* About 15% of instagram posts, especially in the morning, are about achieving excellence and outstanding performance (with a strong bias on achieving higher status and recognition).
* Humans are social animals. Therefore, hierarchical. By pure biological logic, a small number of individuals in each group will assume leadership and manifest excellence (in other mammals, usually by higher strength and skill in killing). A species where genes would favor more than 2-10% extremely aggressive males and females struggling unrelentlessly (meaning, figthing to death) for priority for food, territory, etc CANNOT be social. By definition, a social species must have codified behavior of mediocrity acceptance and value
* Culture has always given special status to different forms of excellence, from the early records we have of it everywhere (meaning societies with no previous contact they can remember).
* In cultural humans (meaning later than a period that could never be accurately dated, but when cultural traits were strongly determining of human interaction and action), the difference between excellence and deficiency is determined by CULTURE itself. Therefore, it depends on historical, economic and social context.
* I’ll take myself as an example: 100-30 thousand years ago, if I survived to reproductive age, my genes would probably determine that I would have killed an important number of fellow humans (either in the same pack or attacking groups) and would, as a strictly alpha female, be coveted by the alpha male, which the alpha female always chooses. Soon I would have produced offspring, part of which maybe, just maybe, might manifest the aggressive/creative behavioral phenotypes of their parents. In many ancient and middle age societies, depending on my social class, I would be executed at a very early or early age, most probably not leaving offspring. In the XIXth and XXth century, depending on the society and my social class, I would be committed to a mental hospital, but possible after leaving offspring. Today, I can enjoy being a high performance scientist or athlete or whatever, also depending on the society and social class I belong to. That is how bipolar genes remained in the human gene pool (yes: it is highly associated with what idiots call the “alpha” profile, which can also – and alternatively, never both – be associated with certain levels of psychopathology).
* Mediocre means “in the middle”. Mathematically, it refers to the greater frequency of ANYTHING, as expressed by the logistic curve. If you stop and think, and back off a little bit from being indoctrinated by the “be awesome” motivational instashit, you might conclude that it is not only ok, but expected that the great majority has to be mediocre.
* If you give some minutes extra thought to it, you will conclude that you are fortunately mediocre in many aspects (in a behavioral study, also called “variables”). The ones in which you may (or may not) excel may or may not be valued by your sub-culture.
* The “excellence is what really matters” ideology favors faking excellence, which is pretty obvious: if something is a rare commodity, and is related to innate abilities or genetic traits, it will be artificially produced to conquer the desired social validation and status.
* Given the very specific factors that determine what is or is not excellent at any given time, at any given society, promoting the struggle to achieve that is stupid and cruel. It is a way of not accepting difference. Most probably, the underdog you despise is excellent (or at least, much better than you) in something. Either something not socially valued or something that, because of not being socially valued, he has never had the chance to discover the talent for.