An interesting discussion. I guess you hit the right crack in Gustave's argumentation by saying America is less class- bound than many European countries.
However, at the same time you opened access to equal cracks that I assume to be starting points for Gustave's admonitions by saying: In America, people are judged by how they play the hand they are dealt, which means that someone from the slums who becomes the manager of a supermarket may be regarded more highly than a person "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" who becomes the president of a bank.
and
In sum, although acquisitiveness is part of the American character, it is tempered by other considerations, and one should not overestimate the degree that success is measured in dollars.......
Although I have no doubt that those are correct depictions of American reality, they are contrary to what MikeH said, and Gustave criticized, about the validity of IQ testing as predictors of success, and a means of deciding over the question whether the job system as a whole is meritocratically legitimate or not. (It wouldn't be true if either the supermarket manager earned more than the bank president, or if their social success was measured on a different scale, independent from earnings, and the results on this scale were used to calibrate IQ tests instead of monthly earning).
I see the whole discussion less as one that can succeed in offering explanations on why either European societies or the US are what they are, and do what they do, than as one that exemplifies that neither society has a narrative or myth in the background that can explain consistently all what happens inside them. :-)
I hope nobody will claim that the IQ-success-correlation is or has to be 100% per cent, to say it differently.
Regards MNI. |
