I have a feeling this is one of those topics that I can't talk about openly and honestly without sounding like a total asshole.
So be it.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Well I didn't mean to say that exactly. How would you define the term 'excellence' while not using the concept of superiority or at least the state of being distinguished of others in some significant way?
The very concept of 'excelling' is, by definition, excelling relative to some standard - usually, relative to people around you. But I think this is a very poor standard, for several reasons.
First, it assumes that what people generally do is relevant, and that what people do is generally good enough. But you may be the man with poor eyesight, in the land of the blind.
There are a variety of things that most people are bad at. Being relatively good at those things means nothing. You can be above average, and still suck. A mediocre juggler is way above the average population in juggling ability. Other jugglers will know him to be mediocre.
For myself, I'm a pretty decent guitar player. But if I was comparing myself only to other people that have been playing guitar for twenty-five years, it might be a different story; I might be average, or worse. But to someone who doesn't play, or has been playing for six months or a year, my skills might seem very impressive.
There's also the possibility that the people around you are a poor sample. For instance, in high school, I was one of the smartest people in the school. I didn't need to study. The situation was quite different when I went to college, and didn't get that high school spoon-feeding of knowledge. I had to learn how to study.
This is probably most relevant here, in talking about seeking after truth. Most people are not really interested. Being interested
at all probably puts you above average. So what?
If there is such a thing as enlightenment (as a distinct state of being), then what matters is the absolute fact of whether you have achieved it (or are seeking after it) or not. It doesn't matter what anyone else does. It's not enough to be
relatively enlightened.
I think it's good to keep in mind, even if you are the 'best' by some standard or other, you're still just another human; just another monkey. At most, you be thought highly of by other monkeys. It's highly unlikely that you will ever be known off this little speck of dust, or when this century is over.
It all comes down to puffing yourself up because "Stupid people think I'm cool."
Thirdly, people are very bad at comparing themselves to other people. It's pretty easy to compare two other people to each other, but comparing yourself is very difficult. The current issue of Scientific American "Mind" has an article about that topic. They did a comparison between self-esteem, and how good looking people thought they were. There was a significant correlation. But it wasn't clear what caused what, so they got in an independant panel to judge how good looking the people actually were. They found
no corrrelation between how good looking people thought they were, and how good looking other people thought they were.
So it's pretty easy to fool yourself, one way or the other.
The ego can and will jump on any bandwagon that can provide the significance it craves, but since the road toward excellence is often very hard and humbling I doubt that it would be already a relevant factor in the first stages.
This highlights the danger in feeding the ego. Doing it for ego rewards is not going to work anyway.
Is there any reason to compare yourself to other people, other than to feed your ego?