Averagism

Herewith an addendum to my earlier “Elitism, Individualism” (two days ago). I did not manage to capture the feeling that served as the inspiration for that post. The feeling was something like this: “Odd that in a country where individualism is supposed to reign, elitism is roundly condemned. Shouldn’t elite achievement be prized instead? Isn’t that an implication of individualism.” I didn’t quite manage to say that. Much depends on precise definitions, and words like elitism and individualism thrive precisely because they’re handy labels. We read into them whatever we wish. Individualism is stretched to justify radical libertarianism at one end, free marketeering in the middle, and elitism as capitalist wealth at the other—but, in the last case, disguised using another word. Elitism is very suspect because it implies both gifts and unusual effort: natural endowments, social status at birth, and unusual abilities energetically developed. That flies in the face of individualism which, applied to the masses, is thought to mean that everybody is the same. The only activity that gets a pass is sports. There elites are fine and dandy. But it helps a little if the great athletic star started life in the slums and did not come from a wealthy family.

There ought to be a law. I propose it. Let all true individualists join me in getting it passed. It would outlaw the word “individualism” and all of its meaning in favor of “averagism.” As under the Nazis you had to prove that no Jewish blood tainted your line, so in our bright future, every person, before holding any job of worth, should be able to certify his or her absolutely average gifts and status. And those who don’t qualify? Well, we saw a lot of uninhabited little islands in the Florida Keys when we were down there. We should have a elite cleansing and make them live on those islands. Global Warming, as luck would have it, will cause them soon to be submerged.

Elitism, Individualism

Elitism has negative connotations in this supposedly individualistic society because the meaning of the word has changed to mean “people who exhibit privileges, wealth, and position they did not personally earn.” They started with a better hand than most—be that through family, genes, energy, smarts, whatever. The word’s origins are in selection, choice (the Latin eligere). Someone has chosen, elected, or picked out these people—presumably because of their emergent qualities. Using the original sense, all those who win elective office are members of an elite—but such is the onus of this word, candidates make utter fools of themselves trying to show that they’re just Average Joes.

Individualism, of course, derives from the concept of something that cannot be further divided; in practice it means that you can’t saw a person apart to make two. We might as well say human. But we enlarge and distort such words. We have humanism, for example, which asserts that the focus is on humans—rather than the cosmic arrangements of God. Therefore individualism means a focus on the individual rather than powerful collectives able to influence all kinds of human outcomes.

For this focus to work ideally—which it can only do in an impossible world—every baby born would have to be kept to an average achievement, intelligence, beauty, talent, etc. Kurt Vonnegut made fun of this in his wonderful story, “Harrison Bergeron”; it features a Handicapper General.

Elite or elites are the modern terms for aristocracy. That word for me has always had an un-erasable ambiguity. If by “rule” of the “best” we mean the genuinely best, it is laudable. If we means a controlling ruling class that maintains itself by privilege, force, and manipulation, it is problematical. The notion that people should be judged by what they achieve using whatever fortune dealt them is a bit too complicated for use in the Age of the Sound Byte.