"They're probably, just in terms of literary merit, among the five best books ever written.
Art history is a chronicle of spats over relative merit among people with varying degrees of assigned authority: cognoscenti in the past, now the rich or the many.
Among the non-alumni, special praise is merited, among the actors, for Stephen Zinnato as Hugh Hendon, the splendidly nasty chancellor who covets not only the power of the throne but also his brother's girl.
Some even responded to orders by first asking, "Why?" These new civilian controllers formed what, for that time, was a shockingly diverse workforce: merit among them was determined not by pedigree or seniority but by swagger; the less likely one was to blink or flinch or allow himself to be punked, the more that person could be trusted on the job.
In 1947, Blanchard graduated from West Point, 296th in order of merit among 310 graduates, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
In other words, the synergistic influence derived from differential merit among antagonistic equals is conditional on the recognition and appreciation of partners and teammates.
If correct, this suggests that the root of humans' brightest qualities, the open-access, quorum-dependent quest for merit among antagonistically equal obligate teammates, is somewhat neglected by current evolutionary approaches of animal and human behavior.
The proposed further comparison between limited-access dominance and open-access merit first boils down to four new opposites: dominance is altogether imposed, one-dimensional, transitive, and symmetrical, whereas merit among antagonistic equals is the exact opposite since it is altogether granted, multidimensional, intransitive, and antisymmetrical.
The result is a persuasive account that merits consideration among the very best.
