“Equilibrium alone destroys power, abolishes it. The social order can only be an equilibrium between forces.”
Simon Weil, “The Gravity and the Grace”. Carmel, p. 198
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When you look at adults, there is something that separates them from young people; They don’t go beyond, they don’t take risks, they stay in the safe space. And eventually it happens to many at one age or another, they become mediocre. And to be mediocre is to live in the middle, not on the sides, not on the margins, not on the side. Neither soft nor hard, neither hot nor cold, as in Natan Zach’s poem,
And the main thing is not to be different at all. The common pattern and the permanent habit are the jailers who keep the average rabbi in administrative detention. Any behavior that is different, unusual, challenging or controversial – is immediately severely censored; ‘We are people of the middle way, we go as and therefore as is acceptable’. This is how everyone behaves. And as mentioned, young people, children or babies are never mediocre. Each of them carries with it something unique, awe-inspiring. Although we have seen thousands of babies and children, there is still in each of them something unreconstructed, with a personal and original charm. Mediocrity is a slippery slope. One of the biggest curses in people’s lives. There is hardly a young person who rushes full of momentum towards the life full of promise that is still destined for him and does not look at his parents, the elders and the graduates of the tribe – with a disgusted look at the harsh mediocrity that has befallen them. And most of them promise themselves it won’t happen; the feeling of stagnant and moldy water; The routine, the lack of brilliance and the spontaneity – there is something frightening about them. The young man looks at the adults and says to himself: “So for that everything they went through was worthwhile”? To study and experiment only to become a muddy lake of those who flow nowhere”? Mediocrity as a severe degenerative disease that occurs so slowly that it is difficult to notice it, but it is like paralysis. And one day it is a final and final certainty. And the annual trip to Turkey or Tuscany is the pinnacle of exhaustion
and the implementation of existence. And this is not just about the petty bourgeois above them and their older brothers; The burghers, in the next section (, ranging from 09.00-17.00 behind me
Table. and between 20.00-23.00 on the TV couch. It is not about external squareness, but about internal mediocrity. On the sinking and falling of the internal tension. And it happens to artists and intellectuals – as it happens to officials. What happened to them is self-circulation, a replication of predetermined genetics. A chewy, narrow, conventional worldview. Very unoriginal, like I fell into a certain pattern that dictates repetitive behavior and worldview. Mediocrity is the ultimate compromise, between primary ambitions
and between what exists. It is living in a state of coma. Because living a mediocre life is sleeping. To flatten the clear outlines of things into amorphous clichés that do not move one way or the other, it’s all the same. All life is in the middle; Does not smell, does not stink and it is difficult; Let them be bad, let them be cruel, let them be something with color and character, but the water
The lukewarmness of mediocrity is, in the end, more oppressive than evil. And what is interesting about this total mediocrity is the self-deception. Because the unusual, the original and the strange – they know that they are different and walk on an unpaved road that is not clear where it will lead. While the mediocre actually say and behave with the greatest mediocrity out of a sense and feeling that this is how they are original and unique. For example, they spout the most predictable and common phrases giving the impression that they have just invented the Pythagorean theorem.
Because it is possible to be mediocre without a feeling of “what to do, that’s what there is” only mediocre, but no. They talk and move and behave in this narrow and mass pattern, as if fulfilling their individual uniqueness; A mechanized doll moving on a fixed and narrow axis, and with egocentric ambitions that are only sensitive (in a very subjective way) very personal but they are visible
and behave as a hideous replica of all the others. have to admit; There is something bland, heavenly, and even frustrating in an encounter with mediocrity, with a lack of creativity, flight, brilliance, with a clerk who does his mediocre work, or with a theater whose repertoire is mediocre, with a mediocre writer, mediocre food, mediocre conversation. It’s fine when it comes to the physical dimension of things; Medium height, medium nose, medium range of sight and hearing – but when it comes to feelings, mind, thinking and even spirit – here mediocrity is like stale water. Because the spirit and soul cannot be mediocre! They must be fresh, new and surprising. Surprising by the fact that they create records by the very life force that amazes them. The wind cannot be mediocre, as the sea or a flower or a polar bear or a shark cannot be mediocre, there is something a little breathtaking about them. Native American can’t be mediocre, baby—
As mentioned – it cannot be medium, a forest or a grove – cannot be medium. And the more you think about it, you see that there is no such mediocrity in nature, everything is fresh and bursting, vital. There is nothing average about a cat, you can watch it for hours and it is always original. And that begs the question; What is it about us, human beings, that brought mediocrity to the world? Mediocrity that includes sub-concepts such as: ‘Everything is like everyone else’. Nothing is more important than something else, depends on whether you have fun with it’, not to make waves, not to stand out ‘with a kitbag? Without a kitbag? In an encounter with mediocrity there is the feeling of a room whose windows have not been opened for a long time. Or dust has accumulated on the sides of his things. And this is exactly the feeling that mediocrity gives; Stagnant air and dust accumulate positive ions. Something that was meant to be washed by air and water all the time, but became its own prison. Because we are talking about people who are free
And the savages were born, Adam, if they take away the savages from him, what will be left? Like love, or religious devotion, or creativity – there must be something wild about them, there is nothing more discouraging than to see love, or religious devotion, or creativity taken from them by the wild spirit of the bursting freedom. The young people do carry with them some of this wild spirit, but these mainly
Hormones, it is not yet related to the human spirit, something that lies within it and can be released and set free. It is real when it occurs precisely when the person is mature and mature enough to bear the responsibility of the freedom that
Gabriel