“Do you know the hallmark of a second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own – they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal – for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them – while you’d give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don’t know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. Do they have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors – hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom – the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don’t respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?”
“I’ve felt it all my life,” she said.”
-AYN RAND
Mediocrity does not mean an average intelligence; it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters. Mediocrity is what rules the world right now. The need is for prime movers and how viciously the world treats them. Also one needs to ponder over what the world would do with mediocre’s and what would the world be without true intellectuals and prime movers. This was shown during the Mahabharata when Dhritrashtra had his advisers as fools and thus he finally lost everything. While Pandavas had their advisor as Krishna who was brilliant beyond words as he had a solution for all problems. This can be true of any prime mover in the present world too. Man, at his highest potentiality, is realized and fulfilled within each creator himself. No other individual can fulfill the intellect of another individual. But yes there are cases of copyright violation, plagiarism where one individual copies the work of others. Thus original work gets unnoticed. This is because of the herd mentality. Individualism is lost and prime movers nowhere to be seen.
But I have a question here. Would it matter to a creator whether anyone or a million or all the men around him fall short of the ideal of man? The fact is that this does not matter to mediocre’s because they themselves are imitators. It affects scientists, saints that all men fall shortfall of the ideal man. Among mediocre’s our politicians, actors, doctors, who are bothered about mundane aspect as such as politicians though not all are corrupt, actors are busy in the beauty business constantly visiting Gymnasiums and getting surgeries to look their best and doctors minting money. Professors worldwide are busy researching what is not what is essential to be researched on.
Thus creators must not think that she can somehow transfer her energy and intelligence to these leeches and underachievers and make them fit for her purpose in that way. She must face other men as they are, recognizing them as essentially independent entities, by nature, and beyond his primary influence, she must deal with them only on his own, independent terms, deal with such as the judges can fit for his own purpose or live up to her standards and expect nothing from others. That’ because nothing can be really expected out of them.
Hope that we have more prime movers and less mediocre’s because the answer to all problems lies with the real prime movers and not mediocre’s.
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