Mediocrity

Here in the _W_est, we are a culture that ironically celebritizes all things mediocre despite our gravest intentions to avoid ‘average’: a word that borders on a slur for some of the more ‘success’-oriented people out there. I pity those souls on many levels including their animosity toward the mean, in all its inevitable ubiquity - due of course to the very nature of statistics. Despite any ardent effort to avoid what might be called ‘average’, there seems to be great difficulty in promoting excellence, which would be the subsequent implication.

However, excellence may very well be the reward of a thousand instances of mediocrity; to painstakingly fall short in every conceivable way until there is no choice left but to wield a title of ‘mastery’. Interestingly enough, the mundane - whether those of an concretely experiential or more intrapersonal nature - contains all necessary ingredients for the realization of true beauty: surely considerable of masterpiece status. It is resting perfectly in obvious places, just waiting for the right eyes.

Beauty waits in the boring, mastery following the mundane, greatness accessible only through the grime of average. Perhaps all being a masterfully ‘good person’ requires is to just be decent (average, perhaps?) for decades.

AA: Isn’t consolodation of excellence a good thing? Shouldn’t we praise and support the excellent in order to give mediocre an objective?

Perhaps so, I don’t deny that reward the ‘best’, in any provably objective sense is good. However I don’t see utility in punishing the average with equal force. The ladder pulled up leaves many with potential for greatness behind, given at how insulted being average is. I advocate for a middle ground; some ideal ‘distribution’ of ‘competition’ among the varying echelons of excellence such that average can survive into the adulthood of mastery, perhaps even flourish into such.

This middle ground may just be what comes natural: to ignore the average. Don’t reject or insult it, but give it no more attention than necessary until celebration is warranted through mastery.