We are living through the Great Reveal. It is a moment where the tectonic plates of civilization are shifting violently, exposing the rot beneath the surface of our economic, political, and moral systems. From the existential disruption of Artificial Intelligence to the cascading institutional failures now visible in real time — the collapse of public trust, the grotesque consolidation of wealth, and the moral bankruptcy of the global elite laid bare in documents and testimonies across courtrooms and congressional hearings — the current chaotic moment feels unprecedented.
Yet it was all predicted nearly 70 years ago.
When former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently sat down on a leading podcast The Rest is Politics, he pointed to Michael Young’s 1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy, as a prophecy of current Western decline. It was a stunning admission from a top-tier global leader: The West took a dystopian warning and used it as an instruction manual.
We are now witnessing the inevitable crash of that system. The operating system built on hyper-individualism and extractive capitalism has reached its breaking point. As the old-world fractures, it becomes clear that the only way forward isn’t a top-down “Great Reset” engineered by the same elites who broke the world, but a fundamental reformatting of human values based on the wisdom encapsulated in the ancient African philosophy of Utu (Ubuntu).
The only way forward is a fundamental reformatting of human values based on the wisdom encapsulated in the ancient African philosophy of Utu (Ubuntu)
The Poisoned Chalice of “Merit”
To understand why the current collapse is happening, we must understand the trap Michael Young identified in 1958. He coined the term “meritocracy” — now used globally as a supreme compliment — to describe a nightmare scenario.
Young envisioned a future society where rigid class structures based on bloodlines were replaced by a scientifically managed hierarchy based on a simple, brutal formula: IQ + Effort = Merit.
On the surface, this sounds fair. The smartest and hardest-working people rise to the top. But Young foresaw the psychological poison this would inject into society’s bloodstream. In the old aristocratic systems, the king knew he was king simply because of the luck of birth. The peasant, conversely, knew their lowly station was also merely bad luck — an accident of circumstance rather than a verdict on their worth. This distinction mattered profoundly. It preserved a shred of internal dignity, a firewall between one’s social position and one’s sense of self. Philosophers in the tradition of luck egalitarianism would later formalise what Young intuited: that a just society must distinguish between outcomes people are responsible for and those that are simply the result of fortune. Meritocracy, Young warned, demolishes that firewall entirely.
A pure meritocracy destroys this buffer. It creates a ruling class possessed of a terrifying, god-like arrogance that genuinely believes their immense wealth, power, and status are mathematically justified outcomes of their own superiority. They believe they deserve everything they hoard.
This is the psychological root of the modern elite class — the technocrat, the Davos attendee, and the extractive capitalist. When you truly believe your position is merited by superior intellect, you begin to view those below you not as fellow humans, but as inferior biological units. You insulate yourself from moral consequence because the system tells you that you are the apex predator.
Conversely, Young warned that meritocracy strips dignity from the bottom. If the system is “perfectly fair,” then your poverty is proof of your own inadequacy. This creates a society simmering with deep, internalized shame that eventually boils over into blind rage. The kind of society we have today.
The “Scholz Glitch”: Diagnosing the Sickness, Missing the Cure
In his recent interview, Olaf Scholz diagnosed this exact sickness with remarkable clarity. He accurately stated that if a hospital director looks down on a plumber, “the society will not work.” He argued that if we do not view the person serving our coffee as an absolute equal, society has no chance. He recognized that the working class feels fundamentally disrespected, pushed aside, and patronized by an insulated, university-educated elite.
Scholz is grasping for a new operating system. He calls for a “society of respect” and a new “cultural habit.” But then, the interviewer asked the defining question: Society is hardwired to worship high wealth and visibility. What is the actual policy implication of this “respect”? How do you legislate it?
Scholz’s answer exposed the absolute limit of the Western political imagination… “Minimum wages,” he answered.
This is the glitch. It is like watching someone try to describe the colour blue without having the word for it. You cannot solve a global spiritual and systemic collapse of human dignity with a slight bump to the hourly minimum wage. With a sleight of hand. Scholz sees the symptom — a lethal lack of respect — but because his entire framework is Western and capitalist, despite his being originally a leftist, his only tool to fix a shattered human soul is an economic band-aid.
He doesn’t realize that what he is asking for isn’t a policy tweak. It is a complete structural overhaul and transition.
The Great Reveal: When the Formula Breaks
Scholz’s inadequate solution is especially glaring because the defining formula of meritocracy — IQ + Effort = Value — is currently being rendered obsolete by technological reality.
Capitalism, the economic engine of meritocracy, is built on managing scarcity through competition. It requires human labour and human cognition to function. But we are standing on the precipice of an era of profound abundance.
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly democratizing “IQ,” shattering the cognitive monopoly of the professional managerial class — or nyaparas, as they were known in colonial East Africa, the class of overseers whose authority is derived not from wisdom but from their position as intermediaries between power and the people. Simultaneous advancements in breakthrough energy technologies promise to shatter the need for energy scarcity. What happens to a society built on “I produce, therefore I am valuable” when human labour is no longer the primary driver of the economy?
The current elite are terrified because they know the answer. Without the artificial constraints of scarcity to justify their hoarding, their moral authority evaporates. They have no framework to manage abundance other than to artificially manufacture new scarcities through technocratic control. Thus, the reemergence of fascism.
The Western operating system has crashed. It cannot compute a reality where value is not derived from competition and extraction. It is desperately trying to run new hardware — AI, robotics and abundance tech — on old, corrupted software, and the resulting glitch is tearing society apart.
Utu: The Necessary Software Upgrade
Michael Young’s book ends with a violent populist revolution predicted for the year 2034. We are seeing the tremors of that quake today, from the rise of the far-right in Europe to the fracturing of the American political landscape. But a violent overthrow that simply replaces one set of meritocrats with another is no solution.
To survive the transition into a post-scarcity, AI-driven future, humanity requires a completely new operating system. One that was not forged in the fires of industrial competition, but one rooted in an older, sturdier truth.
AI-driven future, humanity requires a completely new operating system. One that was not forged in the fires of industrial competition, but one rooted in an older, sturdier truth
This is where the African philosophy of Utu (Ubuntu) transforms from a localized cultural concept into an urgent geopolitical necessity. If meritocracy is an OS based on separation — I am superior because I beat you — Utu is an OS based on unbreakable connection: “I am because we are.”
Utu is not soft sentimentality. It is a rigorous ethical framework that asserts that human dignity is inherent, unearned, and non-negotiable. It does not depend on your IQ, your looks, your bank account, or your economic output. It is the exact missing vocabulary that leaders like Scholz are desperately searching for.
In a world where AI, robotics and automation handle the IQ and Effort, the only remaining human currency is our capacity for connection, empathy, and collective stewardship. Utu provides the necessary logic for a world of abundance.
Capitalism asks: “How do I extract the most value for myself from this resource?” Utu asks: “How does this resource serve the common good of the community that sustains me?”
When the marginal cost of energy and intelligence approaches zero, hoarding becomes a form of mental illness. The meritocratic elite cannot see this, because their entire identity is tied to being the “winner” in a game of scarcity.
But Utu is not merely philosophy — it is a proven architecture for organizing human life. We can already see its logic at work in models that are quietly succeeding where extractive capitalism is failing. Community land trusts in cities from Nairobi to Baltimore are demonstrating that collectively stewarded land can provide stable housing without the speculative extraction that price out ordinary families. Platform cooperatives — worker-owned digital enterprises from ride-hailing apps to creative guilds — are showing that the economic surplus generated by technology need not flow exclusively to shareholders. Open-source software, the backbone of the modern internet, was built entirely on the logic of shared contribution over individual accumulation. These are not utopian fantasies. They are working prototypes of an Utu-aligned economy, operating already within the shell of the old one.
Installing Utu as our civilization’s new software means scaling these prototypes. It means designing digital civic infrastructure, governance platforms, and community organizing models that prioritize the collective voice over individual accumulation. It means rewriting the metrics by which we measure national success — replacing GDP with indicators of collective wellbeing, social trust, and ecological health. It means, concretely, that policymakers, technologists, community organizers, and educators must each ask a different founding question of every institution they build or reform: does this strengthen the web of mutual obligation, or does it fray it?
The Great Reveal has shown us the dead end of the Western experiment. We cannot patch the old system with minimum wage hikes while the foundational structure remains extractive. The crash is here. It is time to mainstream a new operating system — one that recognizes that in an age of god-like technology, our survival depends not on how fiercely we compete, but on how deeply we recognize our shared humanity and cooperate.
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