Mediocrity Pays

We’ve really taken that Genesis story to heart. You know the one I mean, where we’re instructed to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Supposedly this kind of knowledge would make us too much like gods and that would make all Hell break loose. I’ve never understood this. Why is it better to be mediocre? Why shouldn’t we be like gods? We have greatness inside us. Immortality even. Every now and then it manages to show through the cracks in the facade. If Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Einstein could do it, why shouldn’t we? Why are the rest of us so easily dissuaded from letting it loose?

While a case certainly can and should be made for taking knowledge too seriously, of putting it on a pedestal, revering it for it’s seeming unreachability…and we have done that, much to the detriment of the planet…that doesn’t mean we should eschew knowledge, thinking it’s fine for nuclear physicists, but not for us. There-there, dears. Don’t worry your pretty little heads. We’ll tell you what to think. Then you’ll never have to worry about a thing. It’s all laid out for you. See? Don’t think for yourselves, don’t try to rise out of the muck. Just do what we say, and everything will go smoothly. You’ll never have to suffer those horrible pangs of doubt, learn anything the hard way or ever, ever…God forbid!…get lost in thought.

And we go along with it. We take and keep jobs we hate. We assimilate painfully boring information in order to live a life of regret. Only when we’re sure it’s “too late” do we allow ourselves a wistful sigh of “if only.” We hate our lives.

We want our children to feel better, so we build their self esteem. We believe false praise does them good, telling them “Good job!” when they have, in fact, done nothing. We tell them this repeatedly and they come to believe a good job is not screaming for toys in Wal-Mart, when everybody knows material things are of the utmost importance. They think a good job is sitting or walking or eating food. Something a little more proactive, like reading a book or taking out the garbage without being asked elicits an extra over blown response. Like they just discovered the cure for AIDS, or something. Praise in the right place…of course. But for nothing? This keeps us down.

We’re so punished by rewards, we can’t even remember what we’re here to do. When we forget our inner greatness and settle for being a cog in the machinery, we’re rewarded with large bank accounts, fancy cars and hearty congratulations. Good for us. We grew up. Figured out what’s important. But those who cannot give up their inner godliness, who strongly feel the need to rise above mediocrity, are scorned for being unrealistic…like faith in one’s self is a crime against humanity…like the world would end if everybody were true to themselves. We do have a purpose, and it’s not doing other people’s work, it’s not making quotas, cranking out widgets or scrubbing toilets. It’s something fabulous. We have to do what’s in our heart, not in spite of, but because of it’s being the more difficult path. This is how we evolve. Save a rain forest. Create a new economy. End world hunger. It is hard. But this is the work we are here to do. And it’s our only salvation.

Thoughts on the “Evolution” of Human Thought

I frequently complain about Aristotle.  He’s a jerk.  A white-boy misogynist fag whose virulence has been immortalized.  I mean, I love what he did in Posterior Analytics, it was great.  It made me cry.  I slept with it under my pillow for a whole month.  But jeez.  All that other stuff?  The nastiness?  He’s the foundation upon which all woman hating and racism sit.  No news there.

But a new friend recently suggested, after one of my usual bouts of bitching, that Aristotle and his cronies are dinosaurs.  That we do not actually think in their tired old ways anymore.  That human thought has, in fact, evolved.

I’m not so sure about that.

Consider this.

Many years ago I worked as a piano tuner.  It was a brilliant education in learning how to listen, but as a way to make a living?  Zzzzz…!  Now the basic nature of your average upright piano is…crap.  For a gazillion reasons there is so much inharmonicity built into it that it is, literally, impossible to tune properly.  There is an art to tuning the thing to itself, so that it seems to be in tune, but it will never really be in tune.  Ever.  Even if you worked on it for 100 years.  And for $50 you don’t have 100 years!

Now, so many years after the fact, I can admit there were pianos that got away from me. I did an absolutely terrible job on some.  But the customers never knew.  To them it was music to their ears.  They bubbled over with joy and thought I was the greatest thing ever.  This baffled me completely.  I like to be appreciated as much as the next person, maybe more, but it still baffled me.  I talked to other piano tuners about this and they all had the exact same experience.  They told me that just by sounding different, people assume that means better.  It doesn’t.

I was quite young and still very impressionable.  This made quite an impression on me.  Are people so conditioned by all the advertising that screams “New and Improved!” that they actuall believe the supposedly new is an improvement?  Hard to believe, but it does seem to be the case.

Which brings me back to Aristotle.  Yes he had some idiotic ideas that nobody takes seriously anymore.  Like the shape of the planet.  A big upside down bowl?  Really?  We certainly know better today.  And that little pee-pees are better than big ones?  Ha!  And that women are useless pieces of shit.  But really, he was no stupider than anybody else.

The learned Doctors of the Dark Ages “knew” how to deal with witches, those nasty female confederates of the Devil…

Newton’s ideas about the Mechanical Universe are now ridiculous and passe.  And eventually Einstein will be wrong, too.  (I remember hearing somewhere that he is already wrong, but I can’t remember how…something about wobbling stars?)

My point is, every generation recogitates the same old stuff, imagining it has come up with something New and, therefore, Improved…while still standing the test of Time.  Ugh!  What we are doing is using all our own built in inharmonicity, and, with a bit of flim flam, some good intentions and a big, unhealthy dose of self-deception simply tuning ourselves to be in tune with  ourselves…whatever that happens to mean at the time.  Not the same thing as evolution.

Evolution is an organism’s ability to adapt to changing environmental stuff…ice ages, floods, droughts, etc.  It is not taking over the entire planet, ruining everything, causing mass extinctions and patting ourselves on the back for it because one extraordinary member of our species came up with the idea that Energy=Mass x The Speed of Light, Squared.

Our thinking is very much the same as it has always been.  Humans brandish their stupidity like a standard of excellence and the stupider we get, the more proud of ourselves we become.  It’s embarrassing.  How can we be “evolved” or even “intelligent” when so many of us are so eager to believe obvious lies?  That we are not suffering from over-population.  That war can be just and justified.  That global warming is a hoax.  That the Bible is the Word of God.  That infants do not feel pain.  That rainforests exist solely for the use of the McDonalds Corporation. That 6,000 years of patriarchal oppression is, in fact, progress.  That the Inquisition was neccessary.  The stupidity never ends, it only changes its desktop themes .   Our jargon changes.  Our technology changes.  But our thinking is still the same.  It is still as dissonant and out of tune with the nature of reality as it has been since the Bronze Age.  And that’s even older than Aristotle.