What I've learned about awards
"We want to believe winning an award is a reliable indicator of excellence, but it isn’t always."
“Every thought has got to be either joyful or productive.” —Catherine Austin Fitts https://home.solari.com/
There is a problem I’ve noticed with some awards. Some tend to be political, not always truly rewarding the best people in a particular field. Organizations often use awards for their own ends, a top-down endeavor to perhaps deliver good PR to a particular audience, or find good rank and file workers, good additions their endeavors.
[I’ve written about the funny person I knew on the Swedish Academy that selects the Nobel laureates, and the totally incompetent Nobel laureate in Medicine who lost his medical license when all the subjects in his study died except one severely damaged patient, and was imprisoned for forging documents and abusing his office: https://www.bustle.com/entertainment/paolo-macchiarini-today-prison-sentence-bad-surgeon-dr-death.]
We want to believe winning an award is a reliable indicator of excellence, but it isn’t always.
Similarly, would it be surprising if the very people who use the word meritocracy (a word I hadn’t heard used in such a long time and only in hypothetical contexts) set out to hire average Joes, not the best or brightest, because mediocre hires make their bosses look brilliant by comparison? They seem to make it a point to hire people who aren’t smart enough to see through their own bosses, and who always genuinely believe everything they are supposed to believe. Often, it’s impossible to not notice that these types tend to be drawn from the same ethnic group, a group that consistently dresses extremely well in New York City and looks the part. As we’ve seen in the news, these hires seem to tacitly agree in advance to go to prison for their bosses when the truth inevitably comes out, and do. Sadly, this is what that group believes it means to be equal in America.
But hopefully soon psychologically healthier people will establish awards and organizations, and the dark clouds of corruption that currently hover over many places will dissipate.
Catherine Austin Fitts, George H.W. Bush’s Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is an investment banker and founder of the Solari Report. After being intimidated for the truth she reports, she moved abroad.
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What an insightful piece. Apt observations.