Worshiping Individual Mediocrity Generates a Mediocre Society

Cuba: Worshiping Individual Mediocrity Generates a Mediocre Society
Posted: 10/06/2013 11:57 pm

When I was in high school two of the many words used as insults shocked
me. One of them was "self-sufficient." Its stigma came from the mea
culpa processes to join the Young Communists Union, where the candidates
criticized themselves for not behaving -- always -- as part of a
collective. Another pejorative terms was "conscious" or "aware," which
in that context referred to someone too intellectual, too devoted to
books, too engaged in learning. The good students were labeled
"super-conscious" and the natural leaders who emerged in each group also
felt the taint of self-sufficiency. Better not to excel, not to
overexert yourself... these disqualifiers seemed to warn us.

Worshiping individual mediocrity generates mediocre societies. Vilifying
the talented and entrepreneurial hinders the development of a nation.
Professional capital is not constructed only with titles, degrees and
post-graduate degrees, but with the need that arises from a population
that reveres knowledge. It is also imperative that intelligence is not
something to be hidden, almost with embarrassment or shame. We are all
potential scientists and discoverers, in need of an environment where
our capabilities find respect. A country of scientists should be able to
show off its laboratories and vaccines; but also ensure that ordinary
people can patent their achievements and be rewarded -- materially and
spiritually -- for their ingenuity.

There may be many university graduates in Cuba, but as long as these
people do not find true social and legal recognition and salaries
commensurate with their work, we can hardly call ourselves a nation of
science. It's sad that more statues are raised and more plazas dedicated
to people who have wielded machetes or weapons, than to those who have
saved lives with their microscopes and syringes. The prodigious
milligram* of knowledge needs an environment where it can multiply. That
fertile soil that carries the seed of education, the irrigation to
imagine a better life through scientific discovery and the essential
fertilizer of freedom.

* "An ant censured for the subtlety of its loads and its frequent
distractions, found one morning, on straying once again from the road, a
prodigious milligram. Without stopping to think about the consequences
of the discovery, it took the milligram and put it on its back. Happily
it discovered that it was the perfect load just for her. The ideal
weight of that object gave her body a strange energy: like the weight of
their wings on the bodies of birds." (Taken from "The Prodigious
Milligram," Juan José Arreola, Complete Works, Mexico, Alfaguara, 1997)

** Thanks to Universal Thinking Forum for provoking this reflection ...
and much more.

Source: "Cuba: Worshiping Individual Mediocrity Generates a Mediocre
Society | Yoani Sanchez" -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cuba-worshiping-individua_b_4055439.html