Political world
In E349 Steven Poole gives an analysis of the British government’s rhetoric of “levelling up” the country’s prosperity by analogy with video game power-ups: “In 21st-century English to ‘level up’ a region or country is inevitably associated with the vocabulary of roleplaying games… Such flippant talk of levelling up or powering up… reinforce[s] a view of society that is focused on the individual and their freedom to pursue certain goals and desires. It is a fundamentally right-wing portrait of human affairs.” I think the analysis misses an
important part of the etymology of “levelling up”, namely the so-called levelling down objection to egalitarianism in political philosophy.
There are different definitions of egalitarianism, but in the present context we can say it means no individual should be worse off than another through no fault of their own. Levelling down is a standard objection to this view. If no one should be worse off than anyone else, then it’s desirable to bring everyone down to the same level to achieve this, even if that level is very low for all concerned. This seems intuitively undesirable, so it follows that egalitarianism is undesirable.
In response, (although it wouldn’t answer the a priori issue raised by the levelling down objection) egalitarians might say that some people should be levelled down and others should be levelled up. Egalitarianism is to be achieved by averaging out through the redistribution of resources, in other words, not by levelling down.
I think this may be the sentiment the government is trying to invoke here. Obviously, I’m not suggesting that they are egalitarians (to paraphrase Jerry Cohen, if they’re egalitarians, how come they’re so rich?). Probably it’s just another instance of government doublespeak. But the point is that the “levelling up” vocabulary is not straightforwardly individualist or rightwing; some of its roots lie in thoroughly collectivist and left-wing thought.
Finally, someone capable of debating Steven. Usually we just nod politely and print whatever he tells us to.