This week I’m writing my first essay on the ideas of Mòzǐ starting with the concept of “Promoting the worthy”
Promoting the worthy is the foundation of government
The Mozi
You’re in an office boardroom. There’s a cadre of folks sitting around the table. For the men in the room the analysts are in ties and their bosses have open collars. On the wall the opening slide of a presentation is projected waiting patiently for the meeting to start. Suddenly a woman walks in. Everyone immediately looks at her. They get up. They outstretch their hands. They smile as big as their face can manage. She excuses the attention with a breezy attitude before she sits down. The presentation starts.
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We are all deeply enmeshed with our social settings. The tools, ideas, and institutions that shape our experience depend on the coordination of large groups of people over time. The very language we use, that intimately determines our perspective, presupposes a social setting. For better or worse the idea of man as an island is a myth with little basis in reality.
Within this social setting we are deeply affected by authority. We naturally emulate those who we see as important figures. At one level this manifests as celebrity worship and the naive ways that we try to be like our heroes. At another deeper level though the imitation is more subtle and, perhaps in part for that reason, more powerful as we relates to the people that have direct authority in your life. Your parents, your boss, or a local politician.
We can become conscious of the ways that we copy these authority figures and that can help us to avoid falling into the traps of broken social conventions. But even if we question the conventions they will remain conventional. We cannot think our way out of memetic desire. You know this if you've ever sat in a meeting room with a senior boss. It's simply not going to happen.
The solution is not to attempt to subvert, undermine, or out-manoeuvre authority. Instead it is to raise the right people up to positions of authority in the first place.
In the Mòzǐ this is the idea of “promoting the worthy” (“尚賢上” ). People imitate those with respect, money, and fame. The people that you choose to lead you, and who you rewards for that leadership, will show by their example what is valued in a society and others will naturally follow. If you wish to develop a righteous state the most critical thing is to raise up and revere righteous people.
It makes sense theoretically but there’s also good evidence for it practically.
Singapore has become a city on a hill and ‘solved’ the problem of how to be a state. On almost every dimension from healthcare and education to maintaining low taxes Singapore has shown that effective management can work.
One of the most cited reasons for this success is that Singapore selects for bureaucrats on the basis of competence. To this day government jobs are hyper competitive, well respected, and for the most part pay more than their equivalents in the private sector. Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, is paid ~1.6m USD a year, more than 4 times the US president.
This observation that promoting the worthy is the foundation of government can be disheartening. We are not all always in positions of authority ourselves to lift up those who we think deserve to be esteemed. However, once we understand that a society is shaped by who we give authority to it can allow us to make wise decisions. We can choose which people we elevate to the degree we can, and we can assess which societies we want to be part of, and understand the which we don’t.
So, the next time you want to understand your social conventions and where they are leading you look to your leaders. If you want to change the world for the better you need to think carefully about who gets that top spot.