The Curse Of Mediocrity

Today it is my intention to wax a mite stridently opinionated on matters that may not seem to have much to do with freedom, but actually do. Proper human freedom requires much of men, including intelligence, smarts, generosity, honor, courage, and a whole host of other characteristics that many neither possess nor have any interest in acquiring.

I must beg your patience and indulgence for my little vent. Thank you in advance.

Planned obsolescence strikes me as a colossal failure of creative thinking. It reminds me of the Patent Office official who resigned because he had decided there was no point in continuing because everything that could be invented, had been.


I saw this brand of failure daily and for forty years had to deal with it in my profession (software/business R&D) and the fact that it is so interminably widespread leaves my brain numb. Far too many people are far too willing to simply give up.


On the one hand is the vulgar man whose dullardly lack of creative imagination and drive befouls the earth. On the other, we see his diametric opposite: those who press on regardless, working each problem as it arises, perceiving them as challenges and puzzles to me met and solved, rather than causes to quit.

The engineers at Chrysler in the 1960s were such men. When the Hemi came on to the NASCAR scene, ca 1964, they crushed the competition. NASCAR, being an example of the dullard, imposed restrictor plates on the hemis to reduce mass flow into the cylinders.


Undeterred, the Chrysler engineers worked the problem to the point that the engines produced more power with the restrictor plates, than without, leading said dullards at NASCAR to ban the Hemi outright. This is the way of the common-as-dirt human world, where the mean man - the inarticulate mob of mediocrity - hates the superior man because of the shame to which their betters put them. And so the excellent, if they become too excellent, must be shouted down. A fine example of this is a passage in the novel "Shibumi" by Trevanian, ca. page 108 where the General speaks to Nikolai on this very point. The one paragraph alone makes the entire book worth the reading.  To wit:

“Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring — but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down.” 

True excellence is hated by lesser men stemming from the shame of the mediocre man who understands his willful insufficiency, even if only unconsciously.

In his book "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance", Robert Pirsig makes valid and eminently worthwhile arguments concerning not only the nature of quality, but its lasting and forward-looking value.  His other truly significant point lies in the emphasis on the development of rhetorical skill in the individual, the single most important capability any human being has ever acquired, or ever will.  The stronger the rhetorical skill of a man, the more powerfully is he able to reason.  The significance of this cannot be overstated.  The tome is very much worth the reading and I recommend it to anyone seeking deeper truth.

Obsolescence in many areas comes naturally as new technologies emerge. There is nothing wrong with this, and it has in fact brought many good things into our lives. But the mindset that intentionally designs and builds junk, either in the morbidly mis-proportioned  pursuit of profit or the anticipation of new technologies to come is a cancer that should, and indeed one day may, be excised. Looking back to the days when General Motors started down the path of this rotten and ultimately myopic world view of quality, the consumer was very naive, and understandably so. The result was unspeakable waste, but today we can no longer afford to be so spendthrift in our habits, and because of all this the consumer is beginning to push back, which is a good thing.

Consumers are tired of the junk coming to them from places like China.  And yet, they remain reticent to pay more for articles of higher quality.  This is a very big problem, but perhaps with sufficient disappointment may come a change in those attitudes.

Old habits die hard and that of our miserable paucity in creative problem solving remains stubbornly ensconced in the minds of those whose very livelihoods are centered on finding better solutions to the challenges of providing for a growing world, the process of which places ever greater stresses upon resources. We can no longer afford such failshort habits. Time to find our love of true excellence, rather than the low-standards that have hitherto been mislabeled as such. Time to grow up.

Be well, pardon my rant, and until next time please accept my best wishes.