In his new book about important shifts in Australian culture, entitled The Lucky Culture, Nick Cater writes about the Australian view of class and merit. Before (say, pre-1970s) Australia was a society structured by merit and individual ability. It was a relatively united meritocracy. Cater notes that our culture is now divided along class lines, but not in the Marxian paradigm of workers and bosses (or “labour and capital”). He writes, “There has always been divisions in Australia … but this was of a different order. For the first time there were people who did not simply feel better off but better than their fellow Australians.” (p. 6)
Cater describes a society divided, no longer by merit and lack of merit, but by moral superiority and inferiority. He longs for the older ethic of the meritocracy, where people did not consider themselves better than others, but merely better off. However, the Christian ethic is even more radical than that. Continue reading
