to infinite positive possibility or contracts to only one negative one, depending upon the frame of meaning WE CHOOSE to live in. And we were made with the ability to choose wisely, or to choose poorly.
And most spiritual paths, despite the attached frills and religions, seek to help us choose a wise frame of meaning.
The only things people are “punished” for in the long run, are the things they have choice in and choose poorly. Or one could argue, that they intentionally choose poorly and persist in choosing poorly and create networks of convenient partial-truths to justify continuing to choose poorly.
@Jear77
As we don’t have them, they are not ours to deal with personally. Which in a way is why we need a “placekeeper” in which put them . . . . lest we start actually thinking they are ours to deal with.
BTW, did you notice that you keep shifting to a mode that presumes these things ARE yours to deal with in the now?
Our only task regarding them is to just accept that they are there; and perhaps there for a reason that our lack of foreknowledge and omniscience cannot grasp.
And we’ll drive ourselves to various hellish states trying to fancy that they are there for us to deal with in this moment.
@griz that’s where you disagree. I can’t acknowledge a deity who allows the world to be the way it is, because it had rhe ability to choose to create nothing. I won’t.
@Jear77
I know that’s our point of disagreement.
But as a friend (and with my training and experience) I know that point to be one that works more against than towards your joy, peace and fullest realization.
Every human has worth. Current and past societies have run on economies of honor, where humans give honor to other humans. This system is corrupt, because humans are corrupt due to the disconnection with God via the flesh.
The only true honor comes in the celestial city model, where that disconnection is removed. That is, where the inhabitants always see the face of God.
In that society, there is not honor based on the illusions of self, but on the realities of ‘work’. That is all are understood as being given what they have, so there is no longer boasting, or the request of honor to each other. Therefore, honor is given according to the capacity of work.
Where work can be defined as an expression of the application of energy towards the greater good.
This requires the dissolution of self, or self will.
This is only obtained by spiritual death of the self.
Individual merit is obtained only by God in such a society. As the inhabitants can only give honor if God smiles.
26 responses to “What does merit mean in a social context?”
Whatever merit is, I seemed to have lost it with my next door neighbor. One time I ordered worms for my worm farm and they got delivered to her by mistake. “Snakes!!!” she shouted! Then, she trusted me to babysit her dog with newborn puppies and one puppy died. It had some kind of epileptic fit and died. So now, evidently, I killed her puppy. Sending her snakes and killing her puppy has lost me merit points. Now, she won’t say “Hi” to me. ——- Oh well.
I tend to give people a chance at merit points. Most people don’t do things to lose merit points. Turning on me, cheating me, using me in a way that leaves me saying, “What the hell?” will lose points with me. Even then, I try to understand why they did what they did. Our yard and the next door neighbor’s yard had lost a lot of rocks and had bare spots. I ordered two tons of rocks for our yard and we raked them evenly in our yard. Now, the neighbor’s yard looks worse in comparison. I told Immortal Pirate that I would not be surprised if some of our new rocks end up covering bald spots in the neighbor’s yard. Humans being human, they may take the easy way out and steal rocks from our yard. I am just waiting to see if that happens. If they do that, they will lose a few merit points —- but no biggy. I will give them the phone number of the rock yard where we ordered our rocks from.
Merit is trust. You trust someone not to do you dirty.
I guess a group can have merit and win your trust, as long as they don’t try to cheat you, or do you wrong.
@ladybarbara
Merit and reputation are two different things.
They can intersect but don’t have to.
@ladybarbara
Consider that merit is for the individual. A group is more like a thing than a person. The constituent parts can change practically overnight (like when the kids take over a business from a parent) and then it becomes an entirely different thing.
A group known for high-merit people, can quickly become populated with flakes.
If one lacks merit having underlings of high merit casts you in a very bad light. Plus a person of true high merit (and not just an opportunistic chameleon) won’t be able to work for such a person/company for long without either supplanting that person via social or market pressures; or abandoning their own value of merit.
That you’ll do what you say, when you say it, in exactly the time frame you say it. If there is any alterations to any of these, merrit may be gained or lost. It doesn’t matter if you did 100 things right, the one thing you do wrong is what others will remember. If you say you’ll get things done in x time, and deliver earlier, that sets a subconscious precedent that others will hold you to no matter what you say. People, organizations, and movements can all have – and lose merrit based on sometimes the stupidest of factors. At day’s end it’s sometimes not worth kow-towing to public whims.
@Jear77
)
That’s the reliability and predictability and accountability aspect of merit. Society rewards them because you cannot play social games with someone who is unreliable unpredictable and unaccountable (Good reason to reconsider a hypocrisy defense
But there’s also a competency aspect to it. What’s good to do exactly what you say when you say you’ll do it, if the end result is shoddy?
These are not whims; but the very things that hold a meritocratic society together.
Someone who refuses to recognize merit walks the sociopath’s path.
And someone who tries to demerit others for invalid reasons, walks the path of the psychopath.
Each may get away with it a few times. But a healthy Society soon recognizes what they’re up to: and they will find they have to move away to places where people don’t know their tricks to regain any social merit for themselves.
Or else have to resign themselves to living a miserable life with no friends and no contacts within the society.
Dee@griz how many times do i need to remind you, i’m talking philosophy, not real life?
yet you understand from the social context god, if it exists, fails ALL social contexts! And it’s my humble opinion that any social structure based around a god who can’t / won’t fulfill the parameters i set forth will ultimately fail… Because god can’t put a timeline for his promises NOR spell them out in minute detail. And since it seems that god considers all actions, persons to be without merit without his son, god, should it exist, should be seen as the biggest sociopath of all!
@Jear77
A philosophy that does’t have some traction where the rubber meets the road, is simply speculative imagination. Elevate it to the status of something religious or “salvational”, and you have a recipe for bitterness that the real world doesn’t seem to “comply”.
I still think you’re confusing “social context” with the context the man-made religion has tried to apply.
And that this ties into a very common process where the key question is, “Which God” gets to set the “Divine” standard?
2@griz so… let’s put this into real world perspective. what if we communicated the way god did? Vaguities about what we needed done, when, or how. We wouldn’t communicate directly outside the written word for millenia. Would we be able to get anything done?
@Jear77
What if we communicated like chimpanzees? It’s no more helpful a flight of imagination.
I understand your question. It approaches “convenience” and “negative utility”. (And my grandpa used to say “Any fool can misuse a tool”).
We need to take things farther (past what is convenient for the ego) into positive functional utility — unless we want to live in a hellish state of resentment and bitterness.
There are the “tools” provided for the task. It’s perhaps not easy or convenient for a reason (as in, how many things of true value and meaning even in temporal life are easy or convenient?
Consider that this is less about God’s Nature or how Reality was constructed . . . than about just WHO GETS TO BE GOD!
People get pissed off because their ego cannot be — at least not for very long before things start falling apart, losing all meaning, and driving them into resentment then bitterness.
@griz but this is exactly what we have to work with. And it’s not ego. It’s the literal truth. You may counter by saying god answers prayers. See a person who was born without limbs (yes it happens) or those who have them removed by some mishap get new ones (i’m not talking prosthetics either) due to the influence of prayer. Or let’s talk about hose who are parapalegic able to spontaneously walk again by people (or even themselves praying). What about the people who have some disaster happen – a fire, a flood, or wind damage will prayer miraculously restore what was lost? Finally, what about raising the dead, can most people of faith do this (doctors and medicine doesn’t count). No. It can’t do any of these things. Sorry, if it can’t, and this is reality, guess what, if there is a god, it’s useless to worship, pray to it. I have better things to do with my time.
@Jear77
This is exactly PART of what we have to work with.
But that is confounded if we mistake our ego for literal Truth.
There is the very real probability that God answers prayer that is an exercise of proper fellowship with Life. Expecting a physical function of an organism that it is not designed to do is not proper fellowship with Life. It’s just flight of fancy.
And in what reality should we expect flight of fancy to be honored by all Reality? Would we really want it, ie, would we survive it? (Consider the various sci-fi movies where wishes and reality get all mixed up).
Some people are handed special challenges. (Including yourself and I!?) And then how we deal with those challenges indicates whether we are seeking proper fellowship with Life as first priority or not. Are we using those special challenges to disrupt proper fellowship with life and create our own little pocket of personal hell that will grow to subsume us?
The people who REALLY captivate us — are those with profound challenges who still make a splash that all of the species feels (Like Stephen Hawking, Joni Erickson, Christopher Reeve) and remain a positive force for good in the process.
Cosmic justice shall be what it shall be. We seem to have some choice of which side of it we fall upon. Even when everything around us blows up.
Provided all our energy isn’t put into complaining how unfair the system is to our delusions of god-hood — and the profound position that if Life won’t do what our ego wants, we’ll embrace death and dissolution.
In a way it’s like suicide of all aspects of the sovereign individual that are not just the fleshly casement. It keeps shambling around for a time seeking out new ways to create hell-on-earth for self, loved ones, and perhaps even strangers.
@griz not ego l, but “greater things!” Or, once again, the bible should be more explicit in its language. These types of things only scratch the surface of the things expected. And the only reason why it should not be expected is if god were a jerkass genie (something where the exact wording of the wish is granted and there are disastrous results, but not the intent behind it. Dungeon masters in tabletop RPG games tend to do this.)
@Jear77
Trying to control others to our liking is a losing game.
And if you’ve not noticed, our species doesn’t like to be “told things”. We like to find them out for ourselves. And the language and delivery of the Bible seems to recognize and honor this.
Throughout most of the spiritual wisdom traditions I’ve explored, the idea is there that we are an image (spark) of the Divine. Not that the Divine is just a “bigger us”.
Expecting God to be like a jerk Dungeon master or manipulative tyrant or lazy contractor is trying to just make God a “bigger us”. This is where the foolish exercise of ego confounds the quest for/seeing of the Greater Transcendent.
Rather than recognizing/reaching for the absolute best we can be, we’re left pouting at the speculation that God represents the absolute worst of us, only bigger.
@griz if god exists, it made us like this with the full knowledge of having done so… which likely means that instead of being created good, the story has it wrong, we were created evil.
@Jear77
Can you only do evil?
Can you do no good?
@griz according to the bible, it’s impossible “no one can do good, no not one.”
@Jear77
You’re cherry-picking scripture again.
What’s the standard?
What’s the context?
(You know I’m going to ask, so why not include it in your responses?)
@griz actually, for the most part context mstters. In this instance (and this alone) it doesn’t. The bible says throughout that man is irredeemable. That is its message through and through. You are dirty. Worthless. A fuck up. That’s why i’m so generous to offer grace. No, that’s not the message mankind needs. A god who truly “so loved the world” and wanted its salvation (or rather the salvation of the people… it’s linguistic nonsense to say a hunk of rock hurling through space needs to be saved) wouldn’t need to send his son… because forgiveness would be automatically granted without his sacrifice.
@Jear77
One can cherry-pick context too.
The whole thought is that en seul we are insufficient to the task of transcending the things that hold us back. But that the story doesn’t end there. A way has been provided that bridges that gap.
But there’s issues to be explored in the desire to just stop at the absolute worst partial definition so one can blame the very nature of reality as we experience it.
@griz only because we were made thus. Once again, you can’t create something knowing everything then complain about it. It’s a bit hypocritical. Accept it, don’t punish people for being as created, or don’t create it to begin with!
@Jear77
Exactly!
We were made with the ability to cherry-pick unto the worst and the negative, BUT WE DON’T HAVE TO!!
Just as we are made with the ability to set ourselves aflame or pluck out our eyes to spite ourselves, but we don’t have to.
And we could do great malicious evil to self or others, but we don’t have to . . . .
unless it is a spirit we have been grooming in ourselves through a progression of resentment, bitterness, and starting to actually believe the convenient partial truths (ie, lies) that enforce that process.
Then one may well get to a point where they “have to”.
As in the various mass murderers. One could psychologically argue that they “had to” do those things — but they didn’t “have” to arrive at the point where they had to. Choice either expands to infinite positive possibility or contracts to only one negative one, depending upon the frame of meaning WE CHOOSE to live in. And we were made with the ability to choose wisely, or to choose poorly.
And most spiritual paths, despite the attached frills and religions, seek to help us choose a wise frame of meaning.
The only things people are “punished” for in the long run, are the things they have choice in and choose poorly. Or one could argue, that they intentionally choose poorly and persist in choosing poorly and create networks of convenient partial-truths to justify continuing to choose poorly.
@griz with foreknowledge, omniscience the concept of choice is an oxymoron or paradox, and i don’t deal with either.
@Jear77
As we don’t have them, they are not ours to deal with personally. Which in a way is why we need a “placekeeper” in which put them . . . . lest we start actually thinking they are ours to deal with.
BTW, did you notice that you keep shifting to a mode that presumes these things ARE yours to deal with in the now?
Our only task regarding them is to just accept that they are there; and perhaps there for a reason that our lack of foreknowledge and omniscience cannot grasp.
And we’ll drive ourselves to various hellish states trying to fancy that they are there for us to deal with in this moment.
@griz that’s where you disagree. I can’t acknowledge a deity who allows the world to be the way it is, because it had rhe ability to choose to create nothing. I won’t.
@Jear77
I know that’s our point of disagreement.
But as a friend (and with my training and experience) I know that point to be one that works more against than towards your joy, peace and fullest realization.
Every human has worth. Current and past societies have run on economies of honor, where humans give honor to other humans. This system is corrupt, because humans are corrupt due to the disconnection with God via the flesh.
The only true honor comes in the celestial city model, where that disconnection is removed. That is, where the inhabitants always see the face of God.
In that society, there is not honor based on the illusions of self, but on the realities of ‘work’. That is all are understood as being given what they have, so there is no longer boasting, or the request of honor to each other. Therefore, honor is given according to the capacity of work.
Where work can be defined as an expression of the application of energy towards the greater good.
This requires the dissolution of self, or self will.
This is only obtained by spiritual death of the self.
Individual merit is obtained only by God in such a society. As the inhabitants can only give honor if God smiles.