Passage 1 - "Nothing to Hide"

A common response to concerns about state surveillance is disarmingly simple: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. The phrase has a reassuring, common-sense ring, and it is precisely this quality that makes it so misleading. It invites us to picture surveillance as a net that catches only the guilty, passing harmlessly over the law-abiding majority. But this picture rests on assumptions that dissolve on inspection.

The first assumption is that privacy matters only to those with something to conceal. Yet we draw curtains, seal letters, and lower our voices not because we are ashamed but because a life lived wholly in public would not be recognisably human. Privacy is not a shield for wrongdoing; it is a precondition of the ordinary intimacies — confession, negotiation, dissent — on which social life depends. To surrender it is not to expose one's crimes but to relinquish a sphere in which one is answerable to no one.

The second assumption is more insidious. It supposes that "wrong" is a fixed category, defined once and for all, against which our conduct can be measured. But surveillance does not merely record; it accumulates. Information gathered under one regime, for one purpose, remains available to the next, for purposes not yet imagined. What is lawful today may be suspect tomorrow. The citizen who has "nothing to hide" under a benign government has a great deal to hide from a malignant one — and cannot know, at the moment of collection, which he will eventually face.

Defenders of surveillance sometimes concede these points but insist that the trade-off is worthwhile: a modest loss of privacy purchases a substantial gain in security. This may sometimes be true. But the phrase "nothing to hide" does not invite us to weigh the trade-off; it denies that any trade-off exists. It tells the citizen that the loss is illusory, that only the guilty pay. And a citizenry persuaded that it has surrendered nothing will not notice when, by degrees, it has surrendered a great deal.

Passage 1 - "Nothing to Hide"

A common response to concerns about state surveillance is disarmingly simple: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. The phrase has a reassuring, common-sense ring, and it is precisely this quality that makes it so misleading. It invites us to picture surveillance as a net that catches only the guilty, passing harmlessly over the law-abiding majority. But this picture rests on assumptions that dissolve on inspection.

The first assumption is that privacy matters only to those with something to conceal. Yet we draw curtains, seal letters, and lower our voices not because we are ashamed but because a life lived wholly in public would not be recognisably human. Privacy is not a shield for wrongdoing; it is a precondition of the ordinary intimacies — confession, negotiation, dissent — on which social life depends. To surrender it is not to expose one's crimes but to relinquish a sphere in which one is answerable to no one.

The second assumption is more insidious. It supposes that "wrong" is a fixed category, defined once and for all, against which our conduct can be measured. But surveillance does not merely record; it accumulates. Information gathered under one regime, for one purpose, remains available to the next, for purposes not yet imagined. What is lawful today may be suspect tomorrow. The citizen who has "nothing to hide" under a benign government has a great deal to hide from a malignant one — and cannot know, at the moment of collection, which he will eventually face.

Defenders of surveillance sometimes concede these points but insist that the trade-off is worthwhile: a modest loss of privacy purchases a substantial gain in security. This may sometimes be true. But the phrase "nothing to hide" does not invite us to weigh the trade-off; it denies that any trade-off exists. It tells the citizen that the loss is illusory, that only the guilty pay. And a citizenry persuaded that it has surrendered nothing will not notice when, by degrees, it has surrendered a great deal.

Passage 2 - Meritocracy

The word "meritocracy" was coined, in 1958, as a term of abuse. Michael Young's satire imagined a future England in which status was allotted strictly according to talent and effort, and found the result not utopian but grotesque: a society in which the successful, believing they had earned everything, felt no debt to those below, while the unsuccessful, stripped of every excuse, could blame no one but themselves. Young's warning has been comprehensively ignored. Today "meritocracy" is a compliment, an ideal to which politicians of every stripe pledge allegiance.

The appeal is understandable. A meritocracy promises to replace the accidents of birth with the justice of desert: the able rise, the idle sink, and each ends where their own efforts place them. Against the inherited privilege of an aristocracy, this looks like plain fairness. But the promise contains a sleight of hand. It assumes that "merit" can be measured independently of the advantages that produce it - that the polished candidate and the neglected one arrive at the starting line by their own exertions alone. They do not. The child coached from infancy and the child left to fend for herself may differ in demonstrated ability, but to call that difference "merit" is to launder inherited advantage into personal achievement.

There is a further, subtler cost. An aristocrat might at least acknowledge that his position owed nothing to his virtue; the accident of birth was undisguised. The meritocrat enjoys no such humility. Persuaded that he has earned his place, he is freed from any sense of obligation to those who have not risen and equally, the person who has not risen is invited to conclude that the fault lies within. Inequality survives, but the older languages of solidarity and grievance that once contested it are quietly disarmed.

None of this shows that we should prefer aristocracy, or abandon the attempt to reward effort. It shows only that "meritocracy", presented as the end of unearned privilege, may be its most effective disguise.

Passage 2 - Meritocracy

The word "meritocracy" was coined, in 1958, as a term of abuse. Michael Young's satire imagined a future England in which status was allotted strictly according to talent and effort, and found the result not utopian but grotesque: a society in which the successful, believing they had earned everything, felt no debt to those below, while the unsuccessful, stripped of every excuse, could blame no one but themselves. Young's warning has been comprehensively ignored. Today "meritocracy" is a compliment, an ideal to which politicians of every stripe pledge allegiance.

The appeal is understandable. A meritocracy promises to replace the accidents of birth with the justice of desert: the able rise, the idle sink, and each ends where their own efforts place them. Against the inherited privilege of an aristocracy, this looks like plain fairness. But the promise contains a sleight of hand. It assumes that "merit" can be measured independently of the advantages that produce it - that the polished candidate and the neglected one arrive at the starting line by their own exertions alone. They do not. The child coached from infancy and the child left to fend for herself may differ in demonstrated ability, but to call that difference "merit" is to launder inherited advantage into personal achievement.

There is a further, subtler cost. An aristocrat might at least acknowledge that his position owed nothing to his virtue; the accident of birth was undisguised. The meritocrat enjoys no such humility. Persuaded that he has earned his place, he is freed from any sense of obligation to those who have not risen and equally, the person who has not risen is invited to conclude that the fault lies within. Inequality survives, but the older languages of solidarity and grievance that once contested it are quietly disarmed.

None of this shows that we should prefer aristocracy, or abandon the attempt to reward effort. It shows only that "meritocracy", presented as the end of unearned privilege, may be its most effective disguise.

Passage 2 - Meritocracy

The word "meritocracy" was coined, in 1958, as a term of abuse. Michael Young's satire imagined a future England in which status was allotted strictly according to talent and effort, and found the result not utopian but grotesque: a society in which the successful, believing they had earned everything, felt no debt to those below, while the unsuccessful, stripped of every excuse, could blame no one but themselves. Young's warning has been comprehensively ignored. Today "meritocracy" is a compliment, an ideal to which politicians of every stripe pledge allegiance.

The appeal is understandable. A meritocracy promises to replace the accidents of birth with the justice of desert: the able rise, the idle sink, and each ends where their own efforts place them. Against the inherited privilege of an aristocracy, this looks like plain fairness. But the promise contains a sleight of hand. It assumes that "merit" can be measured independently of the advantages that produce it - that the polished candidate and the neglected one arrive at the starting line by their own exertions alone. They do not. The child coached from infancy and the child left to fend for herself may differ in demonstrated ability, but to call that difference "merit" is to launder inherited advantage into personal achievement.

There is a further, subtler cost. An aristocrat might at least acknowledge that his position owed nothing to his virtue; the accident of birth was undisguised. The meritocrat enjoys no such humility. Persuaded that he has earned his place, he is freed from any sense of obligation to those who have not risen and equally, the person who has not risen is invited to conclude that the fault lies within. Inequality survives, but the older languages of solidarity and grievance that once contested it are quietly disarmed.

None of this shows that we should prefer aristocracy, or abandon the attempt to reward effort. It shows only that "meritocracy", presented as the end of unearned privilege, may be its most effective disguise.

Passage 2 - Meritocracy

The word "meritocracy" was coined, in 1958, as a term of abuse. Michael Young's satire imagined a future England in which status was allotted strictly according to talent and effort, and found the result not utopian but grotesque: a society in which the successful, believing they had earned everything, felt no debt to those below, while the unsuccessful, stripped of every excuse, could blame no one but themselves. Young's warning has been comprehensively ignored. Today "meritocracy" is a compliment, an ideal to which politicians of every stripe pledge allegiance.

The appeal is understandable. A meritocracy promises to replace the accidents of birth with the justice of desert: the able rise, the idle sink, and each ends where their own efforts place them. Against the inherited privilege of an aristocracy, this looks like plain fairness. But the promise contains a sleight of hand. It assumes that "merit" can be measured independently of the advantages that produce it - that the polished candidate and the neglected one arrive at the starting line by their own exertions alone. They do not. The child coached from infancy and the child left to fend for herself may differ in demonstrated ability, but to call that difference "merit" is to launder inherited advantage into personal achievement.

There is a further, subtler cost. An aristocrat might at least acknowledge that his position owed nothing to his virtue; the accident of birth was undisguised. The meritocrat enjoys no such humility. Persuaded that he has earned his place, he is freed from any sense of obligation to those who have not risen and equally, the person who has not risen is invited to conclude that the fault lies within. Inequality survives, but the older languages of solidarity and grievance that once contested it are quietly disarmed.

None of this shows that we should prefer aristocracy, or abandon the attempt to reward effort. It shows only that "meritocracy", presented as the end of unearned privilege, may be its most effective disguise.

Passage 3 - The Placebo

For most of medicine's history, the placebo was an embarrassment - an inert sugar pill given to placate the anxious or to flatter the physician's authority. Its power was acknowledged only to be discounted: a "mere" placebo response was precisely the thing a real treatment had to outperform in order to prove itself. The word carried a faint contempt, as though a patient who improved on a dummy pill had somehow been taken in.

Recent research has made this contempt untenable. The placebo response is not a failure to tell the real from the fake; it is a genuine physiological event. When a patient is given a sham painkiller and reports less pain, the brain can be observed releasing its own opioids; block those opioids chemically, and the placebo effect disappears. The improvement is not imagined. It is produced — by expectation, by ritual, by the meaning the patient attaches to the encounter. What the sugar pill supplies is not a drug but a context, and the body responds to context as surely as to any molecule.

This has an awkward implication. If the effect is real, then dismissing it wastes a genuine therapeutic resource; but harnessing it seems to require deception, and deceiving patients is exactly what modern medical ethics forbids. Some researchers have proposed an escape: studies suggest that placebos can work even when patients are told plainly that they are receiving them. The ritual, it appears, keeps some of its force even when the illusion is stripped away. Whether this holds outside the laboratory is not yet known. But it hints that what heals in the placebo is not the lie the patient believes, but the care the patient receives.

Passage 3 - The Placebo

For most of medicine's history, the placebo was an embarrassment - an inert sugar pill given to placate the anxious or to flatter the physician's authority. Its power was acknowledged only to be discounted: a "mere" placebo response was precisely the thing a real treatment had to outperform in order to prove itself. The word carried a faint contempt, as though a patient who improved on a dummy pill had somehow been taken in.

Recent research has made this contempt untenable. The placebo response is not a failure to tell the real from the fake; it is a genuine physiological event. When a patient is given a sham painkiller and reports less pain, the brain can be observed releasing its own opioids; block those opioids chemically, and the placebo effect disappears. The improvement is not imagined. It is produced — by expectation, by ritual, by the meaning the patient attaches to the encounter. What the sugar pill supplies is not a drug but a context, and the body responds to context as surely as to any molecule.

This has an awkward implication. If the effect is real, then dismissing it wastes a genuine therapeutic resource; but harnessing it seems to require deception, and deceiving patients is exactly what modern medical ethics forbids. Some researchers have proposed an escape: studies suggest that placebos can work even when patients are told plainly that they are receiving them. The ritual, it appears, keeps some of its force even when the illusion is stripped away. Whether this holds outside the laboratory is not yet known. But it hints that what heals in the placebo is not the lie the patient believes, but the care the patient receives.

Passage 3 - The Placebo

For most of medicine's history, the placebo was an embarrassment - an inert sugar pill given to placate the anxious or to flatter the physician's authority. Its power was acknowledged only to be discounted: a "mere" placebo response was precisely the thing a real treatment had to outperform in order to prove itself. The word carried a faint contempt, as though a patient who improved on a dummy pill had somehow been taken in.

Recent research has made this contempt untenable. The placebo response is not a failure to tell the real from the fake; it is a genuine physiological event. When a patient is given a sham painkiller and reports less pain, the brain can be observed releasing its own opioids; block those opioids chemically, and the placebo effect disappears. The improvement is not imagined. It is produced — by expectation, by ritual, by the meaning the patient attaches to the encounter. What the sugar pill supplies is not a drug but a context, and the body responds to context as surely as to any molecule.

This has an awkward implication. If the effect is real, then dismissing it wastes a genuine therapeutic resource; but harnessing it seems to require deception, and deceiving patients is exactly what modern medical ethics forbids. Some researchers have proposed an escape: studies suggest that placebos can work even when patients are told plainly that they are receiving them. The ritual, it appears, keeps some of its force even when the illusion is stripped away. Whether this holds outside the laboratory is not yet known. But it hints that what heals in the placebo is not the lie the patient believes, but the care the patient receives.