Sunday, April 15, 2018
Striving for Greatness / Striving for Shit
I received this little moral lesson in an email. No doubt such lessons are well-meaning. They don’t qualify as “rants” but I felt compelled to respond to it with a rant because this mentality is now pervasive and never questioned. Fundamentalist Religious followers and Marxists alike love “messages” like this, tugging on their frayed heartstrings and leaving their minds in perpetual sleep.
Truth be told, I hate little moral lectures like this. The average uncritical clown sees little videos like this and they think the message is somehow profound and insightful when, in fact, it’s full of shit. “Speaking kindly,” and “Lov[ing] generously” is great but completely unrelated to the lifestyle one strives for. If all a person needs is a house, why get a nice one? If all you want is to create art, why strive to create the very best, especially if no one wants or expects the very best anyway?
There is nothing wrong with wanting a nicer cup for your coffee or,... a better job, or more refined or dignified life. While it does induce stress, the stress is a biologically built in factor that motivates progress and, in some cases, greatness. A race for more garbage is certainly not a worthy standard but striving for the best has some merits.
In this video, it’s kind of ironic that the goal is stress reduction and the demonstration is through downing...caffeine (genius).
If I were to do a video like this I would show everyone scrambling for the shittiest cup, or the leader commanding them to take a shitty cup so as not to be “selfish.” But, ask yourself, what’s so nobel or wise about a collective race to the bottom, or even a race to mediocrity?
The real moral of this story is that some people and some nations and cultures will strive for the best, some others will simply not care, and others, to prove some abstract moral point, will demand that everyone “equally” subsist on scraps. Some will be motivated by refined taste and standards and some will have no taste or standards. Some people’s value of greatness is ...to not be great. Some people’s value of greatness is to seek greatness in all that they do.
I’m now going to have a cup of coffee...not in a convenience store paper cup but in that really nice cup I bought at an arts and crafts show. The one made by a really creative and great craftsman. But that’s just me.
