what did you learn at school today?

although i feel uncomfortable with boxes with labels on them and don't know how to make lists, these boxes and lists and categories and compartmentalizations really interest me.
like maslow's hierarchy of needs. it's cool to see that, to look at it and figure out where you lay on the scale and which of your friend's needs are filled and use it for good arguements advocating financial stability before empowerment in third world countries. but then, like an itch you just can't help but scratch, come the what-and-why questions. why is sex in the bottom most basic level you need to fill first but sexual intimacy in the third? does that mean you can't have a need for intimacy until after you've had sex? and if you never have sex, can you never have self-esteem or be creative or feel safe? that seems pretty weighted, and also contrary to what most women's magazines tell us, at least: that sleeping with him won't make you feel better about yourself. according to maslow, it will. go figure.
here's another thing i like: gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. now we all (at this point in history) have heard since the kindergarten that there are different types of learning. but apparently our brain functions in the way to have high and low points, strong and weak bits that extend beyond just being smart and dumb. like you can have naturalistic intelligence, which makes a person have increased sensitivity to nature, the ability to grow things, and greater connectivity with animals. basically, being a tree-hugger is actually a type of intelligence. there is hope for nader, after all.
there's also specifically room for musical intelligence. that perfect pitch and sensitivity to rhythym and tone and aural sensations inhabit a real space in the mind and have merit there. i feel like it shows that there can be people who actually are tone deaf and some compositions are just...well...better than others (although frank and stravinsky and i have talked at length about this and it turns out that the only thing that makes music good is construction--this will be addressed at a later date). and you can get brain damage that makes you a musical sociopath (a strange and only-just-now-invented term for someone who has no feeling toward music, like regular sociopaths who have no feeling toward people--watch the film "badlands"). and being a musical genius is just as neurologically valid as being a math genius or something.
genius in any of these categories, even nature, means exceptional ability and creativity. i feel like geniuses are people who see the world working in different ways from most other people, who figure things out and consider things in a bigger way than other people can. they can go from a to c and skip be and go on to letters not even invented yet. stravinsky was a musical genius. picasso was a visual-spacial genius. those things are pretty obvious at this point. but what if we shake things up a bit...was kandinsky a musical genius? his pieces have very real musical quality to them, the motion and value and line and space and everything are more than just paint and images on a canvas. he said that "color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with the strings." keep that in mind the next time you're at the MOMA. and because he used music in a completely new and interesting way (by not using sounds at all, but color and picture) does his genius extend into the musical category? i think probably yes.

peter keating

[the way to kill greatness is to] kill a man’s sense of values. kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept—and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. you stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. enshrine mediocrity—and the shrines are razed.

--ayn rand, the fountainhead

do we live in a world of mediocrity? is this the age of Everyman, where everyone is a winner? the Great American Dream seems to profess such, that if you work hard you can achieve whatever you want. anyone can grow up to be president. celebrities are every scandal-causing person that television can get their hands on, making people famous for being dumb and pretty and promiscuous. there’s a grade for citizenship and effort in many primary schoolrooms. rec soccer teams for young kids reward effort, failing to keep score and giving everyone trophies at the end of the season. everyone is special. which is another way of saying no one is.

by venerating the mediocre, what are we saying about it? simply that it’s ok, it’s acceptable, that average is good enough. if we look up to people who have no desirable qualities to speak of we become able to justify to ourselves that it’s ok if we have no qualities either. past the Real World culture (where everyone had to be a Something Guy—the sport guy, the funny girl, the protective mother, etc) of reducing our personalities to an adjective, we now are allowed to reduce them to something shocking, or to nothing.

but is greatness dead? there still are things we can see and aspire to, and even more than ever before. forerunners in music and art and literature and politics and philosophy still exist and are standing up for something to look toward. they still matter, at least to me, more than any falsely famous person or shocking situation. and amidst everything great that is being done by every amazing person, I can look at things and people who are living their lives (subjectively, of course) less successfully than I am, and feel better about that. but when we get to the dangerous stage where living large and reaching higher no longer holds any interest for an individual, that is where the cult of mediocrity has won its battle.