The monstrous burden of mediocrity

IN Death in Venice Thomas Mann asks: “Do you know what lies at the bottom of the mainstream?” His reply to that question is also the same thing that's the root of all evil in this land. Frankly, it is mediocrity that has been killing us, its inexorable burden crushing us daily. We're going from bad to worse in the manner a lower number drags down the average.
Mediocrity is everywhere and it's in everything. It's there in our writings and speeches. It's there in our courage and conviction. It's ubiquitous and omnipresent. Anybody who puts his or her ear to the ground will get to hear the sound of its marching boots. We have lost our appetite for excellence. We have lost our ambition for improvement. We are a hollow nation, high on style but low on substance.
It's mediocrity that has corroded our lives like oxygen and water convert iron into rust. Mediocrity is why our politicians badmouth each other. Mediocrity is why our bureaucrats are inefficient. It's for the same reason why our intellectuals are prisoners of passion instead of conscience. It's repeatedly for this reason why basic instincts prevail over sublime visions.
Napoleon Bonaparte knew how it works. He said that if small men attempt great enterprises, they always end up reducing those enterprises to the level of their mediocrity.We have more educated people than before. We also have more foreign educated people than before. More people write books in this country. There are more television channels and radio stations, more newspapers. We have certainly got more writing, talking and thinking minds than any time before.
But more has created less and that's where mediocrity gets to us. In its vicious cycle mediocrity leads to mediocrity, thus perpetuating in its perpetual motion a preposterous culture of inordinate inferiority. While enlightened minds in other nations of the world are engaged in the task of uplifting their masses, our experience has been quite the opposite. Our gifted minds in their quest for cheap and ready popularity have hoisted themselves at deplorable levels of esteem and integrity.
Needless to say, our great minds in this process have diminished themselves. Jagdish Bhagwati coined the term immiserising growth, which means economic growth could result in a country being worse off than before. That's exactly what has been happening in our intellectual and cultural domains. The growth has only diminished itself. Higher minds lowering themselves have elevated lower minds to higher positions.
That's how street smart defines smartness, cleverness defines intelligence, immorality defines dignity and depravity defines sanity. Mediocrity has wrecked our mental grid. It has wreaked havoc on our sense of proportion, messed up our sense of decency, and twisted our sense of right and wrong.Mediocrity, like termites eat wood, is feeding on our conscience.
But, above all, it has inspired small men to undertake great tasks. Many of them have built vast business empires and some of them have gone to the parliament, while others have infiltrated rest of the rungs on the social scale. One of the strengths of mediocrity is that, like a downward spiral, it feeds on itself. It goes from leaders to followers, bosses to subordinates, holy men to disciples, achievers to admirers, every time from highs to lows. It turns obscenity into beauty, corruption into conscience, debauchery into character, and descent into ascent.
Mediocrity, in its silent aggression, has created wasteland. It has created vacuums and voids. It has also created a great deal of pretensions. And people have become who they aren't. Usurpers are keepers, cheaters are teachers, dealers are leaders, wily is wise and empty is solid.
It's not that a society can entirely get rid of mediocrity, because it must exist for the same reason smokers need a corner in airports. This rationale was explained by US senator Roma Hruska during the nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court in 1970. “Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They're entitled to a little representation, aren't they?'” he quizzed.
In our case, the smoking corner has taken over the airport. Our lives are so much regulated by mediocrity that we have lost our penchant for superior performance. This nation instead of pulling itself up is taking itself down. The only thing showing progress here is mediocrity when the ordinary is regularly cannibalising the extraordinary.
On July 15, 1960, John F Kennedy talked about the New Frontier while accepting the Democratic Party nomination, and his words ring sadly true after all these years. Our country, as he said about the United States, must make a choice between public interest and private comfort, between national greatness and national decline. Our leaders can't tell us that because mediocrity holds them back from attaining that height.
 

The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. Email: badrul151@yahoo.com