According to an egotist of monumental proportions, Napoleon Bonarparte, history is but a set of lies agreed upon, so maybe all of it are lies. :-). According to conventional recollection, the Qin emperor died from mercury poisoning (somehow his physicians thought mercury pills will grant immortality), his chancellor and his carriage supervisor conspired to issue a forgery and convinced the crown prince to commit suicide. The eighteenth son of the dead emperor was elevated to the Qin throne, and either he or the carriage supervisor, now elevated to high office, killed off the remaining sixteen princes and unknown number of princesses.

I've considered myself for a long time a meritocrat, and maybe still do. But to me one of the things the 'superior' man does is help elevate all those below him, so I don't see it as a resting on one's laurels and using one's position to abuse others, or disregard the wisdom of the past, or the usefulness of the system.

What you seem to be describing is reality, not the contrived term meritocracy. Practically, men tend to hire individuals proficient at the field needed to accomplish an end. When sick, men seek assistance from physicians; when seeking to fix plumbing issues, men hire plumbers; when desiring entertainment, men browse fiction/comic section of the library. Though these behaviors are economic reality, the conception that somehow the ruling class are comprised of men of individual merit divorced from any conception to their sociocultural milieu (the pernicious and tenacious Anglo-American concept of "self-made man") is highly toxic to a society for reasons listed in the post.

The problem with establishing a social hierarchy based on merit is that the determination of merit seems to be subject to populist ignorance. It is remarkable to witness, in the supposedly "meritocratic" societies in the West, the peasants flocking to clowns opining upon complex geopolitical issues, rather than listening to dedicated policy think-tanks; the mob protesting science based on ignorant opinions of capitalist industrialists; and the electorate voting enthusiastically for men who just happened to possess money (Trump, Macron, Cameron, etc.).