The Patron Saint of Mediocrities

The choice

is between believing that

the narrative of life

is a story of winners and losers

or that it is about the struggle

to ensure decency and sufficiency for all

That's from the book The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert. More on it soon.

I took the title of this post from the movie Amadeus. It made a big impression on me when I was young, and I've always remembered the last few lines Salieri says at the end. From a script I found online:

Goodbye, Father. I'll speak for you. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. On their behalf I deny Him, your God of no mercy. Your God who tortures men with longings they can never fulfill. He may forgive me: I shall never forgive Him.

Mediocrities everywhere, now and to come: I absolve you all! Amen! Amen! Amen!

It's a fairly tragic moment, the character pronouncing to all that he considers himself a failure, that his life's work--and his life--have amounted to nothing.

However.

Alpert, in his book, redefines "good-enough" from it's common usage as settling for something barely acceptable to an entirely different meaning when seen from a changed framework. In the same way, many would consider Salieri highly successful and only "mediocre" in comparison to the greatness of Mozart. But the problem is not determining whether Salieri is mediocre, good, or great, it's the worldview that compels him to compare himself to Mozart at all. The evil is that he can't stop himself from feeling they are in competition and must be ranked against each other instead of appreciating his "mediocrity" for what it is.

Last post, Just the Insects and Me, I wrote about how the apparent "plainness" of Kansas has taught me to see the beauty in the ordinary:

While I do love the sense of awe I get from both mountains and ocean, I also love the relative plainness of Kansas. I love that the beauty doesn't just smack you in the face, that the landscape trains you to find the beauty in apparent absence. You learn to appreciate the subtle, mundane beauty that is always there in everything, not just in the grand and eye-catching. You don't take it for granted or get desensitized to it. Beauty is everywhere if you know how to see it. Kansas teaches you to.

While I referenced mainly physical features, I meant to imply the principal across the board. To "ordinary" people, emotions, experiences, art, ideas; all of it. Everything has inherent beauty and value simply because it exists. Ordinary--mediocre--is wonderful. It's all there needs to be. Not sameness, just a refusal to judge and compare, to decide that some people and things are better or worse.

I've been a librarian for 25 years now. At one point I felt pressure to "climb the ladder," which in my world means becoming management. I hated it. After two months I asked for my old position back, and have never regretted it. The thing I hated most was having to formally "appraise" people--not just help them grow, but make a record of their strengths and flaws against an official scale, to rate and rank them. I prefer to look at people with an eye toward appreciation. I know everyone has flaws, but I focus on empathy and seeing their unique and individual value. I see everyone as good and try as much as I can to see their goodness.

I really appreciate this Facebook post from George Lakoff:

In the conservative mind, all policy decisions flow according to the following hierarchy. To understand Republican stances on abortion, racism, homophobia, worker rights, etc., just consult this chart.

It's all there.

Of course, I'm biased as a liberal--but we have our moral hierarchies as well, which are just as bad in their own ways. I disagree with the ordering of this hierarchy from Lakoff, but even more I disagree with the existence of any kind of hierarchy at all.

Which is all meant to be an introduction to The Good-Enough Life by Avram Alpert. Here's my review:

The choice is [between believing] that the narrative of life is a story of winners and losers, or that it is about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

Alpert argues in this book for a change in society's orientation from a "greatness" worldview to a "good-enough" perspective. Greatness is characterized by a constant striving for success, whether financial, social, artistic, athletic, relational, or any other realm, a desire to be at the top of a necessary hierarchy. It's about comparing, judging, rating, and ranking people. Some are always better than others. A good-enough orientation, on the other hand, sees us all as connected and interdependent and only successful together, not as individuals. It does not mean just barely sufficient; it means everyone gets at least a good life and all needs are met--decency and sufficiency; good plus enough.

Whatever combination of solutions we rely on, they should all be compatible with the idea that everyone deserves decency and sufficiency, and that no one merits more than others.

I love Alpert's ideas, some of the ways he articulates them, and how he applies the worldview across the board at the personal, communal, societal, and natural levels. I'm not convinced his names for the two orientations are effective and feel often he considers his ideas too vaguely and abstractly, having insular conversations with other philosophers and thinkers instead of with readers.

Overall, though, a really good--and important--book.

But of course I don't want to stop with just that. I have a plethora of quotes I picked out to share.

A bit more on what Alpert means by "good-enough."

Although good-enoughness begins by accepting that human beings cannot entirely avoid tragedy or difficulty, thinkers of the good-enough do not stop there. They follow James Baldwin in understanding that this is only one of two opposing needs: this need of "acceptance, totally without rancor, or life as it is," but also the demand of "equal power: that one must never . . . accept these injustices as commonplace." The good-enough life accepts human failings--it appreciates that we are only ever good enough--and, because of those failings, it demands both decency and sufficiency for everyone. Because the world is good enough, we should be good enough to each other. But this is not a capitulation. It is a call to reimagine the world as a place brimming with meaning, access, and creativity for all. It is a call to think of who we are as irrevocably bound up with the destinies of all our fellow humans on this elegant and delicate sphere. And it is a call to appreciate that much of what is valuable in our world is overlooked by the regime of greatness--from the ordinary acts of labor that sustain our lives, to the ordinary caressses of intimacy that bring us home to ourselves.

-----

This is not an argument that doing these things will result in a perfect equality or an edgeless, harmonious social world. It is a claim that we can better circulate and distribute the value and goodness and decency of humanity to buffer ourselves collectively from the treachery and errors that are also part of our condition.

None of this progress will be possible without a deeper understanding of our natural condition. We are not determined by evolution to seek a place on the top of the hierarchy. We are the inheritors of a cooperative history that we bequeath to future generations. To ensure decency in this futurity, we will need to understand culturally what science already knows: that no group of humans is greater than any other, and that humans as a whole are not greater than nature. Humans and nature are both good-enough systems working in symbiosis.

He only uses the word symbiosis one time that I noticed, but I think it's a really important one. We are all interdependent.

A brief interlude.

The Holiness in Reality

For some people, scientific ideas stir spiritual feelings of wonder and connection, which, they say, can offer psychological benefits similar to religious spirituality, like an increased sense of well-being and life satisfaction. And, on top of that, when scientific ideas inform people’s sense of spirituality, they come away with a better understanding of science. “Although science and religion differ in many ways,” the researchers write, their findings across three studies indicate that those human enterprises “share a capacity for spirituality through feelings of awe, coherence, and meaning in life.”

That article focuses on the comparison of religion to atheism, but I think it also speaks to finding the value in the ordinary and mediocre.

So does, I think, something I wrote a long time ago in Attempting to Gain Some Momentum:

So in Clerks II there is an ongoing argument between fans of the Star Wars trilogy and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy over which is supreme. Both Lucas's movies and Tolkien's books were formational experiences for me, so I don't feel any need to make an either-or comparison. If push really came to shove, though, I think I'd have to come down on the side of LOTR. I don't make this decision lightly, but based upon the controlling mythology of the stories. I know I'm not the first to describe them in these terms and much more has been written than this, but here's my take.

In Star Wars your hero just happens to be magically imbued with a powerful force. We eventually find out he is the son of one of the great powers in the universe. He is destined for greatness and he fights the great. The prequel trilogy only expands upon this theme. This is a battle of the high and mighty against others who were born to power. This is an incredibly powerful mythology for an adolescent male--How awesome would it be to discover you have this great power and can do incredible things? Everyone wants that in some form. But while I can fantasize about wanting to be a Luke Skywalker, I know there is no truth in it. Finally I must accept that I am just another ordinary person and that particular fantasy is just an escape.

While LOTR may have Gandalf and destined-to-be-king Aragorn, the true protagonists are the Hobbits. They are as down to earth and ordinary as they come. They don't succeed in their quest because they are inherently great, but because they are able to find extraordinary strength of character and courage within themselves. They are you and me succeeding in a crisis situation despite our mortality and weakness. This may be called a fantasy, but it is one that we can actually put ourselves into and identify with. Ideally, it is one that can inspire us to live our own lives like courageous Hobbits and discover our own versions of greatness. It is a story that might make us better people.

And that's what I'm really looking for in a good fantasy, not just escape, but something that will help me examine my own life and come out a better person because of it.

Even the most ordinary hobbit has great value.

Back to Alpert:

It is unfortunate to have to think of smiling back at a child as some kind of extraordinary achievement. But such small acts of interpersonal care become increasingly difficult in greatness-oriented culture. This has a powerful impact on our general sociability. If we are all striving to be great and ignoring the ordinary interactions that constitute the bulk of our lives, we are going to be less friendly to others--both to our most intimate acquaintances and to those we do not know but with whom we share the world.

And:

Let's say . . . you've decided to reorient your life around the idea of being good enough. . . . You've stopped aspiring to be the best, and beyond that, you've seen through the absurdity of even thinking there is such a thing as the best. You've come to appreciate the inevitable suffering and limitations of existence without always trying to turn them into positive lessons. You appreciate that you are part of an interdependent world where your own actions find their deepest resonance in how they complement the activities of others. And to that end, you're trying to focus on promoting and participating in a world that is decent and sufficient for everyone. You've learned to gain strength from the profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency. You've recalibrated your sense of the purpose of parenting, love, and friendship, moving away from a desire to be among the greats and toward an understanding of the values of dissonance as much as communion.

But not you encounter a problem. Everyone around you is still striving for greatness. . . . 

The profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency.

Another interlude.

Researchers Gave 200 People $10,000 Each to Study Generosity

Researchers gave 200 people from seven different countries $10,000 each, with instructions to spend it all within three months and to document how they spent it.

Participants spent 68% of their cash prosocially, benefiting others and sometimes simultaneously themselves.

With members of the wealthy Baby Boomer generation beginning to pass away, an unprecedented transfer of wealth is about to unfold. The study suggests a significant amount of that money could be spent on the public good.

People respond to expectations, both good and bad. If we expect them to treat the world as a hierarchy and only strive for greatness, they'll see everyone else as competition. If we expect them to see the world as a more cooperative, interdependent one, they will.

From You Can't Have Winners without Losers:

Many of the standardized tests used to create these rankings are norm-referenced ones, which means that the tests are graded on a curve and students' scores are determined in comparison to each other. Once all the tests are scored and average is determined, with half the students ranked as above that average and half below. Using this measure, half the students by definition will always score below average. There is guaranteed to be a bottom quarter of students who fail every time. Even if every single student shows marked improvement and gets more than 90% of the answers correct, there will be a bottom half and a bottom quarter, and those at the bottom will be considered failing in comparison to the rest. It is impossible for everyone to be considered a success, no matter how well they do, because the measures used are competitive. We have created a system that guarantees we will always have millions of failing students taught by thousands of failing teachers in thousands of failing schools.

Because our measures are based on competition.

And in a competition, there will always be losers.

I know some workplaces use a similar scenario for their appraisal processes. There is an average percentage of annual raise for the pool of workers, say 3% for this scenario. Each person earns a raise based on their annual appraisal score. Some will score more highly than others, so some will get higher raises than others, as long as it all averages out to 3% for everyone. So if someone earns a 5% raise based on excellent performance, then someone else must be scored low enough on their appraisal to only earn 1% so that the numbers balance out.

Reality says that things will likely work out, that there will be some under-performers in each organization. But philosophically the organization is saying there must be. It is not possible for the entire team to achieve together, for everyone to band together and pull each other up to an excellent level of performance as a group. No, some of the group will have to perform disappointingly. You can never have a work group composed entirely of achievers; your organization will always have losers on its team. In fact, you're not likely to have a cohesive team practicing excellent teamwork, since members are in competition with each other to be the achievers and avoid being the losers. If I help someone else do well in his or her job, then that's less raise available for me at the end of the year. Better to see everyone else fail in comparison to me, even if it hurts the organization's overall performance. . . . 

You can't have a competition winner without a loser.

So, if we ever hope to really have a "we" that succeeds together as a group--where we are all winners and don't have any losers on our team--there has to be more to our measures of success, to how we define ourselves, to the core of our philosophical models than pure competition. . . . 

As this excellent article, 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying, articulates so well, the purely competitive capitalism model ensures there will always be plenty of losers:

So "anyone can get rich" isn't just untrue, it's insultingly untrue. You can't have a society where everyone is an investment banker. And you can't have a society where you pay six figures to every good policeman, nurse, firefighter, schoolteacher, carpenter, electrician and all of the other ten thousand professions that civilization needs to survive (and that rich people need in order to stay rich).

It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?

You're intentionally conflating "anyone can have the moonshine" with "everyone can have it." And you are doing it because you're hoping that we will all be too busy fighting each other to ask why there was only one jar.

We are not a collection of individuals; we are a collective.

But we don't act like it.

The One Cause of Poverty That’s Never Considered

What if the persistence of poverty has less to do with the misfortunes of the needy than with the advantages the affluent presume they are entitled to? In Poverty, by America, Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton, argues that we need to examine the behavior and priorities not of the poor but of “those of us living lives of privilege and plenty.” . . . 

He is impatient with the implication that poverty arises passively, because of large forces beyond our control. To the contrary, poverty is a social reality that Americans create and sustain—and from which many of the nonpoor benefit materially in more direct ways than they care to acknowledge. Desmond’s mission is to disabuse the better-off among us of the illusion that they are mere bystanders with their hands tied. Many wealthy people assume that the built-in advantages that come with affluence are their due, and take for granted their freedom to choose among many life options. What they fail to recognize is that their choices contribute to foreclosing options for people of lesser means, whose lives are already far more constrained. . . . 

Desmond demonstrates how exploitation in various forms is the root of the problem. . . . 

In Desmond’s taxonomy of how the privileged “make the poor in America poor,” the strategy of living in walled-off communities—and more broadly, the proclivity to invest in private amenities at the expense of public housing, education, and transportation—has more than an economic impact. The physical separation also “poisons our minds and souls,” enabling affluent people to forget about the poor and obscuring two other tiers of economic exploitation that Desmond calls attention to.

Surveying a host of other perks and benefits to which the well-off consider themselves entitled, he emphasizes that such life amenities are available only because poor people suffer: When the wealthy patronize shops and restaurants that offer low prices and fast service, their satisfaction comes at the expense of cashiers and dishwashers paid poverty wages. When we open free checking accounts that require maintaining a minimum balance, we benefit from the fact that banks can collect billions of dollars in overdraft fees from poor customers who struggle to meet these requirements—and who often end up gouged by check-cashing outlets and payday lenders.

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor,” James Baldwin once observed, an irony that still prevails in America. . . . 

What is “maddening,” Desmond writes, is “how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes,” or by doing 20 or 30 smaller things to curtail just some of the subsidies of affluence. Yet his book makes it all too clear why the loopholes don’t get closed. The real reason the well-off sustain the status quo isn’t that they believe the poor are shiftless. It’s because meaningful change would require giving up their own advantages—or, to put it bluntly, because “we like it,” as Desmond writes. This is, he notes, the “rudest explanation” for our current state of affairs. Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder.

Things can be different if we want them to be.

Back to Alpert:

Good fences do not make good neighbors. Good neighbors are made by how they treat one another with respect and appreciate their fundamental dependence on each other. A good fence won't do you much good when your neighbor's house is on fire. It will just provide tinder for the flame.

-----

Whether our current economic system requires racial divisions or not is debatable. At the very least, it requires an underclass of menial laborers who are underpaid and undervalued, and who, in order to justify their position, are often racialized. And it is relatively clear that the modern capitalist system was forged through its racial divisions.

-----

Empirical and historical studies have consistently affirmed [the] finding that market-driven inequalities produce civilizational-level crises. The solution [is] equally known: in material and positional equality lies the salvation of democracy. People who have a say in their lives, who find that their efforts are meaningfully rewarded, that their failures are adequately understood, and that they can have basic trust in the decency of both neighbors and strangers--such people are not easily corrupted by demagogues. And since democracies thrive when they can work cooperatively with others and without fear of attack, that equality itself works best when it is shared across nations, not just within their borders. To embrace this basic truth is to abandon the pursuit of economic and national greatness and appreciate that nothing less than global solidarity based on decency and sufficiency for all is the best path for peace and security.

-----

Time and again it has been shown that workplaces that foster participation both positionally (less top-down and more equal power) and materially (shared rewards) increase productivity, happiness, and a sense of purpose.

-----

There is nothing about our world that benefits from some nations or cultures or races doing better than others. Such competitive desires create the poverty, wars, and failures to act effectively on global issue like climate change that we see today. If we manage to overcome these challenges, it will not be because the fittest survived, but because we managed to survive the very idea of there being some who are more fit to live than others.

We must manage to survive the very idea of there being some who are more fit to live than others.

Finding sufficiency, appreciating the ordinary, experiencing the profundity of the everyday and the meaningfulness of simple decency does not mean settling for "mediocrity" in the traditional, comparative, hierarchical sense. Salieri complains of "God who tortures men with longings they can never fulfill." These longings are part of our natural state and we'll always have them.

From Alpert:

If the aim of natural selection is to get us to propagate our genes, then it needs to do two things. First we should get pleasure from activities that keep us alive and help us procreate. Second, these activities should leave us feeling a bit dissatisfied after and wanting more so that we keep trying. Our very survival depends on our seeking satisfaction and then finding it unsatisfactory. The result is that we have become creatures who experience suffering that we foolishly try to cure with pleasures rather than acknowledging the impossibility of total satisfaction.

And from Longing and Tranquility:

 . . . it's more important to embrace contradiction and paradox than to try to make logical sense of everything, and longing will drive you crazy without an ability to tune it out and be in the moment. So I value both. I enjoy the drive and energy I get from longing but I also enjoy the contradictory ability to find joy and tranquility in fully experiencing the everyday mundane.

And I think it's important to have both. Often when I'm unhappy it's because those two competing veins are out of balance. With too small a dose of constant drive to seek something more I feel stagnant and life loses its zest, with no purpose or goal or reason to exist. With too much obsession about what I don't have, I can't focus on savoring what I do have and giving myself to who and what is right in front of me. You might think you can't pursue the ideas in both of the books that follow at the same time, but that's what works for me.

We're always going to want more, to need to strive. Being "ordinary" and "good-enough" doesn't mean we stop working to make our lives better. It means we stop trying to make our lives better at the expense of others and instead we look for ways to make existence better for everyone.

To quickly revisit the opening quote with proper context, this comes at the end of a long section about Amy Chua's parenting book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

The choice is not between being a Chinese parent or a Western parent. It's between teaching your children that the narrative of life is a story of winners and losers, or that it is about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

The narrative we tell--the expectation we communicate--should be one about the struggle to ensure decency and sufficiency for all.

A biblical interlude. 

I would argue that one of the major themes running through the Christian Bible is that God has a different perspective than humans do, that God's wisdom is not human wisdom, that God does not approve of human hierarchies, judgments, and power structures, and wants to reverse them.

I did some skimming and quickly gathered a few verses; others have spent more time and done a much better job of it. This is long, so feel free to skim it yourself if inclined:

1 Samuel 8:10-18

So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.’

Zechariah 7:8-12

The word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They made their hearts adamant in order not to hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, 16-17

I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.

Matthew 5:1-11

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Matthew 7:1-5

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Matthew 18:1-5

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Matthew 19:23-26; 30

Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.’ But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Matthew 23:1-28

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

‘But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

‘Woe to you, blind guides, who say, “Whoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.” You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? And you say, “Whoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.” How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may become clean.

‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Matthew 25:34-40

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Mark 9:33-37

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’

Luke 3:10-14

And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’

Luke 4:5-8

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,

“Worship the Lord your God,

   and serve only him.” ’

Luke 6:37-42

‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.’

He also told them a parable: ‘Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Luke 16:19-25

‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

Luke 18:9-14

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Luke 18:18-27

A certain ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honour your father and mother.” ’ He replied, ‘I have kept all these since my youth.’ When Jesus heard this, he said to him, ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

Those who heard it said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ He replied, ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.’

Luke 20:45-47

In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’

Luke 22:24-27

A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.

John 13:34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

All passages copied from the Oremus Bible Browser.

The greatest is the one who humbly serves.

From Alpert:

Researchers working at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and ecology have found remarkable parallels between inaction on climate change and what is called "social dominance orientation," a metric of how much someone believes that there should be hierarchies and inequalities in society. The more someone believes in human hierarchy, the more likely they are to believe that humans do not need to worry about climate change.

One last interlude:

For the First Time, Research Reveals Crows Use Statistical Logic

“In our lab, it has been shown that crows have sophisticated numerical competence, demonstrate abstract thinking, and show careful consideration during decision-making,” she said. In her most recent experiment, Johnston and her team pushed these abilities to a new extreme, testing statistical reasoning. . . . 

Johnston and her team began by training two crows to peck at various images on touchscreens to earn food treats. From this simple routine of peck-then-treat, the researchers significantly raised the stakes. “We introduce the concept of probabilities, such as that not every peck to an image will result in a reward,” Johnston elaborated. “This is where the crows learn the unique pairings between the image on the screen and the likelihood of obtaining a reward.” The crows quickly learned to associate each of the images with a different reward probability.

In the experiment, the two crows had to choose between two of these images, each corresponding to a different reward probability. “Crows were tasked with learning rather abstract quantities (i.e., not whole numbers), associating them with abstract symbols, and then applying that combination of information in a reward maximizing way,” Johnston said. Over 10 days of training and 5,000 trials, the researchers found that the two crows continued to pick the higher probability of reward, showing their ability to use statistical inference.

Statistical inference involves using limited information about a situation to draw conclusions and make decisions. People use statistical inference daily without even realizing it, such as when deciding which café will have more seating available for a group of friends. “You only have time to visit one, so you might think back to your previous visits and conclude that there were tables available (relatively) more often at Café A compared to Café B and thus opt to visit Café A,” added Johnston. “You’re not guaranteed a table in either case, but one is judged as the better option.” Similarly, the crows remembered the connections between the images on the touchscreen and the reward probabilities and used that memory to ensure they would get the highest reward in most cases.

Pushing the crows even further, Johnston and her team waited a whole month before testing the crows again. Even after a month without training, the crows remembered the reward probabilities and could pick the highest number every time. Johnston and her team were excited that the crows could apply statistical reasoning in almost any setting to ensure their reward. "Working with the birds every day is very rewarding! They are very responsive animals, so I enjoy spending time with them,” added Johnston.

The social dominance hierarchy, as with the conservative moral hierarchy and many others, puts humans above nature.

Finally, from Alpert:

Whatever combination of solutions we rely on, they should all be compatible with the idea that everyone deserves decency and sufficiency, and that no one merits more than others.

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Greatness in any sphere of our lives is a problem in all spheres of our lives. So long as some have vastly more wealth and power than others, they will have too much control over the lives of others, and the perceived desirability of their lives will create the kinds of competitive contests that distort our appreciation of each other's plural values and abilities.

Mediocre is all we need to be.

Ordinary is all there is.

Strive to provide for everyone.

You are deserving of acceptance.

Complete, unconditional acceptance.

From yourself, from me, from everyone.

We all are.