A slogger's apology

On self-worth, ordinariness, and justification

Source: Gustave Dore’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven

This essay is not written for a reader. When people write diaries, they do not necessarily have a reader in mind. Diarying may be understood as an exercise of documenting the mundane and extraordinary in one’s life for one’s own reading, reminiscence, and reflection (in the future). I do not write a diary and hence cannot speak from authentic experience. But can we look at diarying as an act of talking to oneself? I engage in a great deal of private speech, or what is often disapprovingly referred to as ‘self talking’ when it is done in the presence of other people. Private speech has not only been a great technique of study and revision for me, but it also helps me organise my thoughts and clarify my ideas. But that is not all. Private speech, like diarying, can also be wonderfully cathartic. In this respect, the value of diarying is more immediate. One may not agree with what one wrote in moments of agitation or distress when reading it after regaining composure.

The fate of this essay has been similar. I first began writing on some of the themes discussed here about two years ago, in June 2023. After having written over 3000 words, I decided to junk the draft. Because what made a lot of sense to me while I was actually writing it seemed too incoherent, impulsive and lacking in deliberation when I read it a couple of days later. A personal essay cannot avoid being highly subjective but what I had produced contained such ideas and feelings that could have had an intuitive appeal only to me, howsoever they might have lacked in logic or fact. Such writing could have safely remained on the pages of a diary but it could not - or so I thought - be delivered to people’s mailboxes.

But the substance of what I had written about kept cropping up in my musings every now and then. I had tried, in that ill-fated essay, to talk about my ideas on ability, diligence and mediocrity. I wanted to put forth my ideas on intelligence and how it is forms a great dividing line when it comes to worldly attainments. I sought to write an elaborate defence of work-ethic over raw intellect, perhaps as a means to defend my own self-image and self-worth amidst unforgiving competition. I wanted to pour out the nebulous products of my tortured contemplations on what I like to call the tragedy of ‘ambition without ability’. These are questions of immense personal significance to me and tearing up that draft was certainly not going to banish them from my mind.

Hence, this essay - which will not be delivered to anybody’s mailbox. It will arrive unannounced and will remain here, not seeking to be read by anyone.

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I cannot claim to perfectly understand intelligence, much as I obsessed over it. All I can do is to recount my engagement with this concept over all these years.

Our schooling system tends to equate academic performance with intelligence. As a kid who scored good marks in examinations, I was led into looking upon myself as an intelligent student. Given the predominantly memory-based questions that were put to us in exam, it was hard work and repeated revision that helped me do well. There were hardly any opportunities to develop one’s powers of reasoning, analysis and problem solving. But the kid who scored high was a ‘scholar’ and was made to feel extraordinary in many direct and indirect ways.

When I was about 15 or so, I began to notice that I was often unable to think on my feet and answer some of the not-so-easy-questions that were asked in class discussions. I would brood over my inability to think as effectively as some of my peers could. Whenever a classmate was able to solve a problem that eluded me, I felt a pang of inadequacy. Even today, I can grapple with complex problems only if I am given adequate time to think. I often goof up trying to deal with them then-and-there. Or, my answers in such cases tend to be unimpressive generalities crouched in sophisticated language. This is why I believe that the so called ‘higher order thinking skills’ should be tested through challenging assignments (designed to make it impossible to cut-and-paste) rather than questions in an exam that lasts for a mere 2 or 3 hours. Good analysis takes time, at least for me.

Coming face to face with the limits of my abilities gave me a new understanding of intelligence. Intelligence was now no longer merely about perfecting the textbook. It was as much about quick and ready wit, persuading someone, understanding hidden motivations, finding connections between concepts, figuring out shortcuts, applying experience to new situations and so on. Whatever little I learnt in my psychology course in 11th and 12th grade did help considerably in making sense of it all. I remember spending a great deal of time pondering over Spearman’s “two-factor” theory and grappling with the meaning of general intelligence. It was quite a revelation for me to find out that every single cognitive task involves intelligence. This seemed to make sense. Many of the brilliant classmates I had not only excelled in academics but generally did remarkably well in creative and performative tasks.

My recognition of the possibility of not being intellectually gifted required a recalibration of my identity. I was (and remain) a person with a very narrow range of interests. After I turned 13 (if I remember correctly), I stopped going out in the evenings for a game of cricket, football or even for cycling. I studied obsessively and did not develop myself in any other way. I saw myself chiefly as a ‘good student’. This kept my self esteem high, for I (like most others) tended to associate academic performance with intelligence. Now that I realised that the two things were not necessarily related, I had to find other ways of preserving my self-esteem.

One afternoon, my biology teacher in school made the following remark about me, while a bunch of us were chatting with her after finishing our practicals: “He is not intelligent. Rather, he is hardworking. I know intelligent kids. They look like they are sleeping in class but they will be the first to point out a mistake made by the teacher while lecturing. What this means is that you all can become like him if you put in the effort.” However, this teacher continued to hold me in fond regard till the end of my school life. Perhaps the explanation for the apparent dissonance between her assessment of my ability and her attitude towards me is that she valued diligence more than raw intellect - as many teachers do.

This, in short, is how I too sought to look upon myself. I began to value my work-ethic above all else. It became the most important part of my identity and the prime basis of my self-worth. Simultaneously, I developed a contempt for intellectually gifted persons whom I found to be lazy and unwilling to make sustained and systematic efforts. I also became intensely envious of such persons, for their ability to do splendidly well in exams despite having prepared only for a day or two. I still feel the handicap of being unable to pull of such feats, for it would be immensely helpful to finish the entire semester’s syllabus in two weeks leading upto the exam and spend the rest of the semester interning and learning skills. Alas, this cannot be.

While viewing myself as a meticulous and diligent worker might give my self worth something to hold on to, it is clearly not enough in the world I inhabit. This was a major point I had tried to emphasise and expand upon in that discarded essay of mine. You see, the catchphrase of the day is “smart work, not hard work.” This is the age of fast learners, not patient learners. Perhaps I should be less euphemistic and say, slow learners, for that’s what I have always been. Slow in reading, slow in writing (by hand) and slow in processing information in general. As can be gleaned from the preceding paragraph, this does have serious disadvantages.

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It would, however, be very inaccurate to say that I saw myself as nothing other than a hardworking student. As I went through senior secondary school and thereafter, three years of undergraduate degree, I discovered new passions. I realised that I enjoyed research and I found out that I had something of a faculty for public speaking. Writing was something I had enjoyed and been good at right from early childhood. All of these contributed in different degrees to reshaping my self image and my sense of worth.

I was able to do fairly well in each of these pursuits. Over time, here too I developed a tendency for envy. It took me quite some time to reconcile myself with the fact that there have always been and will be people who are better writers, researchers, and speakers than me. I have marvelled at the prose of R, the poetry of G, the thoroughness of S’s legal research and the eloquence and clarity of speech that I found in many of my rather unassuming peers. It took time to shed the suffocating veil of envy and truly appreciate their art.

A recurring idea (or should I call it assumption?) that has been running through this essay thus far is the association between self worth and ‘being good at something’. My friend R once rightly admonished me for insisting on this connection. Does one have to be good at something in order to value oneself? If this assumption were to be valid, then ordinariness would be antithetical to self worth - a result that is both cruel and elitist. I remember being impressed by the principle of unconditional positive regard that I encountered in my brief study of psychology, but I am afraid I have not been able to put it into practice.

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Why must we hold ordinariness in scant regard? What does it mean to distinguish oneself and why is it an end in itself?

Ordinariness has been diversely and evocatively celebrated in literature. There is certainly a silent lure to it. I would argue that this is not so much because of status quoism as because of a healthy respect for human limitations. Then again, does it not lead to complacency? I do not think the celebration of ordinariness conflicts with the need to develop, to ‘fare forward’ (towards what?). The positive recognition of ordinariness is but an acknowledgement of the humanity of those countless people who are not endowed with such abilities or provided with such opportunities as to emerge out of the ordinariness of their being. Abilities and opportunities are both factors over which one has very little control (more on this presently).

Of course, it is ordinariness upon which much of the extraordinary subsists. I cannot help recalling, in this context, Sahir Ludhianvi’s famous poem, Taj Mahal. In this nazm, Sahir speaks not only about ordinariness of the material sort: the labour of thousands of workers who toiled to raise the Taj Mahal, and who shall remain unnamed. He speaks also of romantic love between ordinary persons. It is not easy for many of us, fed as we are on commercial cinema (and ‘popular’ novels), to truly come to terms with the fact that romantic love is not, or at least ought not be, the sole preserve of good looking, multi-talented young people.

It appears that what I have in mind while using the word ordinary is only one kind of ordinariness - mediocrity. Ordinariness could also refer to the mundanity of our lives. But I suppose even those who excel in what they do cannot avoid settling into a mundane existence. ‘Mundane’ is perhaps not the only way to characterise such a life. There is comfort in patterns and rhythms. The celebration of ordinariness that I spoke of earlier involves seeking beauty and comfort within those things that we take for granted.

But how do we deal with ordinariness, when understood as mediocrity? Now it is no longer about seeking comfort in the settled rhythms of life or the simple pleasures of our surroundings. Rather, it is about reconciling ourselves with the limits of our abilities, with our inability to distinguish ourselves in ways that matter to us.

Why take such a fatalistic attitude? Is a person doomed to remain mediocre forever? A person may very well expand their capabilities over the years and end up surprising those who did not expect much from them. But at the stage of life in which I find myself now, it is difficult to not form an estimate - however inaccurate and myopic it may be - of how I and my peers would fare in the future, when judged by our present levels of intelligence, competitiveness and resourcefulness. The question I wish to brood about, therefore, is quite ridiculous: how do I deal with the possibility of ending up mediocre in the future? Only a professional brooder can formulate such problems. Do I propose an answer? No.

But what about my perceived shortcomings at present? I have recounted how I tried to come to terms with the limits of my intelligence. I have sought to overcome this limitation by banking upon diligence and persistence. It is clearly not a winning strategy, but it is the best I can do. However, coping with this inadequacy also requires some kind of intellectual reassurance.

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Intelligence, as is well know, is function of an individual’s genetic endowment and environmental conditions (which includes family background, style of parenting, peer influences, schooling etc.) I take considerable comfort from the fact that nearly all these factors depend on chance. I have no control over the genes transmitted to me and nor do I have any control over the kind of intellectual stimulation I received in my formative years. General intelligence, in my opinion (as susceptible as it may be to informed criticism), is as arbitrary in its occurrence as physical attractiveness (understood in relation to the cultural context). Smart people and good looking people are both useful to society. There can be no other justification for their being feted.

The only justification that seems acceptable to me for allowing intelligent persons to enjoy better chances of material success is a utilitarian one, i.e., the social benefit that we may expect from the exercise of their intelligence. They might turn out out to be great entrepreneurs, political leaders, innovators, artists or academicians. (Or, they may very well end up as wrecks.) It feels pointless to hide the envy that permeates these paragraphs.

These views led me to embrace luck egalitarianism, championed by Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. Rawls’ famous ‘difference principle’ tries to reach the very bottom of chance-based inequality. One can, ideally, level out inequalities arising out of socio-economic circumstances of families, by providing affordable and high quality education and vocational training, amongst other things. But what about inequalities arising out of such factors that the state cannot possibly nullify through egalitarian policies? Different persons grow up in different environments, have access to different kinds and degrees of intellectual stimulation, are exposed to different kinds of social situations and to varying extents, and end up developing different kinds of personalities and levels of intelligence. No public policy can conceivably level out these differences which, by the way, do significantly affect people’s abilities to do well professionally and materially.

Yet, the inequalities arising out of such differences which cannot be levelled out are unquestionably arbitrary and hence Rawls believes that they cannot be justified. To undo the effect of such inequalities, Rawls propounds the difference principle (which is a part of his rather elaborate theory of justice). This principle requires that the social and economic system should be so organised as to give the maximum benefit to the least-advantaged members of the society. It is a principle that compels the policy maker (who chooses to follow it) to think of the worst-off in society before taking any step towards economic growth.

While the expansion of quality education, healthcare, nutrition, employment, financial services etc. are all extremely important for reducing inequalities, there will always remain some inequality which cannot be removed by these measures and which cannot always be attributed to an individual’s own lack of effort or motivation. In this respect, intelligence and personality are great dividers indeed and the arbitrariness inherent in them cannot be ignored.

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Unsurprisingly, luck egalitarianism is heavily criticised. Does it not lead us to explain away an individual’s attainments by entirely attributing them to chance factors, thus depriving the individual of an incentive to expand their capabilities to pursue things that they value?

On the one hand, I feel comforted by the deterministic view of intelligence that I have tried to summarise above, and on the other hand, I cannot deny that I have an overpowering need for achievement. How do I reconcile the two?

As I have already acknowledged, capabilities can be expanded and new skills can be learnt. I suppose even the dullest of law students can, with the blessings of Dame Luck, slog their way to a respectable practice, or a decent living in general. What I ask for (from nobody in particular) are opportunities to expand my capabilities. I cannot afford certifications and diplomas that are whimsically priced. Nor can I afford to put myself through 12 hour work-days at lawyers’ offices.

Am I being unreasonable? I do not know. There might be much more to say but I mustn’t grow numb saying it. Some gloom must be kept in reserve. For all I know, a slogger works best in solitude, and a even lover of solitude cannot do without the company of his dreary meditations.