Jesus Christ taught that one should not worry about food and clothes for God makes sure that all have what they need. He further taught that it was hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.
The desire to become rich is not the value of an aristocrat, but rather that of a merchant. For it is the merchant who measures his own success by how well he manages to accumulate wealth. The aristocrat, in sharp contrast, does not measure his success by what he does, but by what he is and what he strives to be. He seeks only to prove what he believes he already is and thus, he does not act or think like the merchant.
The political evolution of the modern world since the 17th century has seen a thunderous advocation for democratic, egalitarian and liberal values. Until recently, liberals have promoted meritocracy as an important pillar of their humanistic worldview. While it is true that meritocracy has fallen out of favor among the latest generations of progressive liberals, it is still fiercely defended by many classical liberals who are opposed to their progressive counterparts.
Unfortunately, the discourse between pro-meritocratic classical liberals and identity representation based progressive liberals drowns out any voices that do not fit within the current paradigm of political discussion.
Meritocracy is a myth. Despite being promoted as an open and accessible method of achieving upward class mobility under neoliberal or free market capitalism, wealth disparity and limited class mobility remain widespread, regardless of individual work ethic.
Aristocracy is preferable to meritocracy because a society of classes based on merit undermines a civilization's cultural health.
The reasons are that, firstly, due to the talented moving up classes in a meritocratic society, they all become concentrated at the top into a political and financial elite, while the lower classes are sucked dry of their talent thereby creating a perpetually dysgenic underclass.
This means, for example, that there are no genius master craftsmen anymore who can use their natural talent for the crafts and arts like building impressive and beautiful architecture or landscaping among other things. Talented people don't become craftsmen anymore because the cultural incentives to become a politician or have a soulless financial career are far greater.
Secondly, people who become and remain part of today's upper classes do so largely by merit (only partially true for the financial super elite but more or less true for the political lesser elites) and thus don't feel obliged to anyone, as they "earned" their position themselves. This antisocial attitude is developed out of the mammonistic competitive experiences that shape the psychology of those who believe in meritocracy.
In the past, an aristocrat, though believing in his class's supremacy over the lower classes and his natural birth right, knew he didn't directly "do" anything to deserve this position, so he felt inclined to give something of cultural value back to the population to prove himself as worthy of being a ruler. This is to say that the Aristocratic mentality is social and culture building while the Meritocratic mentality is anti-social and culturally destructive.
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