A Meritocracy of Carbs on the Adkins Diet

I have long believed that many diets – paleo, keto, Mediterranean, anti-seed oil, etc – have their dramatic effects not because of the actual things getting tossed down the hatch but because they stop folks from engorging on all that processed poisoning junk that has been sitting in cardboard and plastic for a year or so. (Shockingly, it is almost as if fasting – what does not get eaten or drunk – is much more important than what does get chomped.) That is sort of, kind of OK on a very local level, but in a larger program of societal nutritional health it likely causes more confusion and harm than good. “Meritocracy” – the position that the job should go to one who merits it – is a similar phenomena. With the recent hilariously disastrous implosion of leadership at supposed institutions of higher learning, meritocracy has been getting a lot of chatter online. Meritocracy might seem to work on a very local level, but that is likely more due to the walking dead zombies it prevents from being hired more than its benefits as a positive procedure for a successful hire. For one thing, merit is a notoriously difficult thing to define, and as a perspective of the good to the flourishing of a society “merit” will always be defined by authoritarian act.  If in its current definition merit simply means a rejection of modern race-motivated mischief making, we should just be honest about it all and not hide behind anti-authority liberal sloganeering. That is, we should be honest with what we view to be the good. The Adkins diet might be great for shedding the final 20 pounds prior to the Big Day, but literally no one wants to live like that forever.