[1153] Mean

I’ve written maybe 7 pages over the last week of noise. I’m not in a wholly chaotic and ambivalent place, but zeroing in on something specific to explore has been elusive. Maybe this will get me there.

A few weeks ago, I came across an explanation for why so much abhorrent behavior is tolerated in different work environments. There are things I, and people in my circles, find it “incomprehensible” to do, and a common refrain I hear is some complaint about why a colleague gets paid more, isn’t fired, or is otherwise ignored when they do something that, my friend or higher-achieving person, would never.

The explanation was that we’re more a collection of average-to-shit than not. When you have someone who can legitimately do something better than you, you’re a threat. Almost always you’re going to have a boss that is exceptionally average, typically lazy, and aspiring to the middle of the road maintain basic survival space. This was true when I worked at a movie theater all the way up to the literal head of the Indiana Department of Child Services.

“Average” is the key word. Most of us, probably too often, can speak to areas in which we excel. We ruminate particularly deeply on our strengths or past achievements when we want to fuel a narrative of what we’re entitled to or our worth. As a society, I would put money on the idea that almost all of us have said something to the effect of, “I hate people.” Whether that’s true or just true-enough, it’s a gut-level reaction to our approximate engagement with “your average person.”

I try to depersonalize how I understand the average person. Every baby that’s born functionally resets the species. Whatever genetic information that carries through, it’s only informed in a passively selected way. All of the religious baggage you might wish to stain that baby’s brain with, all of the “cultural norms,” or pathological circularly reasoned spaces need practice. The infinite sea of things that baby will stay ignorant about as it grows up will be as diverse as any individual, but no less infinite.

What happens if you are “generally” an improvement on what’s average? Say you’re pretty. Say you’re smart. Say you’re exceptionally agreeable. You don’t have to be above average to recognize the potential desirability and exploitability of people like that. You can simply want to jerk off to a pretty face, pawn off the responsibility for cleaning the oceans, and abuse the persistently self-immolating patience of your exhausted-mommy-esc spouse.

When one of those people gains the confidence or self-awareness, now you’re in trouble. The smart person might dictate, in excruciating detail, how you aren’t living up to your responsibilities. The pretty person recognizes the control they have over your emotional well-being which might translate into a certain control over your finances. The agreeable one plots underneath the outward displays of social chaos as no one suspects they have an agenda beyond affirming yours.

When you’re average, you’re safe. You don’t become a target. You aren’t immediately resented. People aren’t deeply suspicious that you’ll just “do anything you please.” I think back to the party house. I engineered the conditions, but at a certain point, I became like this evil mastermind presumed to be…I guess…pulling the strings of hundreds of people coming over almost every weekend? People were practically sling-shooting their sense of agency and self-control at me if anything remotely went wrong towards the end of the party years. “We” were no longer partying together, I fucked up for organizing it in the first place altogether. You certainly can’t be blamed for moving into what I pitched, explicitly, as a party house, right?

As average habits go, finding someone to blame is as biblically cliche as it gets. Even when we may be more accurate than not in assigning the blame, we’re still exercising the wrong muscles. I’m a big Bernie Sanders fan. I think millionaires and billionaires are “victims” of our disingenuous systems. Why? By the numbers, you can call someone rich. By their psychology, or history, or wisdom, or rules we incentivize them to play by though? I blame the species-level messaging. We’re still scapegoating our own poor understanding of macro-economic systems. We’re still refusing to lead with a collective ethic versus entrench behind our narrative presumptions.

That is, if we don’t generally, on average, believe and behave as if power and money are corrupting forces, in our heart of hearts, we’re not going to do the practical work to claw back the money it takes for all of us to live better. It’s analogous to addiction. We’re absolutely sold and stuck on agency-crippling notions. We refuse or are never invited to do the work of explicitly stating those notions. So, in the abstract, in the grey, we flail. Without a goal, we default to the norms. We succumb to induced states of propaganda and irrelevance.

I think average is unduly and overwhelmingly deadly. Average is the output of unsympathetic, unconscious, and ambivalent natural selection. What’s “natural” is going to be insufficient if there’s any real “we” in this collective exercise to survive beyond this given moment. We need to define and enable other areas of exceptional human behavior and achievement. We need to do it in the same way we do with Hollywood. I want the Brad Pitt’s of social work to be making 6 figures, not their greedy share-holding bosses or subsidized firm bilking the government. The money is, and has always been, there. The values aren’t.

I genuinely struggle with the idea of wanting to “excel.” I want to be, not just better than average, but exceptionally good at things I do. It’s a borderline pathological disposition that’s taken me many years to find a remotely mellow way to relate to it. I’m literally thankful for getting older and having some energy zapped and thus forced to slow and calm down if I didn’t want to hurt myself. My experience of life has often left me dumbfounded in how people respond to the desire to live and act in service to “more than average.”

It’s worse than that though, because I’m still scarred by the responses I’ve gotten from people for being basically human or competent too. When I called the police to wellness check a friend who vague-booked a suicidal-sounding message, the look on like 7 people’s faces around me was like, “Why bother?” I still can’t fucking figure that one out and you’d think I wouldn’t need a larger display for why I shouldn’t have continued being friends with them. Each client at DCS I informed of their rights or treated with respect and not as though I was a wanna-be cop who needed to threaten them, more than half of the leadership maintained the not-so-quiet condescending and flabbergasted posture because, in their minds, you get better outcomes when people are scared, angry, and lied to?

Round we circle to looking like a threat. When you hold an above-average decency and engagement standard, the insecure cunts who’ve bullied their way to positions of power or influence know that, were you ever in direct competition to something, people are going to prefer you. People are going to be looking for the solutions-focused patient leader more than the threatening asshole. (Innate fascist tendencies and patterns aside. Or, once they subside.)

If I’m not doing something that I create, or where I can be more or less left alone, or where I can do a dozen other things that serve as coping, I’m stuck in an impossible situation. I can’t help but notice when you’re being inefficient. I can’t help but notice when you’re getting in your own, or especially my, way. I can’t help when people like me more than you. I can’t help that I’ve developed in a way that does not allow me to accept “average” where better can be achieved, often with less effort, once we’ve made a detailed account of the nature of the process or problem.

I’m not on auto-pilot. I’m not using every opportunity to speak with someone to unload prepared remarks or cliches. It is what it is? It’s also not what it’s fucking not. And it’s also not making much fucking sense, stressing everyone out, and does not have to be this way. We need to recognize we’re in a constant, moment to moment battle, for control. Control of what? Hopefully, with any sense, how we define and practice our values. How we dignify our work and time. How we celebrate and long for each day instead of justify and excuse all that we haven’t lived up to.