This article is currently SOMEWHAT BROKEN, so you will probably catch my drift if you can wade through it. I am in the process of re-writing it, so maybe just bookmark it and check back soon?
Since I have invited you to Celebrate Mediocrity, I owe you an explanation.
I use “mediocrity” to contrast with “greatness.”
Human attention is naturally attracted to extremes.
“Whatsoever we attend to grows”
“Magical” Sustainability
The “sustainability” of a society’s way of life is inversely proportional to its complexity.
There is a distressing general notion amongst “liberals” that human society is always advancing (albeit in fits and starts). Thus, in aggregate, the current zeitgeist must represent the best form of society we have manifested thus far on our human journey. (Whereas for “conservatives,” society’s halcyon epoch always reigned roughly 50 years before the current date).
I disagree with both views.
The Development of Society
The human animal is a social animal. We are, and have always been, a creature of clans and tribes. Band Societies represent ALL human communities for 99.8% of our development and existence over the past 2.5 million years. The stability and sustainability of this arrangement granted absolute and unparalleled dominance for eons. Only in the most recent and miniscule moment of time, beginning at the dawn of the historical period roughly 5,000 years ago, did it begin to subside to more complex societies.
These alternative and more complex modes of living began as merely regional phenomena. The momentary dominance of our modern civilizations is the result of a gradual process over millennia. And it was achieved through violent and bloody conquest, usually over less complex societies.
Nevertheless, the most basic forms of society still exist to this day at the ever-dwindling margins on the fringe of civilization. These groups, the most fundamental and indispensable elements of human survival, are bound by kinship and governed by those members with the greatest first-hand experience. These most primitive groups furnish the apex of egalitarianism that any human society has ever achieved. Each member relies upon and provides for every other. All labor, and all wealth, is distributed equitably. Even violence (expressed not within, but between societies through the competition for scarce resources) is equitably distributed throughout all of humanity; one society or one segment of society may not externalize these costs upon another.
This is also the only form of society which can, in good faith, be described as “sustainable.”
While the social and ecological merits of the band society reign supreme, it is a hard and unforgiving mode of living. Only a tiny fraction of the existing human population would voluntarily adopt it. Even fewer would succeed.
Nevertheless, one day, sooner than you would imagine, this mode of living will again support our species as the dominant lifestyle.
Complex Societies
The next stage in social complexity is the sedentary society, or tribe. These larger groups (hundreds or even a few thousand) are settlers. They have developed an agricultural lifestyle and create villages. The community is still relatively small, kinship bonds are tight, and the population is still governable by respected elders. This agricultural mode of living is more labor intensive than the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. But it is also capable of producing a food surplus.
Food surplus and the sedentary lifestyle lead to population growth. Increasing population requires more administration, while the energy surplus of stored food means that every member of society need not contribute to its production. This leads the way to the more social stratified society of the chiefdom.
In a chiefdom, exceptional individuals claim rights of leadership, with decision-making authority and higher attendant privileges. They establish nepotistic traditions to ensure that their offspring enjoy the same status.
This progression leads eventually to states. States are even more complex and stratified, with increasing division of labor producing intermediate levels of status. It is in states that writing systems were first developed, for administrative purposes.
As population expands and states grow ever more complex, more positions become available for “exceptional” humans to fill. And upon the small elite at its pinnacle, society confers the status of “greatness.” The further society develops, the more inaccessible these humans become. They begin to be understood as symbols, and it becomes impossible for individuals to interact with them in any personal and meaningful way. We begin to conceive of them as figures.
An exceptional human in a society of a few hundred might interact with all other members of that society with regularity. Mutual influence can still be exercised. In a society of thousands, such a person might still have some accessibility. But as society increases in population and advances in complexity and social stratification, elites and figures of greatness become further removed from the general population. Their power over the common citizen increases in inverse proportion to the common citizen’s influence over them.
Thus the development of civilization actually disempowers the individual at the expense of the elite.
…Hey! Are you still reading!? I will remind you that this article is SOMEWHAT BROKEN, and might be better off just coming back later.
Our Civilization on the edge of the precipice
The Hive Mind
The Hive Mind effect is the mechanism that produces generic consensus (actually consensuses) within our civilization. I understand it as a phenomenon arising from a demand-refining feedback loop which has been highly optimized through capitalist processes. This loop connects our decision making elites and the global consumer class.
It works like this; the consumer population looks to the elites for guidance on what they ought to consume. The elites study actual consumption patterns to refine the products that they offer.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon of consensus-production is a latent function of this demand-refining feedback loop. The Power Law applies the force which reduces all viable consensuses to a limited set.
[Note that the Hive Mind need not produce a single consensus perspective; a limited set of diverging and even mutually adversarial positions is greatly preferred – (see Target Marketing)].
We can see the Hive Mind as the product of Western Capitalist Industrialized “Civilization.” This runaway firestorm of ravenous exploitation, consumption, depletion, and toxication is finely tuned to extract the greatest financial reward from the smallest investment. With our astonishing visibility throughout this vast interconnected web of humanity, the competition for attention is ferocious. And for humans, nothing captures our attention like extremes.
Thus, the Hive Mind roves ceaselessly through the most rarified heights of greatness (and the most terrifying depths of horror). It desperately scours for information in the farthest reaches. What it finds it then broadcasts throughout the humanverse in the battle to command that scarce resource of attention.
Through this feedback process, The Hive Mind produces and presents for consumption that which is most exceptional, in addition to that which is most palatable.
The Twin Crises of Palatability and Exceptionality
The Hive Mind effect focuses the field of production upon the most exceptional and the most palatable offerings. This phenomena should be readily apparent; simply compare the consumer goods commonly available today to those of your youth. You should find that virtually all have been optimized to provide maximum comfort and satisfaction, or to most viscerally command our attention. And why should this not be the case? It is merely the fulfillment of the promise upon which capitalism rests.
But it has grave consequences. For the moment, let’s dismiss any consideration of the impact consumption may have upon the ecosystem. Let us only consider its direct impact upon the individual human animal.
Personally, I have found that commonly available, prepared foodstuffs have become far more palatable since my childhood, while their options have proliferated.
The same goes for the vices that society permits – caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and even marijuana – all have experienced intense palatability-enhancement programs over the course of my life.
Entertainment as well. I have found that the entertainment consumed through screens in the home (video games, television, streaming movies, etc.) has become far more palatable. (As a child, “binge watching” of afternoon television would get me through a single episode each of the cartoons Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, and Rescue Rangers, before I had to try and choke down The People’s Court. If I made it closer to dinner time I would first have to chew through the thoroughly unpalatable MASH). And of course, the provocative and violent content continually pushes boundaries. The extremes of greatness and horror presented through these media advance their march.
Mass spectacles (professional sports, concerts, etc.) in turn become ever more extravagant, awe inspiring, and lavishly produced.
There is a consequence to this. Whatsoever is more palatable will be consumed in higher quantity. Whatever is more exceptional will command more attention.
Now food, vice, entertainment, etc. have all been so intensively refined that they have transcended palatability, and verge on intoxication. We are immersed in addictive cultural offerings.
Compounding the problem, our social connections are mediated through synthetic digital media, our society is host to exceptional, astronomical wealth disparities, and our ethos is that very motto of exceptionality – “Work Hard, Play Hard!”
I can think of no better facility for the manufacturing of addicts. And so, of course, our society becomes fatter, sicker, and more unhappy.
“Greatness” – Monopolizing the attention of a global consumer class
We find ourselves at the extreme pinnacle of societal complexity, citizens of a globalized civilization of more than 8 billion human beings connected instantaneously and synthetically through digital media. And we have just given birth to a new form of technology that is capable of convincingly distorting, at will, the very information that we receive through our synthetic global interface.
Welcome to the Post Reality world.
How long before we are subjected to the first, fully synthetic, Figure of Greatness? Perhaps this process has already begun.
As we have seen, the large society focused on an elite individual can imbue it with great power. And now, figures of greatness transfix and monopolize the scarce resource of attention of massive segments of a global society multi-billion strong.
So I am convinced “greatness” is a deeply problematic construction.
Greatness is a product of The Hive Mind. As such, its primary offerings are palatability and exceptionalism. That which is most palatable or exceptional is seldom that which is most nourishing.
I will chose to Celebrate Mediocrity
I use the term “Mediocrity” in contrast to “Greatness.” This is to distinguish the standards of sublimity, excellence, beauty, inspiration, etc. that The Hive Mind decrees as “greatness,” from those excellent, beautiful, and inspiring works that I encounter in my real life. I call “mediocre” (with a generous dose of irony) the efforts of the commonplace, approachable, knowable humans I interact with in real life, whose lives and experiences I can relate to in an authentic way.
I fervently believe that their “mediocre” expressions of individual humanity are the more valuable, precious, even sacred reflections of humanity. When I celebrate mediocrity, I celebrate the sacred.
(Note, I’m using this term “Mediocrity” only for wholehearted expressions; never in its alternate understanding of halfhearted).
So why use a term like “Mediocrity” anyway?
First, it’s a word that’s a bit startling to see applied to something good. I relish little transgressions like these. Most people require a bit of startling to jar them out of their otherwise conventional and conditioned ways of seeing. I deeply value independent thought and I would enjoy seeing more of it.
Also, the term carries the semantic venom of contempt for the middle ground. I find that a bit disturbing. Statistically the middle ground commands the vast bulk of the normal distribution (~68% at the core in fact).
So, statistically, that includes YOU. I hope that you do not hold yourself in such contempt!
The Gravity of our Plight
It is far worse than that. I am convinced our current condition reflects disdain that covers far more than 68% of us. Our globalized consumer society (a significant portion of the world’s ~ 8.069 Billion Population …as of 10/27/23) is dominated by The Hive Mind.
I submit that the Hive Mind is only interested in the ~0.2% of humanity that represent the very extremes of greatness (and horror) that lie on the fringes of the distribution, three standard deviations from the vast bulk of 68%. Thus, mediocrity today comprises ~99.7% of everything and everyone.
Chances are extremely high that neither you nor anyone or anything that you dearly love, existing within your own personal manifestation in this physical world, is of the slightest interest to the Hive Mind. And yet we willingly allow it to command our attention, program our minds, and govern much of our daily lives.
If you hold mediocrity in contempt, you condemn the vast bulk of human life. Including yourself and everyone and everything that you love. When you celebrate mediocrity, you say ‘Yes’ to life.
Creation for Creators
Groucho Marx once famously joked, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
As a punchline for laughs, that’s hilarious!
As a genuine expression of an individual’s self-regard, it is rather heartbreaking.
So I ask you – “Do you really want to belong to a club that would NOT accept you as a member?”
If not, I invite you to consider the challenge posed in Creation for Creators.
