Today's Question: How'd it All Get So Mediocre?

There's a Kurt Vonnegut short (very short) story called "Harrison Bergeron." In "HB," the United States Handicapper General, under the auspices of the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, has stamped out individual talents and characteristics for the sake of total unimpeded equality. The population is fed mindless entertainment, all their memories periodically wiped clean. It isn't torture, not exactly, nor is it intolerable. It's just mediocre. Imposed, entrenched mediocrity.

And it is quite terrifying.

Now I don't mean to suggest that our current moment is anything like this Vonnegutian nightmare. We aren't physically burdened by actual weights meant to "level the field", nor do buzzing alarms trigger mass distraction and short-term amnesia. Intelligence and beauty are not outlawed. We still have our wits and our various beacons -- in politics, culture, athletics, the arts, and so on. And yes (or no), we are not suffocated by comprehensive, dystopian egalitarianism.

But things do seem awfully... mediocre! We seem to be waiting, on pause, not necessarily with bated breath so much as with Ambien and an US Weekly. It's as though we've been treading water beneath mostly gray skies for a seriously long time, without a "Look, land in sight!" We're weary, we're wary, and rather than swim for shore we float. Our so-called entertainments are what stand in for our current events (quotes left out for obviousness). Our political anger is sooner directed toward straw men than funneled into substantive policy debate and prescription. And while we don't loll about hamstrung by the Handicapper, US citizens do tend to diminish or ignore our most natural advantages. Our enormous opportunities -- many of them unique to America -- for renewable alternative energy. Our once-prodigious diplomatic capital. Our heavy industry. Our edge in scientific and technological innovation.

So good news: We aren't dying, exactly, nor are we living a post-American world (as last week's Newsweek whined). It's just that we aren't really scraping the sky these days. We've become -- not in every way, but in too many ways -- damn average. In our actions and in our expectations, we toe the safe, paunchy middle.

Kennedy promised the moon by a decade's end -- it happened. WWII's Greatest Generation was asked to tighten belts and roll up their sleeves -- they did. And while these admittedly cherry-picked examples might have been nothing more than a function of their unique times, is it easy to imagine us reflexively rising to the moment in ours? Look at where we stand: on a precipice, we're always told of danger and devastation. But even with terrorism, climate change, an always-simmering war, genocide abroad, a credit crunch affecting us everywhere, and countless other messes the newest century has brought .. what precisely defines US (not Us)? Have we struck out with renewed vigor? Have we succumbed to fear? Well, neither. We're mediocre. We've embraced American mediocrity.

Like our heroes, the lobotomized couple in "Harrison Bergeron," we sense something isn't right. We know we ought to be breaking inertia. And this unease isn't just a tickle in the recesses of our minds because, lo and behold, it's front and center. But what will do the trick and wake us from the stupor (stop checking your email while reading this!)? Another catastrophe? Web 7.0? One of those Change candidates? Or will it not be so dramatic, this eventual extrication from the muck of mucks? Might it be more like the car you rock back and forth until suddenly what had been an inconspicuous gathering of momentum launches it back onto the road with a heart-starting roar?

We better hope so. Things aren't really bad. Plateau coasting is better than a downward spiral any day. But the Internet-savvy 1990s were notable pretty much ONLY for jejune prosperity. And these unnamed 2000s are notable mostly for a comfortable unease.

To think the decade that starts in 2011 is at all like its immediate predecessor, which I don't think will the case, would be the saddest sign ever. Means we'd be looking at a pattern of room temperature mediocrity. With that I say look forward -- and only forward.

Speaking of 2011, take a look please: 2011: Trendspotting, from McGraw-Hill (Laermer.com).

Comments

[ShawnMichel]

With all due respect, this was a fairly mediocre post.

The reality is this: being a corporate cog, as over 80 percent of 'Murkans are, being a consumptican (now we're at 99 percent), thinking that consuming is creative, is creativity, thinking that working for the Machine in any way excuses you from being the Aristotelian equivalent of an indentured servant (99.999 percent), is what drives the mediocrity now. There is no need to "wipe" our brains: we do it entirely on our own, and voluntarily. We do it practically every moment of our lives. We do it when we subsume who we are for money, for status, for position, power, and fame.

The State doesn't need to do anything: we approach it, chains in hand, and ask to be locked up forever. (Or the corporation. Same difference.) We fill our heads afterward with vacuous entertainment and infotainment and celebrity gossip; we fill our faces with Botox and fast food and Republican ideology. We do it--not the State, not some third-party entity.

And the taskmasters kick back and smile secretly to one another ...

Wake up, people. It's later than you think.

[burnt]

"But things do seem awfully... mediocre! We seem to be waiting, on pause..."

half full... I agree that we all need to shed our obligatory "handicaps" and accept the fact that our "potential" is largely untapped... and on a social level, that scenario is designed to function that way.

It is easier to lie to a constituency, if that body has first accepted the lie that they can not understand the truth.

There is a glaring exception to your analysis that only becomes readily apparent if you "look backwards" for perspective. I refer to the communication structure that allows to you to present your short rant... the blogosphere. I can not emphasize too greatly, how your posts are changing the scenario that you describe, Richard... exactly at the same time you describe it.

We are nearly limited to measuring the results through hindsight. The fact that there is a growing chorus that claims this power shift to be untrue, is more evidence of the change. Don't believe the lie. It may not be that the content of your message on any one given day is world-changing... but the fact that you are participating... that we are all participating, IS a breakout from the universal mediocrity that you describe.

We are experiencing no less than the birth of real participatory democracy... of course, our self-imposed blinders mostly limit that perception. It will become more evident to all after this election.