The existence of mediocrity is a consequence of humans valuing sociability enough to give up some exceptionalism for it. I write in part because writing is work where I can have company, even if it means being mostly mediocre at it and dealing with resulting social consequences.
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We’re also smarter as a collective species than as individuals. Yes there’s a tax of bureaucracy/“innovation by committee” but hive minds of grain-fed runts still out-evolved scattered beef-only nomad barbarians. Only takes a small dose of exceptionalism and it’s Advantage Borg.
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So for a) social psychological reasons b) efficiencies of scale/concentration c) higher collective intelligence. The human condition is always lower dimensional than what technology allows, and is a function of population, not possibility.
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Mediocrity is safety net of psyche. You sustain it by creating modes of being that *large numbers of people can participate in at acceptable levels in Borg/Death Star mode*. This is in fact what the “democratization” of platform capitalism is. Clouds of average human computers.
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Democratization is mediocratization. The reduction in the number of special traits (genetic, educational, virtues, class) required to participate in a function. The fundamental contradiction inherent in hustle porn and celebration of excellence is ignoring this powerful force.
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With apologies to A. N. Whitehead, civilization advances by extending the number of operations humans can perform without being exceptional or OCD.
You want to level up the world? Replace a genius function, not with an AI, but with something a half-engaged slacker can phone in.
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Seattle is squeezing mediocrity hard right now. And predictably there’s more, and crazier, homeless people on the streets, whose mental health/drug use is a bigger issue than their poverty. Almost as bad as San Francisco now. This is what happens when you wage war on mediocrity.
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Be careful what you wish for in wishing mediocrity would go away. You’re saying: make it to the top or break down and fall to the human garbage pile. Mediocrity is sustainable “fake it a bit till you die happy” option. Not “fake it till you make it or fail and die of insanity.”
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Mediocritism isn’t socialism by the way. Capitalism is a 10x better engine of mediocratization than any kind of socialism *if* you don’t fetishize it. I suspect vaguely socialist modes of societal organization emerge as an overcompensation when mediocrity is stressed too hard.
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This happens when exceptionalists and excellentists drink their own “meritocracy” kool-aid too much and start believing in master races, superhumans and other statistically dubious eugenics fever dream misreadings of how capitalism actually works.
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Capitalism works not by raising floor or ceiling but by dragging up middle via democratization-mediocratization. Misreading this is basically a case of being so terrified of being merely ordinary, and people who accept a contemporary ordinary life, you wage war on mediocrity.
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So dare to be ordinary, huddle in the middle, slack off, say fuck-off to excellence/meritocracy/hustle religions and Make Meh Great Again 🙂
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