Life on easy street
- Martyn Foster
- 8 hours ago
- 4 min read
The devaluing of competence, skill, difficulty and anything challenging.
In another episode of has the pendulum swung too far the other way, I can’t help but feel that in our attempt to protect and pave the way for ourselves, we’ve unintentionally made things worse. Worse is probably not the right word, we’ve changed the perception and the parameters which I feel is giving us less acceptable outcomes. More will make sense as we go along…hopefully.
As I have talked previously – and I think my, “you are enough vs you are more than you think”, article is a good place to start for this conversation – I believe a lot of this depends on your mindset and worldview. I’m sure a number of people would consider even the idea of writing an article on this subject to be outrageous, “it’s obvious we don’t devalue these things!”, the superego voice in my head says.
Perhaps it is better if I start off with a discussion on elitism, why it’s still a problem (and always will be) and how it’s associated to the topic. I’m aware that this article may itself come across as elitist, I mean, it would be a wrongful attribution to elitism, but I’m at least not unaware of the possibility. Obviously, the easiest category to illustrate elitism is wealth, as I touched on in a roundabout way last week. I think it’s the inherent claim to superiority that rubs people the wrong way the most, but as I’ve stated before there is no correlation between wealth and morality – just as there is no correlation between intelligence and wisdom, another category ripe for elitism. You should always be able to demonstrate your (alleged) claims of superiority rather than just presuming it exists.
Genuine elitism is a problem. Elites are always in the market of making it easier for future elites, just look at legacy concerns and nepotism, for example. Elites also like to use other elites to benefit themselves such as Putin and those Russian oligarchs. Intellectual elites like to determine what ideas, narratives and research get undertaken, along with who gets to prosper coming through the system (and more importantly, who doesn’t). Usually, it’s an argument the elites make against those criticising them (or, in their words, inferior to them), “that they want life on easy street”, but the elites can be just as guilty of doing the same.
“You don’t have to do away with competence as such to understand not everyone will be Michael Jordan. Saying LeBron James and I are the same because we both play basketball is a ridiculous statement.”
I guess what gets me irritated, and perhaps this is personal for me, is where people make wrongful claims of elitism just because someone is better at something than they are. I can’t stand it when people conflate competence, skill, being good at something and/or high achieving, with a superior holier-than-thou attitude that successful people are somehow immoral and unethical when really, it’s their insecurities about their own abilities that is the source of their discomfort.
I understand people feel the need to develop a defence mechanism to always being attacked for not being (as) good, but I think we’re going too far in some cases. I say this a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it’s almost like we have the revenge of the underachievers flipping of the table against those who deem themselves as superior to them. Granted, there are crappy people shitting on those they deem inferior, but that doesn’t mean we make everything the same, flatten the curve, praise low achievement and denigrate high achievement, celebrate the easy and chastise the hard/difficult.
Video gaming has a lot of great examples of these sorts of things. On the one hand, you have the “Git Gud” gatekeeping crowd calling everyone else a “noob”, and then you have life on easy street players constantly seeking validation for playing on easy difficulty and broadcasting how much they despise those “elitists” who don’t. Nowadays, PlayStation has all but done away with difficulty level-based trophies and allows platinums on the easiest difficulties. It also feels like so many games are praised as being masterpieces when they aren’t. These lowering of standards may be welcome to some, but are a bane for others. Daring to even bring this up usually results in false accusations of gatekeeping or elitism. It’s almost like people accusing others of this are guilty of it themselves.
No doubt that helicopter/bulldozer parenting has aided the life on easy street mentality; adults desperately trying to remove any and all negativity and inhibitions to their child’s life, thinking they’re doing them (and the world) a solid when in fact it’s more of a disservice. As I postulated in my article, “Popularity vs Truth”, I believe we’re wrongly moving away from a truth-based existence to a merely preferential one which exacerbates the devaluing of competence, skill, difficulty and anything challenging.
I admire David Goggins – the opposite of a man living life on easy street – reading his personal story and the things he’s gone through and what he continues to put himself through now, both mentally and physically, to end up where he is in life, it’s truly a miraculous tale. The former Navy Seal turned ultra marathon runner is in the upper echelon of human endurance and an incredible inspiration to many people, and an easy target for some, sadly…not that he really gives a fuck.
Am I suggesting to maintain the status quo? I don’t believe so. We are all of varying abilities, but we don’t need to erode and devalue standards, especially high standards, in accepting people where they are or indeed lifting them up.
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