There's no better way to ensure the enmity of the mediocre than by exposing their mediocrity for what it is.

It came to me, the sentence in the title. I had been unwinding, methodically, phenomena and structure, history and ideology -- it's a slow, dual processⁱ, and its debris often adheres, like slag in a furnace. Which I suppose is what this blog even is : a large collection of selected slag. You know how diamonds are made, right ?ⁱⁱ

Originally I was going to make it a byline, and be done with it ; but then its own adherences looked sad. Neglected lemmas, inconsequential middle steps, the very substance of all things that a certain sort of lunatic always wants to skip over. Why ?

No, let us take them in from the rain, let us give them a loving home, let them live, and be lively and happy. We have room for all fapturi & plasmuiri of the spirit here, why not. Ink is finally free, let them enjoy it while it lasts.

It is the case, you see, that the work that could be done is always infinite. This is necessary, if it were finite we'd be quite sad indeed -- cold, dry, evacuated remnants of a world once green with possibilities. Suppose, like the poet says, that there were only three things left to do. Just three. That's it, no more. Who'd get to do one ? After that one's done, there's only two left to ever do. Who ?

It is further the case that for entirely perverse reasons stemming from the fundamentally ill nature of the demiurge originating all shit and breakageⁱⁱⁱ, people got their perceptions backwards : they perceive that infinity of possible as somehow threatening, when it's patently nothing but, and they "don't perceive the alternative as anything at all", when it's doom on wheels with bows and a steam whistle. It doesn't even seem credible they do "fail to notice", like claimed, when put into the proper context, huh ?

Regardless, to assuage this self-secreted worry, they then come up with partitions : among the work that could be done, here's the work that needn't be done. It's called a scientific paradigm, and it's mostly deployed by people who aren't scientists (or anything else -- the mediocre can't ever be anything else, mediocrity is an all-consuming identity) with a view to stem the tide of scary, dirty an' "inconvenient".^iv That's it, therein mediocrity is born -- upon the self-promise, readily offered, just as readily accepted, that the world's a half, or quarter or whatever fraction of itself the life of mediocrity can "soundly" proceed. She'll make someone a great wife, as long as she doesn't ever have to cum ; he'll win the war as long as he doesn't have to shoot any kids ; it's a long, intricate list, arduously maintained, held high above the waterline by the trembling hands of the drowning, these hapless fellows much too busy for any rowing -- and besides, all their hands are full.

In the end, what difference does it make ? Somehow mediocrity's not even a word anymore, have you noticed ? Think back of the last time you heard it used, when was it ? Totalitarian is supposedly a bad thing, almost "a racial slur"^v, somehow... The things people don't notice are universally the things they do not want to notice ; the reason they don't want to notice some things is that they're scary. Mediocrity, born of cowardice, breeding cowardice, a whole world of half-men riding lame half-rabbits. How could such sadness ever make a difference, anyhow, anywhere ?

The fundamental problem with the enmity of mediocrity is that it has no effect.

1. It's either tedious or rewarding, neither both, and not on a case by case basis. It's a dual process in the sense that it splits minds into two kinds : the kind that finds it tedious, and the kind that finds it rewarding.

   It's not a question that the elements which one kind summarises and denotes as "tedious" aren't perceived by the other kind : it's that they're not so called, they don't appear worthy of a name ; contrairwise, it's not that the elements which the other kind notes as "rewarding" aren't perceived by the first kind, but, again, that they're not so called, for not appearing worthy of mention. I'll spare you the sexual metaphor. [↩]

2. Slag off Vulcan's own forge. [↩]
3. Also called "Yahvew" in the popular press. [↩]
4. How could it ever be inconvenient ? The same way anything else ever becomes "inconvenient" : someone put something into the wrong place, blocking something else. [↩]
5. That's how you say doubleplusungood saying in pantsuitlang, isn't it ? [↩]