Comment "It's a peak of the stage of mediocrities"
This is my original commentary to an article at Medium.com "It's a peak of the stage of mediocrities" (December 18, 2019).
It's a peak of the stage of mediocrities now in human culture. Human civilization will be destroyed by the quantity and quality of people. I'm sorry, I'm not going to write nice things here, because I don't see them at Medium. There are too many mediocre authors here and middling products of their activity.
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Image from Pixabay.com
I already wrote a comment to another article of that author once. This article is middling as well. The author offers "letting go of your good habits" and quotes Buddha and Epictetus. That's a bit shallow.
The author writes: "Earlier this year, I stopped publishing regularly because I didn't want to cling to it. Nothing happened. One day, I just started up again."
Frankly speaking, I think nothing bad would happen if the author stopped writing at all. I don't even think anyone would have noticed that and the world (and Medium) wouldn't have become any worse.
The only true thing in article is that the author admits, that "most of what we do comes from fear. We fear that we’ll lose our careers if we’re not working every waking moment. We fear that people will forget about us if we’re not posting on Instagram daily. We fear that we’ll lose our relevance if we’re not devouring news and pop culture and the latest memes."
That's what the mediocrities are about. They do something not because they cannot keep their thoughts (music, poems) inside, but they are afraid to lose their audience. That's why they have to produce more and more of bullshit every day. And there are so many mediocrities around... And so much bullshit...
Why did the author start up writing again? Obviously because of the money. After all, there are readers of his articles there. One of the readers even wrote in her comment to the article:
"THANK YOU for this, Darius! Along with the rest of the wisdom in this article, this statement does a lot to dispel the anxiety that it seems many Medium writers can't help but broadcast with their repeated admonitions... "
Mediocre authors exist because their readers are mediocre.
I do not see any wise thoughts in this article, sorry. I know without Buddha and the Stoics that there is nothing "good" or "bad" in life, that the extremes meet and if something is too good, it isn't good, too. Even "good" things (sports, food, sex, hobbies, study, work) can harm while being misused. So the simple conclusion is "do not misuse", i.e. stop overeating, don't work out when you don't want to, and don't write middling articles. But how can you do this if you already have the bad habits of overeating (because the food is tasty), overtraining (because you want to fight the overweight or you just are taught to work out no matter how you feel) and writing weak articles or books (because you are paid for them)?
It's a vicious circle for the humanity.
People get the bar for their creativity lower and lower and the degradation of humans is more and more observed. There are almost no personalities in art, politics, science, literature, music, philosophy... They are dissolved in a faceless mass of mediocrities. And mediocrities vote for mediocre rulers and applaud to mediocre authors at Medium. Yes, there are still some true personalities in the most real (competitive) fields like sports or business. However, what I see - there are tons of leadership training schools around, where again the mediocrities try to make the leaders from the other mediocrities (of course for money) and then everyone is surprised that the real personalities are so rare.
All that is here because the stage of mediocrities has come. The only thing that makes me feel relatively good (so far) is that the electricity is still there, the planes fly and the cars drive. However, this world soon will come to an end with such a growing dominance of mediocrities. They are not able to maintain it.
I very much agree with the second statement in the last comment about "many Medium writers". 90% of the materials posted at Medium are frankly weak, shallow or even bad. By the way, Medium itself confirms that. They ask for "information quality - accuracy, insightfulness, and offering something uniquely valuable to the reader" and offer quite a good money ($5K-50K a month) for that.
The most shocking experience for me at Medium was the poetry. It has no rhyme, no meter and yet the authors modestly call themselves "poets" and "philosophers". If it is possible to argue about a deep or shallow sense in prose, the poetry without the rhyme is not a poetry. I know it is possible to write the good poems in English. As the example of a poetry with rhyme I placed my little poem "Death". Medium didn't curate it, it has been read by only 5-6 people so far and this was one more proof for me of the degradation of human creativity in general, not just at Medium.
If 90% of all Medium's authors would simply stop writing, the world would be a much better and cleaner place to live in. I know, this is an utopia. Medium as well as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc makes money just on mediocrities. And every member of the service (me including) is convinced that his works deserve to be shown to the whole world. The only tiny obstacle to that torrent of middling materialized intellectual bullshit is the conscience of the author. However, conscience is a very flexible thing and depends much on money.
And money is just a guided illusion because of the inflation.
P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov
..........
It's a peak of the stage of mediocrities now in human culture. Human civilization will be destroyed by the quantity and quality of people. I'm sorry, I'm not going to write nice things here, because I don't see them at Medium. There are too many mediocre authors here and middling products of their activity.
Image from Pixabay.com
I already wrote a comment to another article of that author once. This article is middling as well. The author offers "letting go of your good habits" and quotes Buddha and Epictetus. That's a bit shallow.
The author writes: "Earlier this year, I stopped publishing regularly because I didn't want to cling to it. Nothing happened. One day, I just started up again."
Frankly speaking, I think nothing bad would happen if the author stopped writing at all. I don't even think anyone would have noticed that and the world (and Medium) wouldn't have become any worse.
The only true thing in article is that the author admits, that "most of what we do comes from fear. We fear that we’ll lose our careers if we’re not working every waking moment. We fear that people will forget about us if we’re not posting on Instagram daily. We fear that we’ll lose our relevance if we’re not devouring news and pop culture and the latest memes."
That's what the mediocrities are about. They do something not because they cannot keep their thoughts (music, poems) inside, but they are afraid to lose their audience. That's why they have to produce more and more of bullshit every day. And there are so many mediocrities around... And so much bullshit...
..........
Why did the author start up writing again? Obviously because of the money. After all, there are readers of his articles there. One of the readers even wrote in her comment to the article:
"THANK YOU for this, Darius! Along with the rest of the wisdom in this article, this statement does a lot to dispel the anxiety that it seems many Medium writers can't help but broadcast with their repeated admonitions... "
Mediocre authors exist because their readers are mediocre.
I do not see any wise thoughts in this article, sorry. I know without Buddha and the Stoics that there is nothing "good" or "bad" in life, that the extremes meet and if something is too good, it isn't good, too. Even "good" things (sports, food, sex, hobbies, study, work) can harm while being misused. So the simple conclusion is "do not misuse", i.e. stop overeating, don't work out when you don't want to, and don't write middling articles. But how can you do this if you already have the bad habits of overeating (because the food is tasty), overtraining (because you want to fight the overweight or you just are taught to work out no matter how you feel) and writing weak articles or books (because you are paid for them)?
..........
It's a vicious circle for the humanity.
People get the bar for their creativity lower and lower and the degradation of humans is more and more observed. There are almost no personalities in art, politics, science, literature, music, philosophy... They are dissolved in a faceless mass of mediocrities. And mediocrities vote for mediocre rulers and applaud to mediocre authors at Medium. Yes, there are still some true personalities in the most real (competitive) fields like sports or business. However, what I see - there are tons of leadership training schools around, where again the mediocrities try to make the leaders from the other mediocrities (of course for money) and then everyone is surprised that the real personalities are so rare.
All that is here because the stage of mediocrities has come. The only thing that makes me feel relatively good (so far) is that the electricity is still there, the planes fly and the cars drive. However, this world soon will come to an end with such a growing dominance of mediocrities. They are not able to maintain it.
..........
I very much agree with the second statement in the last comment about "many Medium writers". 90% of the materials posted at Medium are frankly weak, shallow or even bad. By the way, Medium itself confirms that. They ask for "information quality - accuracy, insightfulness, and offering something uniquely valuable to the reader" and offer quite a good money ($5K-50K a month) for that.
The most shocking experience for me at Medium was the poetry. It has no rhyme, no meter and yet the authors modestly call themselves "poets" and "philosophers". If it is possible to argue about a deep or shallow sense in prose, the poetry without the rhyme is not a poetry. I know it is possible to write the good poems in English. As the example of a poetry with rhyme I placed my little poem "Death". Medium didn't curate it, it has been read by only 5-6 people so far and this was one more proof for me of the degradation of human creativity in general, not just at Medium.
If 90% of all Medium's authors would simply stop writing, the world would be a much better and cleaner place to live in. I know, this is an utopia. Medium as well as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc makes money just on mediocrities. And every member of the service (me including) is convinced that his works deserve to be shown to the whole world. The only tiny obstacle to that torrent of middling materialized intellectual bullshit is the conscience of the author. However, conscience is a very flexible thing and depends much on money.
And money is just a guided illusion because of the inflation.
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P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov
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