“Astute, insightful, and empathetic, Sandel exposes the cruelty at the heart of some of our most beloved myths about success. A must-read for anyone struggling to understand populist resentment, and why, for many Americans, the American Dream has come to feel more like a taunt than a promise. A crucial book for this moment."

―Tara Westover, author of Educated

Today I managed to read two more chapters of the book, both as a way to motivate myself in gaining continuous inspirations from the book and to fulfill my obligations to update book reviews on my account.

Let me quickly do a re-cap on the major points of Chapters 3 and 4:

1) Rhetoric of responsibility and the rhetoric of rising ("American dream")-- both gestured toward the ideal of self-reliance and self-making. 2) Credentialism becoming the last acceptable prejudice -- insisting that a college degree is the primary route to a respectable job and a decent life creates a credentials prejudice that undermines the dignity of work and demeans those who have not been to college.3) Governing well requires practical wisdom and civic virtue -- the ability to deliberate about the common good and pursue it effectively which neither is developed very well in most universities today.4) A technocratic approach to politics not only places decision-making in the hands of elites, but also disempowers ordinary citizens.

These two chapters are much more personally-related as I am currently part of a higher-education community and Professor Sandel performed a harsh critique on inequalities led by credentialism. He used examples from the educational and political realms in both America and Europe to support his argument that the so-called upward mobility and meritocracy might be causing the backlash of populism we see today.

American politicians,especially many Democratic leaders such as Barack Obama as Sandel quoted, are fond of the usage of American dream hoping to inspire their citizens. The idea of upward mobility is almost adopted as the antidote to all injustice and inequality faced by many citizens. Citizens are told to believe in the possibility in changing the fate as long as they word hard, and then God will lead them to wherever their efforts and talent could take them. However, studies of upward mobility typically divide the income ladder into five rungs. As shown in statistics, of those born on the bottom rung, only around 4-7 per cent rise to the top, and only about a third reach the middle rung or higher.

With that said, the American dream is at odds with the facts. Surprisingly, Europeans, whose societies are more equal and more mobile than the United States, are overly pessimistic about the possibility of rising, while Americans are overly optimistic. This overly optimistic belief in upward mobility reminds me of a book I read not too long ago, by Marvin Collins, an American educator who broke with a public school system she found to be failing inner-city children and inspired hundreds of thousands of children to not concede to their unprivileged status-quo and fight for a better future.

Marva is a respected woman who established her own rigorous system and practiced to cultivate her students' independence and accomplishment. She doesn't give up on anyone, no matter how disadvantaged they were. I was greatly inspired by that sense of optimism and resilience. Nevertheless, today as I flipped through the pages of Sandel's book, I feel deeply challenged, because I am forced to reflect on the things that I supposedly believed as 100% correct.

I used to be a firm believer in cause-and-effect, or you will be awarded by your action. I mean, who wouldn't? That sounds more like a fair game and it would be astoundingly unjust if a person who never tries gets the most fruits. From my understanding, what Professor Sandel is trying to say, at least to the point of where my reading paused, is that we also need to take luck and other people's contribution and support into consideration, instead of having our success entirely our own doing.

Back to the principle of meritocracy, I was then struck by the following quote. "The professional class is defined by its educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you". Indeed, the system needs reform, not individuals. We can't blame those who are less educated as their own faults, because perhaps they were not given equal chances of competitive resources to start with. Besides, the very mentality that everyone has to be highly educated in order to realize their value is detrimental for blue-collar, working-class people as now their jobs are devoid of social value.

In 2021, we saw so many outrages of populism backlashes in the U.S., because many citizens excluded from the so-called elites are being disrespected by others. Their chances of participating in political activities have also been taken away from them as they don't really have someone who is actually from their class to represent them for political issues they care about. All political leaders and officials tend to be titled with one of the top higher education brand names, yet these well educated individuals did not seem to govern the country better. Professor Sandel named a few examples: Think about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both of whom lacked a college degree and Harry S. Truman who was without a diploma but they all ranked among America’s best presidents.

It's time to reflect on the linear relation between levels of education and political performances. It's time to respect all those who dedicate themselves in their passion and obligation as equal. Not siding oneself as "being on the right side of history"; instead, it's time to stop encouraging people to adopt a polarized this-or-the-other, us-and-them mindset that is essentially devoid of cultural heterogeneity.

Let writing spark thoughts.