Excellence and Mediocrity

[Steel Tiger]

I just started thinking about this the other day. We, in the martial arts community, are in a near constant pursuit of excellence. We seek it for ourselves and we instil that same drive in our students as best we can. This seems to put us at odds with the general community.

I feel that there is an unconscious pusuit of the medium position in society. No one is allowed to stand out, be better than anyone else. Everyone gets a trophy. Trying is more important than winning. Society seems to be walking along looking at the pavement missing the brilliant blue of the sky.

What I was wondering is how people deal with this dichotomy. I know that we have quite a few school teachers here, and I figure they must run into this all the time, even more so if they are instructors in MA schools.



I would like to point out some things about my own point of view.
I do think that participation is more important than winning, but if you not trying to win then you are not participating to your best ability.
I think that excellence should be rewarded, whether that be with a prize or participation in something like an honours program.
I think that imagination should be encouraged and rewarded.
I think that the moon program should not have ended in 1972.

 

[thardey]

The same thing hit me during the summer. I got used to being around people who are willing to "do what they do not want to do, in order to achieve what they want to achieve."

Then I spent some time with a group who was not used to that mindset. I kept trying to plan stuff that involved a little challenge, either physically or mentally. There was little or no interest. The more I tried to show them how much fun it was, the more I lost them. I just couldn't figure out how to get them to wake up!

Then I realized that their fun was in doing the same things they had done since high school. I still have fun with them, and they are still my friends, but I realize now that they are not likely to understand why I have the various, strange hobbies that I do. They sort of pat me on the head and go "Wow! That's . . . interesting."

 

[Steel Tiger]

The same thing hit me during the summer. I got used to being around people who are willing to "do what they do not want to do, in order to achieve what they want to achieve."

Then I spent some time with a group who was not used to that mindset. I kept trying to plan stuff that involved a little challenge, either physically or mentally. There was little or no interest. The more I tried to show them how much fun it was, the more I lost them. I just couldn't figure out how to get them to wake up!

I think that we, humanity, have a very strong in-built conservatism. If something works or makes us feel good we don't change it, regardless of how inefficient it might be.

There is more to this though. People seem to wallow in mediocrity these days. Pleasure and thrills are all had vicariously through TV and computers. Opinions are supplied by any number of incredibly self-opinionated people, just find the ones you like and ape them. And yet those individuals who do rise above the general inactivity are usually derided and belittled (good old tall poppy syndrome) or are turned into superheroes and expected to live lives saints could not maintain because they are now role models for children.

They sort of pat me on the head and go "Wow! That's . . . interesting."

Funny, its the same reaction I get from most people when I tell them I studied archaeology.

 

[Xue Sheng]

What I was wondering is how people deal with this dichotomy.

I don't deal with it, I don't accept it and it has on more than one occasion rolled over me because of it. I do not play this game well I have sat in many a meeting that was literally about what was going to be discussed in the next meeting so people could all be on the same level and yet feel they were important and contributing because they were at this fairly redundant meeting. I have also walked out of a few.

I do believe that trying is very important and I do believe that if it comes to competition that when one looses they should be supported and talked to and helped if possible to get to there best and to learn form and accept the loss. But I equally feel that if one wins they too deserve the accolades as long as it was the win gotten fairly. What I see to much is the win at all costs that is being lauded as a win and people congratulating this type of win I have a real problem with.

 

[exile]

I blame the psychobabblers who have been telling us, repeatedly, that incalculable suffering has been caused in the world by damage to people's self esteem, and therefore that we should not reward outstanding performances because they have the negative effect of making other people feel bad that they weren't as outstanding. The idea is that individual self-esteem is the primary psychological key to a healthy social community and that, therefore, excellence is in the end destructive to the Common Good. I cannot recall how many times I have read crap like this.

The funny thing, of course, is that no proponent of the anti-excellence crowd would want to have life-or-death medicine—open-heart surgery, say—performed on them by any but the very best, most outstanding cardiac surgeon. I could be mistaken about this, of course, but I'd be willing to bet all I own that I'm not, just as I bet that if I offered the worthies in question a choice between a home designed by the top graduate of a prestigious school of architecture on the one hand and by a consortium of rejects from a third-rate place, for the same price, every one of 'em would choose the first option. But let's leave that out; what's interesting is that there is some recent research I came across which suggests that sociopaths in particular do not suffer from low self-esteem; in fact, they have unusually high levels of the the stuff. And there is also a body of results that suggest that people who do genuinely suffer from low self-esteem, and who make very bad life-choices as a result, wound up in that condition because of early, severely abusive treatment as children, not because they came in near the bottom of the pack in spelling bees in grades 4 and 5. Once again, a genuine and often very damaging problem is turned into a marketing and merchandising item by the owners of the Feel Good Emporium. The culture of victimization winds up pissing on people who are genuine victims, by insisting that giving someone a C- on an exam, or a critical job evaluation because they were lousy at what they were supposed to be doing, is an act of socioemotional violence.

I'm not exaggerating. Parents have taken school districts to court because of their children's low grades, claiming that their poor tender offspring were seriously, and permanently, damaged because of what that failing grade in algebra said to them about their worth as a human being. I can't dig up any cases now, but I'll bet there are more than a few of you out there who can remember some of these cases....

 

[Makalakumu]

You know, there is a certain subset of the population that does not believe this garbage at all. They go on and do well in whatever endeavor they want to. I'm interested in how this happens? How do they break from the masses? Are they even "plugged" into this system in the first place?

 

[morph4me]

There seems to be a school of thought that says theat everbody should have not only the opportunity, but the right to excel at everything. Unfortunately the only way to let everybody excel at everything is to make mediocrity the standard of excellence. It would be much more beneficial to everyone if we allowed people to understand that they may suck at something and be great at sometnhing else. I can improve at anything I do if I put in the work, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll ever be excellent at it, and my self esteem is just fine. People should strive for excellence and accept their limitations.

 

[Blindside]

I don't think it is a "martial arts thing." I've seen plenty of mediocre martial artists plateau and be content to stay there. How many times have you seen guys who have years in, but their skills haven't improved, they are happy to instruct, but don't get on the floor and bang anymore. They've been in the art 20 years, they've been at the art for about 6, But because they run a school and because they pay dues to an org, they are getting rank promotion.

You can find mediocrity and the institutionalization of mediocrity in everything.

Lamont

 

[exile]

I don't think it is a "martial arts thing." I've seen plenty of mediocre martial artists plateau and be content to stay there. How many times have you seen guys who have years in, but their skills haven't improved, they are happy to instruct, but don't get on the floor and bang anymore. They've been in the art 20 years, they've been at the art for about 6, But because they run a school and because they pay dues to an org, they are getting rank promotion.

You can find mediocrity and the institutionalization of mediocrity in everything.

Lamont

This is true, of course, but I thing Steel Tiger was talking about something else: not just the kind of comfortable inertia that some people fall into and leads them to stop striving, but a much more pernicious attitude: the notion that excellence itself is a social evil, or at least reflects a destructively competitive view of life, and that people who excel are not to be praised for the quality of their work but criticized because they put others in the shade. This is what I think of as the `hive-insect' mind-set: the collectivity is all that matters, and the role of the individual should be no different from that of a single cell within an organism.

There is definitely a connection here to the guiding idea of facist social philosophy: all individual initiative, all personal identity, is to be subordinated to a kind of superorganic State. It's remarkable the number of separate avenues this kind of aggressive mean-centered definition of a healthy society can find to trickle into our cultural norms—including the current, rather paradoxical one we're looking at here: paradoxical because, if you trace the lineage of this kind of thinking in recent times, it seems to have begun in the early 1970s with something called... the `human potential movement'!!

 

[Steel Tiger]

But let's leave that out; what's interesting is that there is some recent research I came across which suggests that sociopaths in particular do not suffer from low self-esteem; in fact, they have unusually high levels of the the stuff. And there is also a body of results that suggest that people who do genuinely suffer from low self-esteem, and who make very bad life-choices as a result, wound up in that condition because of early, severely abusive treatment as children, not because they came in near the bottom of the pack in spelling bees in grades 4 and 5.

I am not surprised by the fact that sociopaths have very high self-esteem. They do, afterall, live in a world of their own creation with standards that the rest of us cannot comprehend.

Its a very odd thing. Schools are, by their very nature, hierarchical institutions. Children are given marks and are thus ranked one against another. Yet nobody seems to understand that when you have a system like that someone will be at the top and someone will be at the bottom. If people cannot accept that their children might not have an aptitude for something, then the school system is going to have to be changed so every child gets the 'you're special' mark. Of course tertiary education will collapse (sorry Ex) because no one will have a clue who should attend, but then the mediocre advocates will simply say, "Good riddance. It was elitist crap anyway. You don't need to know about critical thinking, you just need to know you're special."

It would be much more beneficial to everyone if we allowed people to understand that they may suck at something and be great at sometnhing else.

If only. But nobody, it seems, wants to be thought of as not good at something. Its a shame really, because once you stop wasting your efforts on things you just don't get, the things you do get improve immensely. We can't all be Leonardo da Vinci.

I don't think it is a "martial arts thing." I've seen plenty of mediocre martial artists plateau and be content to stay there. How many times have you seen guys who have years in, but their skills haven't improved, they are happy to instruct, but don't get on the floor and bang anymore. They've been in the art 20 years, they've been at the art for about 6, But because they run a school and because they pay dues to an org, they are getting rank promotion.

You're right its not a martial arts thing. We all know that time-serving can achieve high rank in martial arts. I presented our pursuit as something that was generally outside this unpleasant pattern of hammering down the tall nail which has infected our society. Most of us in the martial arts strive to make ourselves better in someway. That attitude seems to have been stamped out in general society.

Even those people of mediorce talent chose to go into the martial arts to challenge and improve themselves. The fact that they were unable to reach the heady heights of skill and understanding should not detract from the mindset of wanting to be better. It is the desire to get rid of this attitude which disturbs me the most. And it is being catered to. Nobody wants to earn anything through hard work and perseverance anymore, because they have been told that they don't have to. The standard has been set so low you can achieve it without trying.

This is true, of course, but I thing Steel Tiger was talking about something else: not just the kind of comfortable inertia that some people fall into and leads them to stop striving, but a much more pernicious attitude: the notion that excellence itself is a social evil, or at least reflects a destructively competitive view of life, and that people who excel are not to be praised for the quality of their work but criticized because they put others in the shade. This is what I think of as the `hive-insect' mind-set: the collectivity is all that matters, and the role of the individual should be no different from that of a single cell within an organism.

This is the crux of the matter. It has killed industries across the world. Just look at the US engineering industry. It was once the envy of the world, but now you guys have got some serious problems in that field. If this continues I can see some very odd things happening. Look at the disturbing prices for artworks from yesteryear. A rather ugly Faberge egg auctioned for 29 million. There seems to be no craftsmanship to match that of 100 or even 50 years ago. Look at art. Contempory art is pretty ordinary. They seem to have taken Pollack's words to heart when he said, "Even when an artist spits its art." Could this be the motto for our society now?

 

[Kacey]

The current movement that says all participants must win removes any value from winning. Only in comparison to others does winning actually have meaning. Certainly, being last, or nearly last, really, really sucks - but if everyone comes in first, that everyone also comes in last.

There was a student at the middle school where I teach who used to wear a t-shirt all the time that said "Second place is first loser". Now, as cynical as that is for a 13 year-old kid to wear, it points out the opposite side of the equation quite clearly. Simply because one does not come in first, or highest, or best, or whatever comparative one wishes to use, does not mean that one is worthless - someone always has to come in first, and someone always has to come in last; there's not other way, unless there is a true tie between all participants. If you cannot lose, you have no incentive to improve - and that, I think, is the key problem with making everyone a winner.

That does not mean, however, that losers must be ground into the dirt. Too many times I have seen people of all ages berated for the heinous sin of not winning - no matter how much improvement they showed, if they did not win, it was not enough for whomever was berating them for losing.

This issue is not limited to martial arts; it is pervasively present throughout much of society, and I believe it is a significant problem. It will require a significant change in attitude from a large portion of the population to change it, and I'm not sure where to begin... but I'd love to hear others' ideas.

 

[Blindside]

I guess I don't see it, at least not where I am living. Kids are involved in sports here from a very early age, by definition those sports are competitive, so kids are experienced at winning and losing. Outside of sports we've got kids who are in science fairs, kids winning small scholarships in spelling bees, or kids getting prizes for their 4H projects. I'm certainly not seeing an "everybody wins" attitude/ We do hand out participation medals or trophies for kids at the tournament that we host, but thats just for kids who didn't place at all, and that certainly isn't a new thing, I remember getting those as a kid in swimming, 'cause I SUCKED at swimming fast.

Lamont

 

[morph4me]

You're right its not a martial arts thing. We all know that time-serving can achieve high rank in martial arts. I presented our pursuit as something that was generally outside this unpleasant pattern of hammering down the tall nail which has infected our society. Most of us in the martial arts strive to make ourselves better in someway. That attitude seems to have been stamped out in general society.

Even those people of mediorce talent chose to go into the martial arts to challenge and improve themselves. The fact that they were unable to reach the heady heights of skill and understanding should not detract from the mindset of wanting to be better. It is the desire to get rid of this attitude which disturbs me the most. And it is being catered to. Nobody wants to earn anything through hard work and perseverance anymore, because they have been told that they don't have to. The standard has been set so low you can achieve it without trying.

At one point I sat on a schlarship committee that refused to give one of the applicants an scholarship because he had won two others, so they gave it so someone not nearly as qualified, because the commitee didn't want the other applicants to feel bad. That attitude can snuf out the desire to excel, why bust my *** when I can get the same rewards for less work?

Unfortunately, I'm seeing more and more the same attitudes creeping into the martial arts. Judges at competitions scoring their students higher than students from other schools or styles, even though it's obvious to everyone who was more skilled. McDojo's who won't go to competitions with schools outside their niche, because they can't win at them. Students who quit because they didn't pass a test. The attitude that mediocrity should be rewarded is becoming pervasive, even in the martial arts community.