Meritocracy: The American Dream

In my opinion, I disagree that meritocracy is the only requirement or way to achieve “The American Dream,” I see it as an important foundation build towards success, especially in the modern days. I believe that back in the days, meritocracy does work; working hard, earning a high education qualification, positive attitude, etc… However, in the modern era, I believe these are basic requirement to be able to even step on the road to success. I think there are more to add these days like, personality, relationships, and creativity. Personality is the most important out of all three of them. Personality includes how you treat people and things. Compared with previous generations, much more labor force is available now. People have much more
freedom to choose who are they working with. With a pleasant personality, you attract people to work with you, people want to work with you. You might think that you do not need others people’s help, but this might take away many opportunities. Relationships are important too, unfortunately, but this is the reality. Some lucky people might already have several connections that can help them. These connections can make their life easier, the major advantage is referring jobs. But, if you do not have some, just work hard to build some. Creativity is a major tool to achieve success faster, like ride a rocket ship while others are just driving. Since there so many variety of products and ideas invented already, coming up with something new is not as easy as before. Therefore, it might seem that creativity is not as important back then than it is now. I believe all aspects of meritocracy are equally important, like I mentioned, all aspects are just foundations.
I would like to take two major aspects to discuss: hard working and high education qualification. I’m from Hong Kong, where it is very competitive. Earning a bachelor’s degree is the least you should to do to be able to get a decent life, it is not guaranteed though. In HK, we call the degree an “admission ticket,” as in a ticket to enter the trip to success. Without a ticket, do not even think of getting a decent job. HK is a wealthy and developed place, also everyone in the new generation has some kind of a university degree. You might think neglecting the ability of the person is not fare, too early to judge, but as a company, they will would not take the risk to hire someone who is incapable. A college degree is like an insurance to them, but there are no promises, the degree is the only piece of evidence to show them. So, once you have the ticket and got into the field you want to work in, now is the time to show your ability. How? You may ask, work hard. In HK, if you are a hard worker you at least would not need to worry about surviving. Moreover, if you are a lazy worker, people can tell. If you work hard and produce quality work, there will be a higher chance to get noticed and give you hand in the trip to success. These are all basic concepts that older generations have been telling me the whole life. They got through, why should not I trust
them?