www.templeofthought.org

So I was thinking (yeah, go figure, I think once in a while too) that really most people, including you and me, are merely mediocre. None of us is excelling at anything. I am sorry to break your heart but it's true. The good news is most people are pathetic mediocre losers like ourselves. Most people settle with mediocrity. Most people want to have a nice safe job, be able to afford a comfortable life and that's that.

See, being mediocre is easy. It doesn't take a lot of hard work and you don't have to sacrifice and fee uncomfortable. Being mediocre gets you the approval of the pack, the pat on the back - good job, well done. Sure, sometimes you'll have to work extra just to get to a mediocre level but that's only sometimes and that's when you usually go from one level of mediocrity to the next.

Yeah, that's right mediocrity has levels. I don't know how many levels but I assume they range from - "eh, you are okay" to "you are pretty good". It's all mediocrity, buddy. You might be thinking "well, I don't think I am mediocre, I am pretty good at math or Doom II or farting with my armpits". No, buddy, you are still mediocre, in your circle of friends you might think you are pretty good and your friends might think you are pretty good but at a grander scale you are mediocre if not even a sucker.

But then, I keep asking myself - well, why the hell are people mediocre? And just like the crazies I come up with my own answer - well, people are mediocre because they lack discipline, direction, and a drive. Yep, that's what it is... I guess (remember I am pretty mediocre too). Oh and another thing - they love comfort. Now, how many times have you gotten on one of those diets or made a commitment to go to the gym every day and work out hard and eventually look like Arnold? I've done it many times. Then what happens with most people - they go to the gym regularly for a week, two weeks, a month and then they kinda flake out. Did you know that research shows that most beginners don't last longer than 2 months in the gym. It's funny how in January and February gyms are packed with some of those with the new year resolutions to lose weight. By March this crowd thins out and it's only the regulars there. Happy to say I made it past March, not happy to say that I am still mediocre.

Then, comfort. It's such a wonderful thing. Ah, don't I love to get home after work, plop myself in front of the TV, eat the Chinese I picked up from the store and sit on that couch until I pass out. Now, I'd love me a beer too if it's too hot. Yeah baby, "hard" day of work...staring at the computer and secretly googling "boobies" and "booty". With one eye watching out for the boss, with the other eye looking at a hot babe with a triple E rack.
But it's comfort - safe job, safe home, safe car, safe life. It's so mediocre. People hate risk. Come on now, don't fool yourself, you hate risk too. All that cool talk of how you like gambling with life goes out the door the minute your ass gets on the line.

Extending yourself and growing means getting out of the comfort zone. That's why most guys secretly stare at the hot chick on the bus and imagine her naked. None of them though wants to get out of his comfort zone and talk to her. So what happens when you get out of your comfort zone? Well you get nervous, you feel awkward and stupid and then at some point you get used to the new environment and situation and you have just expanded your comfort zone. It's really cool, once you have the balls to do it. I for example was always scared to dance salsa in public because I suck. I don't know why I was scared. I thought I'd look stupid, that it's not for me, etc. Well I got over my fear when I finally did it...several times. Sure I sucked, but then I got this hot girl to teach me how to dance. She didn't teach me s**t but the fact that we had fun, made me confident. Eh, so I suck, so what, I can still have fun. Actually it's more fun to suck at salsa and to get all the hot chicks teach you how to dance than to be the expert and scare away everyone. Remember, even on the dancefloor the majority of people are mediocre. Now imagine you are a pro and you go to a salsa club - no one will wanna dance with you because everyone is thinking - oh, he's too good, I can't possibly dance with him. So, the expert ends up chatting with the bar tender about the Cubs game...

To be continued...

Wow

Still I'd like to add that even the ancient have said it long time ago:

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. ~Confucius

So we are all limited in this world, only potential tends to be limitless and of course frontiers are expanding perpetually, but

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. ~Ralph W. Sockman

and maybe that's why we all live and study all the time, at least the type of people I prefer to meet and talk with. There are layers indeed - of ignorance too and maybe only freedom of mind and openness to new ideas together with good amount of intellect and labor make things happen if they are to happen.

I am waiting for the next post..

I have an assignment for you. You should quit job and spend as much time as you can living on the streets. You'll see that your mediocre life will appear for you as something amazing and great. My idea is that mediocrity is in our minds, I don't think that a person whom you consider to be above mediocre level has rather different life than yours - a top manager, rock star, olimpic champion - wakes up in the morning does the job they have to, goes back home, eats and sleeps; and all of them often think that what a stupid life they have and how great it would be if they were ordinary people.

to be continued))

consider mediocrity in terms of risk....
some good working acceptable definition of risk can go like:

The statistical measure of an event happening or not.
The level of influence of entropy on the perceived events in one's life

I know it sucks as every definition and will be altered, but i'll elaborate:

risk is a measure, differentiating ordinary from extraordinary.
the chaos is always an enlarging and engulfing everything.
life and humans are actually opposing the entropy and chaos.
people try to minimize the risk that these two destructive forces influencing their lives.
thus the imbalance is important - between security and risk. between chaos and order.
ordinary people tend to lower the risk of anything extraordinary happening to them.
and thus tend to be the majority
it is the minority of the risk-takers, that actually bring about change, but also the consequences, deriving from any change.
usually people don't take risks and delve into mediocrity.
a sudden spike of risk-taking may mean the imbalance is about to get deeper. it is inevitable.
wanna stray from mediocrity? take a new risk! it pays back! one way or another

slightly offtopic: but your post reminded my of one of my favorite weird films, Pi where everything in nature can be understood through numbers.

Well, maybe this is so to some extent since I found a lot of sense in your posting about risk and chaos factors influence

it is an inevitable risk that the human mind will wander off-topic into something new and interesting
at least for me usually the urge to share has the upper hand and I spam the topic
this time, it may be different.
"Pi" has a lot to do about it, too, one of my favorites, because of the director and the music score author, as well as the lead.
I am a devout follower of the Laws of Murphy and the agnosticism as a whole, as long as it pertains to the human knowledge and understanding. I still think some things cannot be measured on a scale or compared, but reside in a tricky, murky area of our own intuition as human beings.
and still, people tend to try to quantify such categories, one of them being risk. mediocrity is the gravitational comfort zone of the risk phenomenon, no wonder we're all in it
but i still think that the battle is in every one of us, for every single soul. inside and separate. and mediocrity just scrapes the victims after that. inequality and imbalance is the mantra of those, able to transfer the risk to the rest, "teh mediocre ones" and thus label them suckers and the winners bear the fruits from such a transfer.

I wish we could all live in more ... creative times, when one is free to flourish and create unhindered. be responsible, but also able to express oneself and distinguish, mark and leave a note in history itself, not just the archives.
and thus deal a blow to mediocrity - who knows it may even be mediocre enough itself as to shoot itself in the foot