When Did Excellence Become a Bad Thing?

Good god, what's next? I mean, granted, I know that in the rat race of corporate america, and no doubt corporate anywhere, there is a deeply competitive culture that advocates deep-sixing your adversary, or sabotaging your adversary (excuse me while I puke over this philosophy - but then, hey - I'm the one now unemployed, so go figure), even when you KNOW your adversary is your better. I mean, you KNOW it. Everyone KNOWS it. And instead of just accepting it, you go behind the scenes and mess something up. y'know. like ripping the pages out of the only book in the library that has the legal precedent that EVERY OTHER STUDENT NEEDS TO FIND to get an A. So yeah. You’re complete slime, and you've just ensured that you are the only student to get the A.

Why? Because you've unbalanced the playing field. You've thrown off the scale by adding a greater burden on all others than the burden placed on you. By doing so, you've not only sabotaged everyone else, you made sure that you will win.


And you know what else? You made sure that the person in the place of leadership and power is not the best person for the job. Not the kind of guy/girl that can actually win and hold the position on skill or ability alone. You've actually weakened your organization, your team, your group.

Because you've replaced Greatness with Mediocrity.

Is this what we've become? No. I get it. I know that we deal with this as adults in the Cold Cruel World.

What I didn’t know was that we bring this same ugliness, this same pettiness, this same self-serving abortion of anything good into the lives of small children. Children who haven’t even developed a real sense of self.

This is what we're teaching our children these days?

1. It is bad to be good.
2. It is really bad to be really good.
3. You a bad person if you are really good.
4. Don’t be excellent. Nothing good comes of it. You will be punished. Your friends will be punished. Your family will be punished.
5. If you're excellent, if you excel your peers, you will be punished.
6. Adults don’t really want you to excel. At least don’t be better or smarter than their child in something that THEY control. ;) You will be punished.
7. Average is best. ;) Great is bad. Excellence is anathema - you dirty little DEMON!
8. Just be average. Can’t you see that you're making all the other children feel bad by being so great??
9. Excellent children aren’t welcome here (unless they're the bosses/coaches/company execs child), or unless they play on the team we tell them to play on (read: unless we control them).

Are we really becoming a society where we deep-six CHILDREN too?

How about they all get an F for poor sportsmanship and being poor losers (I’m mad so I take my bat and ball and go home? What are we? Children??)? Sue me, I thought teaching them good morals and sportsmanship was one of the reasons for child sports too.

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