The Individualization of Social Phenomena

• A broad neoliberal ideological shift emphasizes personal responsibility while obscuring structural determinants of success and failure. Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck (on individualization) and Pierre Bourdieu (on habitus and capital) argue that this framing erodes collective solidarity, making social conditions appear as a matter of personal virtue or failure rather than systemic forces.

• Empirical studies on meritocracy myths demonstrate that structural inequalities (e.g., class, race, gender) are downplayed in favor of narratives about individual achievement or failure, reinforcing disparities while making them appear natural.

Obscuring Material Conditions Through Abstraction (Datafication & Reification of Harm)

• The claim that destruction is rendered abstract—turning harm into numbers, data, or illusions—finds empirical support in studies of media framing and bureaucratic rationalization (see Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust).

• Psychological research on desensitization (e.g., war statistics, climate change denial) shows that when harm is presented in depersonalized or highly abstract forms, people often disengage or accept atrocities as inevitable.

• Jason Moore's Capitalocene framework also explores how capitalism translates environmental destruction into profit-driven metrics, rendering ecological collapse as something "manageable" through financial instruments (carbon credits, offsets, etc.) rather than something viscerally real.

Charismatic Authority, Massification, and the "Special Sauce" of Power

• Max Weber's concept of charismatic authority shows how power is often justified through extraordinary personal attributes rather than structural conditions.

• Bourdieu’s Distinction examines how cultural and economic capital are framed as innate superiority, masking the social reproduction of privilege.

• Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death discusses how people seek transcendence through institutions, leaders, and ideologies, reinforcing hierarchical structures by attributing exceptional qualities to those in power.

Several empirical studies and analyses challenge the meritocracy myth by showing how structural inequalities persist despite narratives of individual success:

1. "The Meritocracy Trap" – Daniel Markovits (2019)

   • Examines how elite education and professional pathways reproduce privilege rather than offering equal opportunity.

   • Uses economic and sociological data to show how wealth and advantage are concentrated in certain classes, reinforcing disparities rather than leveling the playing field.

2. "The Origins and Persistence of Black-White Differences in Wealth" – Darity & Mullen (2020)

   • Uses longitudinal data to demonstrate that racial wealth gaps in the U.S. are primarily the result of historical and structural inequalities (e.g., redlining, discriminatory policies) rather than differences in effort or merit.

3. "Inequality by Design" – Fischer et al. (1996)

   • Uses cross-national comparisons to argue that economic inequality in the U.S. is primarily a policy choice, not a natural consequence of differences in individual ability.

4. "Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to Be Privileged" – Friedman & Laurison (2019)

   • Uses interviews and statistical analysis to show that individuals from working-class backgrounds face hidden barriers in elite professions, even when they have the same credentials as their privileged peers.

5. Chetty et al.'s "The Opportunity Atlas" (2018, Harvard & U.S. Census Bureau)

   • Large-scale study using U.S. tax data to show that economic mobility is highly dependent on geographic, racial, and class factors, contradicting the notion of equal opportunity.