“Most people actually prefer mediocrity to success as ambition is the enemy of happiness.”
- Xenocrates
I met a rather lovely young lady some time ago. She was great. She was down to earth, simple minded and even had the capacity for good conversation. In fact, I thought this girl was so perfect, I wondered to myself: Why is she still single? Am I that lucky or is there something wrong with her? Never the less, I applied the woo wantonly and indiscriminately. She’ll be in the bag in two clicks I thought – and then I hit a a glass cieling. I have never lost interest in a woman before because of her simplicity. I enjoy simplicity. I’m already a complicated dude. However, what struck me about this girl was that she was so content with being… mediocre. I don’t mean being average – I mean being less than average. She worked at various odd jobs where she was content with being a sales clerk. She never tried to educate herself beyond high school, even though she’s now pushing 30, she finds every excuse to certify that she’s happy with living from paycheck to paycheck and she doesn’t need more education than what she already has. Needless to say, as I’m not a sugar daddy for hire, my interest in the young woman faded like warm flatulence in the evening breeze. I’ve since met many people like that – people who are comfortable with being extremely simple or average at best. I soon realised that contrary to how I was raised (to aspire to greatness) most people were socialised to prefer mediocrity by self defeating parents (with possibly some genetic help). I then found that I was actually a little naive in my perception of the world in assuming that everyone wanted to be successful. As it turns out, I and very few other people I know, are actually the odd ones out. The situation is actually worse than I thought…
I’m A One-Eyed King
I am usually not a very talkative person. I always wondered why I was such an introvert until I met a wonderful young woman who I thought actually matched my level of intellect. That’s when the extrovert in me came out. We went places and did things that the version of me 3 years ago would’ve balked at. Now we have plans to go to other places and to do other things. In fact, by the time we’re both in our forties, we plan to have seen the world and most of the (interesting) things in it – and maybe even become a psychologically integrated oracle like my friend Al. ;)
It took me a long time to realise why this woman brought out the awesome in me. Before her, I noticed that I always preferred to write my thoughts down and place them in a public forum to attract the minds of other free thinkers like myself, simply because I couldn’t find other minds in my immediate vicinity who could appreciate them. I’ve been a writer on everything from movie reviews to human interest pieces. I love to write and I find that’s because it’s too hard to communicate via speech to most people around me. 90% of what I say would fly right over their heads. So I write things down. It gives them a chance to re-read what I wrote since most of the time they’ll misunderstand it anyway. I also write and publish to draw the interest of other people in the world who have the capacity to see that I’m only human. In fact, that’s how I met her.
She made me realise that I’m not really an introvert at all. I realised for the first time yesterday, that the reason why I appear to be such an introvert is because I’m surrounded by people who would be confounded by some of my most mundane thoughts. But not her. She is never more than 1 or 2 clicks behind if she’s ever behind at all. In fact, she’s the most interesting balance of left and right brain I’ve ever seen in a woman. So before her, for the most part, I remained quiet, to myself until I found someone who could digest my mind. I figured there’s no use casting pearls before swine.
When I first discovered my super powers, I was always considered a maverick and it was always just me alone against “the world”. My former acquaintances at church deserted me when I proved their faux-religion to be a hoax. My high school teachers thought me to be an anarchist because I challenged the Catholic priests to a theological debate and they lost (I attended a Catholic run high school). My college friends are intimidated by my preference of a fiercely autocratic leadership style as I have zero-tolerance for laziness. So I don’t make friends around me very easily. My style of communication has always been brutally honest – assuming that people liked being honest with themselves. How naive I was. That is the curse of having a 182 IQ. But that was never my problem.
I always knew that genius is never appreciated in its time. However, I don’t consider myself to be a genius, even though I hear that sort of thing everyday. There are people in the world who exponentially dwarf my level of cognition who are half my age. So I think in the greater scheme of things, I’m pretty average, possibly even insignificant – which doesn’t say much about those who think I’m all that. I realise now that the reason why I was so withdrawn from so many of my own people is not so much a failure in myself as it is the simple fact that being slightly gifted makes me the odd one out. My desires and aspirations are seen as being too lofty by my kinsmen.
But after years of observation, I realise and accept that they will be never appreciate the sheer brilliance of a piece of music from a Violin Concerto written 500 years ago. They will never understand the mathematical genius that engineered bridges, skyscrapers, motor cars and space ships. They will never appreciate the scientific wonder of animals which only exist in the deepest, darkest parts of the world or become bewildered by an ancient civilization which achieved things we can only do today via computers. They will never understand the sophistication of a piece of art in the Louvre, or understand the wonderment of communicating in another language. No, they laugh at such things as being weird and those who can appreciate them as being eccentric. They can’t appreciate these things because they were not designed to. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a one eyed king living in the land of the blind.
Creating Lands of the Blind
As it turns out, even though I think myself to be pretty average, I realise that the probability of distribution for the genetic permutation of people with a mind like mine in this particular geo-political climate is extremely low. I used to think that distributions of gifted people tend to center on large first world nations, like those you’d find in Europe and North America. But that was just an illusion. As it turns out, higher seats of civilization were created when the brightest people who were merely attracted to each others ideas, converged on specific areas of the world where their numbers were numerous, leading to the first world nations we know today. That I was born on a quaint back water Caribbean island in the middle of nowhere and not someplace in Europe is merely the result of a nearly random genetic permutation and nothing more.
People of similar minds are drawn to each other. That’s why smart people like to spend a lot of time around other smart(er) people. That’s the same reason why people who have this ilk for success are drawn to first world nations for the purposes of education and economic viability. This is why smaller nations like those in the Caribbean and other central American territories as well as those in the far east will always suffer the brain drain phenomena. The smartest, most successful people are drawn to cultures where they think their desires, their ambitions, their dreams or even their survivability are more guaranteed irrespective of where they were born. Writers flock to Hollywood; Actors flock to Broadway; Automotive Engineers flock to Germany and skilled musical composers flock to the musical centres of the world in Europe.
On this little island in the middle of the Caribbean that I’d like to call home, those kinds of aspirations are rarely seen for what they are worth. People here have such a narrow minded view of the world, that all they think about when they consider being ambitious, is being either a doctor or a lawyer – as if those are the only two professions in the world. In fact, if you have a Ph.D. in Economics, they’re likely to ask you if money can get sick… (if you don’t get that joke, you should stop reading right here). These are poor, uneducated people for the most part. They don’t understand that there’s a much, much bigger world out there. So if I went off to Hollywood to make movies to become a famous director, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to appreciate how awesome that would be. They don’t know that the average movie director makes more money than the average singer. So unless you showed up on American Idol or MTV, they’d probably not think you came out to much – unless you drove a fancy car… and then they’d think you were into drugs.
Examples of Mediocrity
Couple everything that I’ve told you so far with this: I believe that at a genetic level, the average person is hard wired to prefer mediocrity. It’s not just the small minded people that live in these Caribbean states and similar countries. It’s people all over the world – even in first world nations. If you ask the average person what their measure of success is, I guarantee you that most of them would respond with an answer that has something to do with money. The average person sees money as something to be exchanged for goods and services. This is why so many entertainers and sports personalities go broke after their stint of fame. It doesn’t matter how much money they had. They will blow it all on drugs, gin, an entourage and whores. When smart, ambitious people get rich, they stay rich. When average people get rich, they immediately start the countdown to bankruptcy, because their minds are so small that being rich means nothing more to them that being able to afford more stuff. But it’s not just them. Consider the following types of thinking from other types of average people:
- ‘All That Glitters is not Gold’ – A person who is comfortable with just being moderately successful will be ‘ok’ with being in second place. You’d be surprised at how pervasive this thinking is. They will teach you that Gold is not the only thing that glitters (I bet you didn’t interpret it that way did you?). But this type of thinking is weak, because it teaches people to accept failure as being just that, as though failure becomes destiny. It doesn’t teach people that failure is an opportunity for success, which simply perpetuates the same need for mediocrity. These people will never understand that life is not about falling down. It’s about how you get up.
- ‘Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls’ – A common teaching among many cultures is not to mix with those who are unlike them. The idea is pretty simple: People are often told that they are genetically predisposed to being only this or that way. So they should not seek to pursue interests which they are not culturally or socially identifiable with, or seek out people who don’t belong to their kin or culture. It extends to everything from career interest to interracial marriage. People who don’t follow those rules are treated either as outcasts or heroes (if they manage to change the thinking of the culture). This type of teaching fails to realise that the colour of one’s skin does not predetermine the colour of one’s mind. It fails to see that the country in which one is born does not shape their destiny. It assumes that everything your parents taught you is best as if parents aren’t humans who also err. It is a classic example of a failure to think outside the box.
- ‘Education precipitates Success’ – I have no problem with people getting educated. However, most people fall into the cookie-cutter syndrome, where they exchange years of their life and brain cells for the opportunity to work for someone else. At every level of the organisation for which I work, I discover more and more people who are only working so that they can get a bigger degree so that they can earn more money – working for someone else who doesn’t even have a degree. These people, although educated, are simple minded because that’s the only way they think they can make money. The mediocrity of these people is exposed in their intrinsic laziness to aspire to entrepreneurship or at least to seek other ways to attain financial independence. They embody everyone from those who demonstrate in front of their employer’s place of work with placards demanding a raise of pay, to those who sheepishly saunter into their boss’ office to do the same. They are lazy because they don’t want the responsibility of thinking for themselves or seeking other ways to make money. That is why, no matter how well educated they are, they are always broke before the end of the month – and they are quite happy about it.
- ‘Faith is the key to salvation’ – I’ve killed religion a thousand times on this blog and I will never get tired of doing so. This one goes out to all my previous church friends who continue to maintain their faith in a bogus religion. You do what you are told because you like being told what to do. You like taking orders from other people who like to make stuff up and get their kicks from ordering mindless zombies like you around. Continue to ignore James 2:18 – 26 which says that faith without works is dead, since God is going to come down from heaven and tell you exactly what to study for your exams, who to marry, how to spend your money and what job to take. God will also make you bullet proof, rape proof and scam proof. Your mediocrity lies in the fact that you don’t like to think for yourself. So you hire a con-artist for 10% of your earnings to stand at a podium and yell at you every Sunday to do it for you. Congratulations. Your lack of ambition has meted out unequalled happiness and bliss.
Conclusion
I have come to realise that I should stop engendering people to become more than what they accept themselves to be. No matter how I try to entreat them, they always think that success is precluded only to an upperclass elite. Although I fail to see their logic, I myself have been frustrated by my attempts to help people help themselves. Many are just looking for handouts. They assume that other people should feel sorry for them and pity them while they revel in their mediocrity. Those people have made me realise that a lot of poor people are poor simply because of how they think and how they choose to be. But I know differently. I should introduce them to a friend of mine who is anything but upperclass, but is now studying medicine. She’s the girl I mentioned earlier. She was a waitress that wanted to be a doctor. She’s not a waitress anymore and now she’s in med school. If she can do it, so can they. That’s how I know their excuses are naught but a load of crock.
But maybe I’m wasting my time. Afterall, they appear to have been predestinated to be second best (at best) and my footstool (at worst) so that people like me can enjoy life for what it is really worth. Their trite and trivial reality is what makes my success a reality. So who am I to tell them to do better for themselves? I will only threaten my own success in doing so. Furthermore, I cannot be so destructively selfish as to impose my own thinking upon those who simply refuse to even want to succeed. That’s fascism and I’m against it. So I’ve adopted a new thinking:
Realisitically, not everyone can aspire to greatness. Somebody needs to clean the toilets, wipe the desk, dust the furniture and keep my office clean so I can go in and work comfortably. Somebody needs to run around doing mundane tasks and stand at my beck and call so that I can tell them what to do next. Somebody needs to dump their pay check to the bank on their fat credit card bills so that my investment returns can come in. Somebody needs to serve me at Burger King and Wendy’s. Somebody needs to be my security guard when I come in at night or drive in to work in the mornings. Somebody needs to swipe my credit card at the supermarket cashier. Somebody needs to buy my used car. Superiority thrives on the existence of mediocrity. So I’m only being a hypocrite in pitying people who prefer to be average.
To all you people in the world who prefer a life of mediocrity, I apologise for assuming that you wanted to be anything more than just average. It’s about being happy and I realise that ambition is the enemy of happiness. If you were really successful, you’d have more things to think about and you wouldn’t really be happy then. I always assumed that everyone wanted the best for themselves – but clearly I was wrong. I cannot hope to change the self-defeating way you think because you were programmed by the unfortunate set of genes your parents passed on to you, coupled with their inferior doctrines. So since everyone has to ultimately play their role in the world, here’s what I’m going to do:
- Get rich (and I won’t have to die trying)
- Get married to that girl I mentioned earlier when she finishes her doctorate.
- Raise a family with her
- See the world
I’ll be sure to say ‘hi’ to the lot of you the next time I swing by KFC to buy her and the 2 kids she gave me a family deal. Cheers!
26 comments
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July 15, 2008 at 10:49 am
Malloc-X
i have been asking myself this for some time now, why is it that people are OK with just being average. most people just want to get a degree so that they can work for someone else and they seem content with living from paycheck to paycheck. I aspire for greatest and im working towards it but it gets hard sometimes when everyone around me is mediocre, i feel as if they are holding me back. back in high school when the teacher asked us what we wanted to achieve in the future most of my classmates replied get a degree and find a good job, non of them aspired for anything greater than that… maybe we are being brainwashed to be mediocre so that our governments can easily manipulate us
July 16, 2008 at 3:29 am
apollostwin
Delving deeper into the concept of mediocrity, it just hit me that many individuals actually owe their very existence to mediocrity. Think about it. Mediocre gal meets mediocre dude, and they have a mediocre relationship, that produces a child or children. There are literally thousands of individuals who are the products of mediocre unions. In the grander scheme of things, mediocrity is a driving force of live, both literally and figuratively. I know this is a rather abstract viewpoint, but its poignant nonetheless.
July 18, 2008 at 11:03 am
razzybrite
I really appreciate the effort and the facts you have put into this post. Its inspiring/ motivating. It is true, for far too long many of us settle for mediocrity instead of putting out all the stops and go for what we want. I most say though, I am not one to settle for mediocrity because my philosophy is “If the milk is sour I’m not the pussy to drink it”.
On a different note, I have read everyone of your posts they are good, keep up the good work.
July 18, 2008 at 12:59 pm
alamanach
Wow, I’ve been called a lot of things, but “psychologically integrated” is a new one on me. I have to start checking this blog more often.
I know what you mean about not being able to talk to people simply because they can’t keep up. Just this evening I was sitting on a balcony watching Jupiter run away from the Moon. It’s a clear night here, the air is pleasantly warm with a nice breeze, I had a comfortable seat and an unobstructed view. I was watching Jupiter and on this particular evening and it conjured up thoughts of the collpase of the heliocentric model, and Kepler’s Laws, and Newton and gravty and calculus. It was Galileo’s discovery of four of Jupiter’s moons that got the ball rolling on the law of gravitation, and thinking of that reminded me of how the Mendleson-Morely experiments had nothing to do with motivating Einstein’s work on Relativity, that Einstein probably hadn’t even heard of Michelson-Morely, he instead had been motivated by the Maxwell Equations; those predict an invariable speed of light all by themselves.
I’m looking at Jupiter and I’m reminded of all this.
But interesting as they are, those are not the kinds of thoughts you can really share with people. “Ah look, Jupiter! There’s some second-order ODEs right there! Beautiful!” They wouldn’t know what I was talking about, and it would take a one-hour lecture to explain. It’s special when you find a person who can keep up, it’s even more special when that person is of the opposite sex. (I’ve met maybe two.) Congratulations.
You’ve examined some different versions of mediocrity, but I’m not clear on your definition of greatness. Does greatness mean having people to boss around? That seems to be what you are saying. And as menial as some jobs are, what qualitative difference separates your job from those other jobs? You still need a paycheck, you still answer to a boss, you still have a work domain you’re responsible for, you still have taxes to pay. You and the janitor have a lot in common.
Then there’s this sentence: “If you were really successful, you’d have more things to think about and you wouldn’t really be happy then.” If success brings unhappiness, then clearly the successful person was pursuing the wrong thing. Be alarmed by that, because three sentences later you list the things that you yourself plan to pursue. You are determined to make a success out of yourself, but you haven’t found how to link success and happiness yet. In fact, right now you have success linked to unhappiness. What does that say about the goals you’ve set for yourself?
It’s funny you mention IQ, because I was thinking about that just this morning. Intelligence is an overrated commodity. Nobody’s going to give us paychecks just because we have high IQs. Sometimes they almost talk like they will (and I kind of wish they would), but they won’t. The best thing to do is to get oneself into situations where that intelligence can be of some use. Althouh even then, it is the actions you perform that people will care about. They don’t really care about the intelligence behind your actions. In fact, you’ll be lucky if they even notice it.
July 18, 2008 at 6:44 pm
xenlogic
@malloc-x: The harsh reality is that people’s brains are wired differently. Some are wired with a greater potential than others. That’s what is reflected in various methods of thinking. I used to judge others because of that view, but that method of thinking is wrong because of the aforementioned reality.
@appollostwin: Poignant indeed. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with mediocrity. I confessed in this very post that I was naive and perhaps a little misinformed. I grew up as a child thinking that everyone wanted to be great. As it turns out, that’s not the case at all. Some people prefer mediocrity because it is simply less stressful. Others abhor mediocrity because it doesn’t give them that sense of self actualisation. I fall mostly into the latter category – although I have been accused of being hard on myself. But the hardwork and the extra stress needed to get there mean nothing to me – but it means a lot to someone else. The truth is, we can’t all be great people. If we were, then nobody would be great, since great would become the new mediocre.
@al
Great points as usual. I’ll tackle them individually:
“Does greatness mean having people to boss around?”
- Not at all. Don’t be misled by my writing style. I like to inject a lot of dry sarcasm for the fun of it.
“what qualitative difference separates your job from those other jobs?“
- There is no qualitative difference between my job and that of a KFC sales clerk so long as they enjoy it. However, the probability that I may enjoy my job more than the KFC clerk is substantially higher because I get paid to do something that I genuinely enjoy and they’re getting paid to do something they have to do to survive. Consider the differences:
I can work from home. They can’t. I get to go on business trips and stay at fancy hotels. They don’t. They have fixed working hours. I don’t. I can post to this blog while at work and it won’t affect my productivity. They can’t do that while they have customers like me waiting in line. I can afford most common capital items for the home on one month’s salary. They’d probably have to take a loan for something as simple as a refridgerator. I could go on, but I think you see my point.
However a KFC clerk’s job satisfaction may be measured in happy satisfied customers and not necessarily by what they can or cannot do. So again, none of the things I just mentioned may apply. But mathematically, what are the odds of finding such a KFC clerk? Not very good I’d imagine.
“If success brings unhappiness, then clearly the successful person was pursuing the wrong thing.“
- That’s just the point, Al. I came to my senses and realised that it was invariably a stupid idea for me to expect that everyone wanted to be great. Not everyone is wired like that. So in essence, what I was doing as a child was projecting my own hopes, dreams and aspirations onto OTHER people – which is a dumb thing to do, even though I thought I was helping people. What I did that was even worse, was to JUDGE them under the premise that they’re somehow bad for not wanting more out of life. Who am I to judge them? I’m nobody. I’m insignificant.
People who want to achieve something will invariably do something about it. So it’s preposterous of me to even expect that I could inculcate the desire for greater things inside someone who is just fine with being “ok”. That’s what the whole point of the post was. It was an expression of my own naivette and my recognition of such. I came full circle when I concluded that I will no longer feel that sense of “pity” for these people as I once did – because they don’t need it. They’re quite happy where they are and I have no right to insist upon them that they should desire more out of life.
If God wanted all of us to be so great, he wouldn’t have created only some of us with the brains to recognise it. This post is a celebration of my finding the grace to accept that reality as something I cannot and should not change. I must live and enjoy my life as is, and let them enjoy their mediocrity. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with being mediocre (even though minds like mine would never settle for it).
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July 18, 2008 at 6:44 pm
xenlogic
“…but you haven’t found how to link success and happiness yet”
- Actually, I have. It is implied several times in the post, not explicitly referenced. I am the type of person who is most happy when they’re very successful. To me, the hard work to get there and the extra stress add incredible value to the pay off in the end. I recognise in this post that most people don’t think that way and that’s ok. Mediocrity built the world – albeit under the direction of monarchs, conquerors and great leaders.
“…Nobody’s going to give us paychecks just because we have high IQs.”
- Actually, Microsoft does. It’s true. Their programmers are not interviewed based on their learning experience. They get the job based on their IQ.
In fact, that’s exactly how it is that I’m getting paid. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m the only person in my organisation that can do what I do. It has nothing to do with my degrees (since there are more qualified persons in the organisation getting less pay) and it has nothing to do with my prior training (as there are many other dudes with the same level of training getting less pay). I get paid the extra dough, because there are some elements of business logic that are critical to the organisation that I can solve using IT solutions that none of my peers can. Quite frankly, just thinking about the complexity of those problems would make them bleed through their ears.
Where some people lose logical traction after a couple of iterations on a recursive mathematical algorithm, I can keep every single iteration in my head and create exit routines and all that jazz, and solve the problem in one pass without doing a debug run. My last psychometric evaluation said that my left brain operations border on pre-cognition – meaning that I “mimic” the capacity to see things before they happen. That’s very useful for my line of work, because it allows me to spot problems inside complex computer code before it ever becomes a reality even though it works. You simply can’t learn stuff like that in school. You can either do it or you can’t.
And yet still, to maintain perspective and to keep my humility in check, I have to constantly remind myself of all the brilliant people in the world that would make me look stupid in something as mundane as a chess game. That same girl I mentioned earlier beat the computer in a game of chess at a particular difficulty level in 15 minutes that took me hours to do. She’s the one that was a waitress that’s now studying medicine. She made me realise that some people are just hard wired to be great and others not so much. Y’know, writing this made me realise how much I’ve fallen for her.
She’s amazing.
But look at you, Al. I’m pretty sure your level of cognition exponentially dwarfs mine (experience aside). I’ve read through some of your engineering blog posts, and to be honest, while I can follow everything you have there – it still requires some level of cognitive gymnastics to grasp it all. Either way, I think that’s part of the reason why you and I can relate on some of these issues. But let’s face it, if a KFC clerk was smarter, they wouldn’t be serving fries and soda for a living. If you and I were smarter, we’d probably be drawing up plans for a faster than light, dark matter powered engine instead of doing what we do now. So OFCOURSE we get paid because of our IQ. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want a medical surgeon with an iq of 80 doing open heart surgery on you… would you?
(I know the question is intrinsically redundant, since you would probably never become a surgeon with an 80 IQ anyway
)
July 19, 2008 at 5:34 am
alamanach
“I am the type of person who is most happy when they’re very successful.”
With that comment you are putting the focus on what you are doing. The sentence itself doesn’t go quite far enough, because you might be successful in a masochistic quest to have your heart broken, and that won’t bring happiness. But you elaborated your goals earlier, so never mind. The point is, it comes down to what you are doing.
“(Microsoft’s) programmers are not interviewed based on their learning experience. They get the job based on their IQ… In fact, that’s exactly how it is that I’m getting paid.”
“So OFCOURSE we get paid because of our IQ.”
These comments place the emphasis on what you are, as opposed to what you do. And what you are, as you yourself well know, is extraordinarily rare. You are about 5 standard deviations above the mean, depending on what test you took, and somewhere north of the 99.99th percentile. That means less than one person in ten thousand has your IQ.
Do you know ten thousand people? Me neither. That makes you something unique in your world. There are clubs for people like us, very small clubs with very exclusive membership based on achievement of those very rarified scores. (And there’s a good argument to be made about how reliable psychometrics are when measuring that far out. At our level, can we really measure IQ? Where do we find the representative sample to calibrate the test? So there’s no telling how smart we ~really~ are.)
Thoughts like these are very sweet and seductive, and I went through my own phase for a while where I wrestled with those numbers and marvelled at myself. That’s a normal reaction, and I’m not very critical of it.
But it’s kind of like a feminist who sacrifices family and home life so that she can become a high-powered VP of Marketing for a Fortune 500 insurance company. It’s a hollow status symbol. There is little joy to be had in what you are. And it’s not just the fact (as you admit to and point out) that there will be somebody smarter. You could actually be the smartest person in the world, there will still be no lasting satisfaction in that. You could be the handsomest, or the strongest, or the richest, and these wouldn’t matter either. Because it’s not about what you are.
It’s about what you do. And your company may have given you your present job because of your IQ, but you keep your job because of what you do. Regardless of how rare and special your brain is, if you didn’t debug those programs, you wouldn’t be able to buy a refrigerator. If a donkey, through sheer, impossible, astronomical luck, could unwittingly debug software– even if it didn’t know what it was doing– they’d replace you with the donkey. They don’t give 2 cents about your IQ, not if they want to stay in business. They care about debugged programs.
Now, if it’s about what you do, rather than what you are, then return your attention to the normals. Look at the guy who couldn’t get your job no matter how hard he tried, because he just doesn’t have the intellectual horsepower. That’s not his fault. 99.99th percentile means 9,999 people get stuck with a smaller share of intellect pie, whether they like it or not. Why would God do that to 9,999 people? I would hazard a guess that by now in life, you’ve had moments of spiritual insight that you recognized would not have been possible if you’d possessed a lesser intellect. Good for you, but what about everybody else? Why would God doom that many people to never see what you can sometimes see?
The answer is, there are plenty of paths up the mountain. One does not need their IQ to clock in at 182 in order to know and love God. It doesn’t hurt– there are arcane equations to find Him in– but He’s everywhere. He’s in the dust being swept from the floor at KFC. He’s in the refrigerator someone’s taking out a loan to buy. He’s in the software you have to debug. So whether someone has a high job or a low job, or no job at all, their focus needs to be in the right place.
A lot of people end up working at places like KFC because they are losers, I won’t argue with that. But somebody could have a job like yours, or even better than yours, and still be just as big a loser. Because the guy in your position runs the very real risk of thinking that his position means someting, that there’s stuff in this world that’s beneath him, that there’s stuff he can turn his back on.
That kind of thinking is a lie. Someday you’re going to marry this girl, and she’s going to be sick at 3am with stomach flu, and you’re going to have to clean up after her when she throws up on the bed. It’s not glamorous, and superficially it’s the kind of work worthy of our loser KFC slob. But she’s your wife, and tonight it’s your job. Possession of a high IQ and a cool job won’t make the sheets clean. But cleaning the sheets and comforting your wife and doing the things that a strong, loving husband does will make the marriage strong. It will make love out of vomit.
Making love out of vomit is more important that debugging software or building hyperdrives. And anybody can perform this miracle, under virtually any circumstances. You’ve said that not everyone can achieve greatness because some people have to do the rough, dirty work. We disagree on that point. I say some of the greatest people will be found knee-deep in the dirt. Remember, it’s not the healthy that need the physician.
July 19, 2008 at 11:06 am
xenlogic
Again, great points Al. Taking the usual route:
- It was administered by Sylvan Prometric. It was one of those sliding multiple choice IQ tests. You are administered about 100 unnumbered questions which test standard intellgence on things you should be expected to know based on your level of education (and you are queried about this before taking the test). You are also tested for your general knowledge, deductive reasoning, problem solving and spatial cognition. Throughout the test, there are a set of questions where there is only one wrong answer and multiple right ones. One answer is “most” right of them all. Depending on how many of the absolutely right answers you select, you may pass the threshold of average intelligence and then the test starts to slide.
By “slide“, I mean that the test starts to go on longer than it would for an average person. This is where spatial intelligence is being measured. You get the same questions again, but they change only one very minor detail that completely changes the correct answer. An average person would get virtually all of these questions wrong because they’d assume that it’s the same questions and give the same answers previously. This is where spatial cognition is tested aggressively, until you start giving wrong answers, and then the test ends and your score tabulated automatically.
- If you measure spatial cognition separately, yes. Spatial cognition is what differentiates us from everyone else. It’s our capacity to problem solve without knowing all of the variables (thinking outside the box) or being able to foresee a problem while a system still works. They call this “emulative pre-cognition” and very few people can do it well. In fact, there’s a theory that says that people who claim to have “ESP” are just people whose brains have a greater degree of emulative precognition than others. You can have emulative precognition and not spatial cognition and vice versa. Those are just features of intelligence that people either have or not.
- You’re actually right about this one. Here’s the problem with IQ tests:
1. There’s no accepted standard of measurement methodology, even though Sylvan Prometric has the most preferred one used today. This method is the one preferred by Microsoft, Oracle and other software manufacturing entities for reasons I will stipulate later.
2. Some psychometric teams use a different test methodology thus resulting in different scores. I did a test with a different company and my score was 171, a full 11 points lower. The reason was because that test was more qualitative than quantitative and so your score is an estimate, and not a precise measurement. Furthermore, they measure spatial cognition in the same range as deductive reasoning. So that test is unreliable. Yet still, I did the test with another company, and they couldn’t score me because I exceeded their scoring threshold. I later discovered that their test can’t measure how smart I really am, because it doesn’t measure spatial cognition at all.
3. If you take any IQ test a second time, your score will be higher because new synaptic pathways were formed in your brain by the time you ended the test the first time.
4. Your score always gets higher the older you get. While most women’s IQ usually tops out between age 17 and 25, there is no age threshold for men. Men have been measured having higher deviations as old as age 75.
5. Intelligence is a measure of several thinking capacities which are mutually exclusive to each other. These include Static Knowledge, Deductive Reasoning, Problem Solving and Spatial Cognition. Some tests include emulative precognition (the ability to predict problems before they occur). Most IQ tests mix and match these cognitive problems in a test. Sylvan Prometric actually differentiates them, and weighs the answers for each of these categories differently thus providing a more accurate measure of how smart someone really is. Software companies prefer people who have strong spatial cognition. Engineering companies like a good mix of spatial and problem solving skills. The best doctors are aces at deductive reasoning. So there are really many different elements here.
This is why someone can score lower on an IQ test than me, and still ace me at chess. Chess requires strong analytical skills through deductive reasoning and previous static knowledge. I may have strong analytical skills, but someone more familiar with chess tactics will wipe the floor with my hide until I reason them out myself.
- I LOL’d.
That donkey is going to have a helluva time with the keyboard though… LMAO!
- That’s true, and that’s where the mediocrity becomes exposed. See, you can be really smart and still be mediocre, like those people who go out and get ph.d’s to work for someone else. Not me. Even though I have my degrees, I don’t need my paycheck to survive. Basically, one could say that I go to work to avoid boredom. However, I’m not rich yet (At least, not by my standards) and more money is still more money, irrespective of what I got invested in the bank.
Mediocre people on the other hand, irrespective of how well educated they are, will always be broke before the end of the month, whether they work for KFC or Microsoft. That’s what makes people like me different from those working in the same company. Even if their job was similar to mine, they are a slave to their employment. I’m not. They work for their money. My money works for me. See the difference? I recommend a book to all readers called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert T. Kyosaki. It will instantly convert all mediocre people into financial savants – provided that they are willing to think of their money differently.
[More...]
July 19, 2008 at 11:07 am
xenlogic
- True. Some people are just hard wired to be more succesful than others. But can we consider this a fault? I say nay. Life’s not fair because everyone has a purpose – even if that purpose is to become just another statistic. It’s a very cold and blunt observation but it is true. It’s the same reason why men and women are not equal. Each as a purpose. Inequality is predicated by purpose. They are both inextricably linked. If life was fair, then our lives would have no intrinsic value whatsoever since everyone would be the same mindless automaton.
This is the reason why I no longer pity those who prefer mediocrity over success and why I would never encourage them to do otherwise. They were DESIGNED to do that so that other people can become successful. I did mention that in the post. Success doesn’t exist if there is no failure, just like there’s no such thing as good without evil or light without darkness. It’s one of those co-dependent dichotomies that effectively define our reality.
- That’s a darn good guess. When I left the church where I first worshipped, I was trumping sunday school teachers with questions they couldn’t answer and throwing Thursday night bible studies into chaos on a regular basis. It got to a point where my own fellow church members were calling me “blasphemer“, “atheist” and everything in between. They simply couldn’t understand the stuff that I was talking about. It was years after I had left before they finally understood and left themselves. When they did, the same people who were calling me those names, apologized and asserted that I was right. It is only now that they realised I was eons ahead of what they were actually teaching.
This is why I no longer have religious debates with average Christians. Most people don’t have the capacity for critical thinking, so none of what I’m saying will stick. As a result, I don’t keep too many friends, because most of them won’t understand me anyway. That’s why I’m so grateful for this girl I met. She ran into the same problems at work that I did at church. I managed to convince her that a mind like hers doesn’t belong in a restaurant and she should be reminded that she’s only doing that to pay for med school. So engaging in these high level discussions with her co-workers is only an effort in frustration. It will take them years understand what she can see in 5 minutes.
Now I’ve been called “chauvenist pig“, “anarchist“, “communist“, “blasphemer“, “racist“, “sexist“, “nihilist“, “politically incorrect“, “religiously intolerant” and even “Muslim” by people who don’t understand half of what I’m saying. That’s ok. You can’t expect to teach rocket science to a baby. I’ve accepted that now and I’ve moved on. That’s the reality of the world we live in and there’s nothing wrong with it. They’ll get it eventually. It’s just that I’ll probably be a grand dad by then. Genius they say, is never appreciated in its time. But I can always find people in the world who will understand, even if there are less than one of them per ten thousand. So long as the odds aren’t zero, those are odds I can work with.
- I agree with this 110%. I hereby certify this as the new best comment on this blog. Interestingly enough, Oprah subscribes to this ideology. (She’s also like us, but in a different way). However, she’s gone as far as to start her own church. I’m not too warm on that idea, even if the basic underlying premise is valid. I long ago came to this deduction in church once, and that’s when people started calling me a blasphemer, because I seemed to be saying that Jesus isn’t the only way to salvation. How narrow their minds were… I was merely saying that there are many paths to enlightenment and you don’t explicitly need Jesus to do that. Jesus merely awoke that potential in our minds with respect to a way of life. He was just a catalyst and there were many great men in history who played a similar role. However, to date, only few people have tapped into that potential. Fewer still understand today what I was saying then.
Geez, now that I reflect on my life, I wasted an awful lot of time with lemmings. Gosh… what a waste. Pearls and swine, anyone?
- Again, you hit the nail squarely on the head. That is precisely why I made this post and why I mentioned earlier that I have to be constantly ensuring that I keep my humility in check. People are different because that is the only way they can functionally execute their purpose, which is inextricably tied to my purpose. So in realising my purpose, I have to realise that their mediocrity (as per my perception), is a NECESSARY evil and that I should never strive to change that. I’m glad you see where I was going. I’m pretty sure most people missed that part.
- Did I certify another comment earlier as the best? I’m recertifying. You’re on a roll today! Wooh! No arguments here. I hope she’s reading. This is why I said previously that you’re psychologically integrated. There’s a certain level of maturity that I aspire to that dwarfs number crunching and sophisticated algorithms and open heart surgery (für meine frau). I concede that such is far more important to humanity, for without love, what other placebo is more useful for continuing our existence? Well said Al. Well said.
July 19, 2008 at 9:42 pm
alamanach
“This is the reason why I no longer pity those who prefer mediocrity over success and why I would never encourage them to do otherwise. They were DESIGNED to do that so that other people can become successful… I have to realise that their mediocrity (as per my perception), is a NECESSARY evil and that I should never strive to change that.”
What is the evil in an IQ of 80?
July 19, 2008 at 9:59 pm
xenlogic
Absolutely nothing.
July 19, 2008 at 10:18 pm
alamanach
??? You said mediocrity is a necessary evil. An IQ of 80 relegates some people to mediocrity. Their mediocrity is a necessary evil, necessary to prop up successful people. Isn’t that your thesis? (If their mediocrity is due to their IQ, that makes the IQ the necessary evil, though maybe I’m being too reductionary.)
So, what is the evil about these people?
July 22, 2008 at 5:18 pm
willy
2. Get married to that girl I mentioned earlier when she finishes her doctorate.
3. Raise a family with her
4. See the world
I’ll be sure to say ‘hi’ to the lot of you the next time I swing by KFC to buy her and the 2 kids she gave me a family deal. Cheers!
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
sounds mediocre to me
what if she leaves school with her doctorate and marries someone else?
July 22, 2008 at 8:59 pm
apollostwin
Humanity is mediocre relative to the universe and its forces. Humanity is mediocre relative to an omnipotent and omniscient being. With the advancements made in science and technology, and all that we have discovered about our universe, mankind has inflated and overestimated the value of his existence. As I see it, mediocrity is not a state of absolute being, but a state of relative being. Mediocrity does not take away from whatever intrinsic value there is in being human, and success does not add to it either and vice versa. They are just concepts of social conditioning that we use to guage and add value to our own existence relative to the next man. Humans are constantly striving to stand out from the rest of the gene pool, and there is nothing wrong with that if there is the realization that at the end of the day what amounts to much in our existence, amounts to little if anything in the grander scheme of things.
July 22, 2008 at 9:05 pm
apollostwin
A man is defined by his character and his integrity, not his IQ. It has little if any pragmatic value in my opinion.
July 22, 2008 at 10:10 pm
xenlogic
- The same thing that would happen if I meet another woman who I think complements me better than she does.
- Comparing humanity to the universe is like comparing rocks and motor cars. A rock cannot be mediocre to a motor car if its purpose is effectively different. I see the point you’re trying to make, but I wouldn’t go beyond human civilisation to make any comparison for mediocrity. The very idea fails, because an excellent human is never comparable to an excellent universe for all the same reasons why “Car and Driver” has never written glowing reviews about a rock. Think about it.
- I agree with this. In fact, I believe this is why religion exists.
- For things which the comparisons apply (certainly not humans and the uninverse) this statement does hold some truth. The question is: How do you differentiate between what is absolute and what is relative? Is a KFC clerk all that she could be? Or was she hard wired to become nothing more than just that? If she was, then your statement is wrong. Personally, I think you are, because character is destiny.
- True, but we do not care about the grander scheme of things. That defies the context of this discussion. We care about humanity.
I like the way you think. But one other thing that you failed to mention is that of a phenomenon called ‘herd logic’. In a nutshell, a collective of conscious beings are inclined to think the same way and do the same things irrespective of their individual motivations so long as they feel a sense of camaraderie. Herd logic is a large part of why people will continue to do the same things, even though they know everytime that the outcome will always be the same, even if that outcome is not collectively favourable, simply because everyone else is doing (or saying) it.
A high IQ makes one person in that herd untuned to the beat of the crowd. Usually that one person is the only one walking in the opposite direction when everyone else is walking right off the cliff. Those are the minds that come up with new inventions that change the world, because they were wired to think differently. If these people didn’t exist, we’d still be stuck in the stone age – so I beg to differ.
My point here is pretty simple: IQ does make a difference. Herd logic would cause you to believe otherwise, since it is commonly accepted by most people that IQ means nothing. Herd logic is based on the innate human propensity to be accepted. When one succumbs to that propensity, being right becomes secondary to being accepted. It’s the same reason why people gang up on one they consider to be a threat – whether or not they really are a threat. That’s why people of high IQ are rarely members of most herds, simply because they will be faced with deciding whether to disappoint the crowd or disappoint themselves. Either way, they can’t win.
July 23, 2008 at 4:44 am
alamanach
Xenlogic, would you address my question, please? I am looking for a more explicit identification of what it is that is necessarily evil about mediocre people. Thanks.
July 23, 2008 at 8:58 am
xenlogic
I’ve already answered your question, Al. I said that it is “absolutely nothing”. More explicitly, I cannot use my quantum of happiness to grade others. Evil really is relative, hence my position.
July 23, 2008 at 11:06 pm
alamanach
OK, so what’s the problem with the down-to-earth and lovely young lady who started this discussion?
July 25, 2008 at 10:54 am
xenlogic
Quite frankly, she’ll become rather dull rather quickly.
July 30, 2008 at 1:28 am
alamanach
I’ve been negligent in not getting back to this sooner, please forgive me. What we’ve established so far:
- Most people are “mediocre”
- Xenlogic is one of those few (by definition, there are only few) who is not “mediocre”.
- There is actually nothing fundamentally wrong with “mediocre” people, they are living the life that is suitable for them.
- Xenlogic doesn’t want to hang with this “mediocre” girl much. Partly this is because he’s got an amazing med student he’s dating. But independent of that, he’d find the girl boring. Again, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with her, it’s just that mediocrity is kind of a bore.
Xen, who’s the person with the problem in this scenario? I don’t think it’s the girl, she’s mediocre like everybody else. You’re in a world full of mediocre people. You’re the oddball who finds them boring; you’re the one who can’t hold a conversation with most people. I say this with empathy because I know well the boredom you’re feeling, but it’s not their job to reach our levels. It’s our job to find what’s worthwhile in them.
This whole post has had me a little bothered from the start because you’ve tossed around words like “superior” and “mediocre” and, frankly, looked down your nose at people with limited horizons. That scares the bejeezus out of me, because people like Nietszche used to talk the exact same way. What the elitisit of history have always neglected is the inherent and holy worth of all people. Anyone, no matter how “mediocre”, is loved by God, and has something good and worthwhile in them. We humans usually can’t see it, and our blindness tricks some into thinking they can judge who is more worthwhile and who is less. That kind of thinking has ended in disaster every time it’s been tried. (The Nazis, the Soviets, the Khemer Rouge, were all people who thought they knew better.)
I hope you will get your focus off your extraordinarily intelligent and highly acheiving self, and refocus on the others around you. Train yourself to see in them what God sees. You’re going to end up empty, angry, and miserable otherwise.
I’m glad you’re smart. I’m smart too, and I know what it feels like. But it’s not about us. Suit up, my friend, because we’ve got work to do out there.
July 30, 2008 at 11:17 am
xenlogic
I’m not sure if you realise it Al, but I was agreeing with you from the outset…
I admitted to the fact that I was naive to expect otherwise from within the post.
I’ll add to what you’ve written here to say even more so that people in our positions have an enormous responsibility. We weren’t given this level of cognition for no reason (which is why, in a twisted sort of way, I can understand why you ‘volunteer’ for the dangerous missions you do).
It’s easy for someone in my position to become evil. I think of hackers who prowl the net. They’re just as smart as or smarter than most people who are ’special’. Most of them only do what they do because they’re bored. But I’m reminded of Ben Parker’s quote about great power and great responsibility.
July 30, 2008 at 9:41 pm
alamanach
‘Nuff said.
October 10, 2008 at 4:57 am
Dave Collymore
I read through this entire article and all the comments, and as usual it was a very good read and good food for thought.
I remember when I was telling people I was going to Japan, and many told me I was brave. Many others even discouraged the idea. I am into technology, I love travelling and I love meeting people of different cultures. Then where better to go than Japan when the opportunity presents itself? and why stay on a little island where jobs are difficult to get, your work is sometimes not fully appreciated and when I can explore a whole other part of the world, possibly be more appreciated and get more money?
Unlike you xen, I have not the slightest idea what my IQ is. I personally think I am just a normal guy with some remarkebly high hopes and aspirations and trying to make them real. I think I am a strange creature though, as I probably love people too much. This has caused me many a problems, especially with females
and especially when I am in a relationship. When I attend conferences in other countries, I tend not to stay in my little group. I rather go out and interact with the people from other countries and cultures and learn from them. Now, this cause many of the anti-socials and the closed minded people in my group to look at me strange or call me “Nuff” Why stay around people who I already know???… when I went to Germany and was hanging out with my white friends from Austria who I met 3 years b4 in another country; both white people who I didnt know, and black people were looking at me strange. WHY!!!??? In Japan, I had a white girl friend of mine hanging out with, and everyone around were staring at us very strange, including my other white friends… WHY!!!!???? I think my friendliness is probably my problem though.
My hope is to eventually travel around the world helping people in different ways and imparting my knowledge which is minute to many others in this here world…. But I would have to first get filthy rich in order to travel around the world and do what I want to do, or get lucky and work for an organization that can send me around. But I don’t believe in the pauper guy going around to help others and can barely feed his family… I want to be so filthy rich that I can provide for my family and help others… In Jamaica, and many other mostly black communities in the world, if you help too much, then you will have a whole lot of leeches to deal with…So that might be a problem.
In terms of mediocrity, I guess its not really our duty to define mediocre as some people are naturally gifted while others aren’t as fortunate. Oh and sorry for sometimes straying from the topic
I like to write too…
October 11, 2008 at 11:41 am
xenlogic
Do you realise that the black folks in your group fall into this mediocrity category that I describe earlier? It’s not only black folks who are like that though. People from all cultures and races – particularly the much older folks, suffer from something called “Xenophobia” – an irrational fear of the exotic or fear of change.
With that said, guys like you I admire greatly. You’re far from the category of which I speak. I’ve just come to accept that there are people like this all over the world and they were genetically predicated to be just like that.
December 23, 2008 at 5:32 pm
The Stop Gap Lover « The World According to Xenocrates
[...] desires. That really is determined by the person’s self worth. Some people enjoy being in second place. From an advantageous point of view, it’s inconspicuous, and they are not required to spend [...]