{"id":171,"date":"2011-05-19T09:41:08","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T09:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=171"},"modified":"2011-09-24T09:33:17","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T09:33:17","slug":"moses-ochon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/writings\/essay\/moses-ochon\/","title":{"rendered":"Moses E. Ochonu"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Praise of Laziness and Mediocrity<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/h1>\n
Moses E. Ochonu<\/h6>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking. Is mediocrity the greatest sin in the world? Why are badness and laziness vilified in such unforgiving terms in most societies? I mean, everybody can\u2019t be an overachieving hard worker in a world of zero sum equations, can they? It\u2019s a matter of simple logic. Badness sustains the value of excellence. Without mediocrity, achievement would be diminished in worth and the world would be a bland, undifferentiated playground of overachievers. Without badness, we would not recognize goodness. Although the opposite proposition is also true, badness and mediocrity are not normative aspirational standards, so they are not the paradigms that need to be reinforced or defended.<\/p>\n

Please follow my logic carefully. The Protestant work ethic has socialized us into thinking that work and achievement constitute the only markers of noble humanity. Don’t get me wrong; I like my work as an academic. No, I love my work. If I didn’t work, I would suffocate from boredom. But as I reflect on it, I am not entirely sure if that’s what nature intended or if I am simply an unwitting victim of the capitalist denunciation of laziness, badness, and mediocrity and its simultaneous recommendation of work, excellence, and achievement. Those who are fanatical campaigners against mediocrity ought to pause and temper their intolerance with a sober acknowledgement of how their intolerance may have been formed by forces outside them\u2014by the work-obsessed capitalist system.<\/p>\n

A graduate school professor of mine patented a phrase of critique that was stinging or entertaining, depending on whether you were a spectator or a target. He would examine a piece of writing or presentation and conclude that the product had two, three, four, five, or six \u201clevels of badness.\u201d That phrase was magical. It caught on among graduate students of our cohort who were familiar with its inventor. We used it to entertain ourselves, to laugh at our work, and to preempt and laugh off critiques of our papers. It was therapy in the harsh, depressing world of graduate school. We even invented our own variation on the phrase. A piece of writing, art, film, musical production, or theatre might have three major levels of badness and\/or two minor ones. That was our self-consolatory take on it.<\/p>\n

As we made our way through graduate school, and as I reflected on the “levels of badness” thesis, it occurred to me that the phrase encapsulated a mindset that does not tolerate mediocrity, however defined\u2014a mindset that refuses to recognize how mediocrity is ultimately constitutive of and indispensible to excellence. Without mediocre engineers, we cannot recognize or appreciate engineering excellence; in fact we would not have the category of “engineering excellence” to begin with. If all engineering is excellent, then “excellent” loses its function as an adjective of value.<\/p>\n

Capitalism is partly to blame for our obsession with excellence and our disdain for mediocrity. The stigmatization of mediocrity is a product of the culture of obsessive work, which is itself the culture of capitalism. Disciplined work has a history, which is intertwined with the history of capitalism. Capitalists, socialists, and everyone in between make it seem as though work is natural to humans. It is not. Scavenging, harvesting, and consumption are. The transition from scavenging and other consumption-based modes of existence to capitalist work discipline was not a \u201cnatural\u201d evolutionary progression as modern social science claims. It took the conscious, contested, chaotic, and unevenly successful effort of shrewd, self-interested groups to institute the culture of regimented work and accumulation and to normalize it as the standard of success.<\/p>\n

The notion that everyone has to be a worker and producer, and that this should be the central defining feature of human progress is neither natural nor is it even upheld by capitalism itself. That\u2019s the ultimate contradiction. Capitalism is supposedly about working and producing but it depends for its survival on a non-productive activity that requires little or no work: consumption. Consumption is not a capitalist activity. Yet it helps sustains the entire edifice of capitalism \u2013 work, profits, pursuits of excellence, and other idioms of capitalist ascent.<\/p>\n

Some sectors of our capitalist economic superstructure in fact depend on laziness and mediocrity for their survival. There is a branch of our capitalist, industrial economy that one might call the Laziness Industrial Complex (LIC), a vast sector catering to the base indulgencies and lifestyles of the lazy and the mediocre \u2013 lifestyles that we simultaneously deride and subsidize. In the United States, the lazy man is a butt of jokes and snide remarks and is projected as a cautionary tale. He is alternately called bum, slob, and loser, among other derogatory names, and children are coached to work hard so as not to end up as a couch potato. The slob\u2019s perceived failures supply visual and textual materials for instructing our wards away from his choices.<\/p>\n

The couch potato is theorized as being useless to society, an unproductive, lazy burden on the capitalist system. But how would the chip making industry survive without the couch potato \u2013 the one who sits on a couch all day eating chips and watching TV and movies? Speaking of TV and movie watching, how would TV shows get their ratings without the vain patronage of couch potatoes and lazy bums who reject the tyranny of hard work and prefer to engage in the vain pleasures enabled by modern capitalist inventions? The multi-billion dollar video rental industry depends largely on the patronage of people who society would define as slobs. Who consumes the junk programming that has become the staple of daytime TV in America? How can mass hard work coexist with daytime TV? In this universe of contradictory impulses something has to give, and what usually gives is that which gives no pleasure and exerts mental and physical energy: work.<\/p>\n

In a world without the couch potato, perhaps the worst hit capitalist sector would be the soft drink industry. Where would fizz makers find a market to sustain them? The alcohol industry is the quintessential bum industry. There is a symbiotic connection between the bum and alcohol. The industry sustains the 24-hour party industry, which is itself dependent on a vast army of underachieving fun lovers. The industry sustains circuits of socialization that are populated mostly by people we would characterize as lazy bums. The beer brewing industry is especially beholden to the large population of slobs and couch potatoes.<\/p>\n

This is the age of multitasking and people can snack and work at the same time. But would they snack as much and consume as much soda as they do if they worked as hard as society would want them to? In the juggling game of life something always gives. We can’t have people working all the time and pursuing successive goals and still get all the comfort foods we produce consumed. Let’s face it: idleness, along with its indulgences, is a complement to, and sustainer of, hard work and obsessive productivity. I am not sure the snack industry would survive if all we did was overwork and overachieve.<\/p>\n

As the world\u2019s leading economies hobble along under the weight of capitalist excess and debt, and as families are compelled to cut back and superintend shrinking resources, their frustrations have found a familiar, perennial target of public economic anxiety: the so-called welfare queen or king. Demonized and devalued in discourses of societal economic and social anxiety, the welfare queen of popular economic lore is the unemployed citizen who takes from the pot without putting into it, the freeloading member of society who contributes nothing but shares in what others produce. Such narratives may soothe the anger of hard working citizens, especially in periods of economic drought, but how true is the foundational assumption that the welfare queen contributes nothing to society? It may be true that she produces no monetized value through disciplined, measured work. But that is just one form of value.<\/p>\n

If one understands the economy to be an organism with many nodes needing to be animated, it is possible to perceive the welfare queen radically differently. Not as a leech but as one whose consumption, conspicuous and otherwise, helps sustain the capitalist machine that enables proud workaholics like us to remain employed and to continue to produce value. Under this scenario, we could rethink the welfare queen as an entity paid by the system to sustain the system through her consumption. For her weekly or monthly stipends are swallowed up by Wallmart, Kroger, and other behemoths of capitalist consumerism, helping to recharge the batteries of the entire economy by adding to what esoteric economists call aggregate demand.<\/p>\n

Capitalism would be dead without the regenerative power of consumption, without the productive \u2013 yes, productive \u2013 input of laziness and mediocrity. Society stigmatizes badness but depends on it. Capitalists rail against laziness and mediocrity but thrive on them. That\u2019s the supreme irony of our world.<\/p>\n

As a Nigerian who is infinitely proud of the ingenuity and creative improvisation that are at the heart of Nollywood, Nigeria\u2019s thriving home-video industry, I was an unsparing critic of the industry\u2019s artistic integrity. I knocked its stories, plotlines, dialogues, acting, and the technical quality of its films. Then I had a conversation about Nollywood with my friend, Farooq Kperogi, a professor of Communications and Citizen Media at Kennesaw State University. He shared my basic critique of the Nollywood but cautioned me against dismissing the industry on account of its many \u201clevels of badness.\u201d He had talked to a film scholar who is sympathetic to Nollywood and celebrates its genius. The scholar had asked Farooq if he had given a thought to the possibility that the popularity of Nollywood was derived precisely from its indisputable badness. His theory congealed to a single poignant question: what if the badness of Nollywood is its selling point?<\/p>\n

Farooq proceeded to tell the story of a Westerner who, motivated by haughty notions of artistic messianism, set out to save Nollywood and to help the industry realize its potential which he thought was being hampered by the technical deficiencies of its productions. His philosophy was simple if na\u00efve: If one preserved the cultural appeal of Nollywood storylines and combined this with sophisticated, expensive production, Nollywood would explode to a different stratosphere of success.<\/p>\n

Our Western artistic do-gooder set out to make a film along those lines. He used a Nollywood script and a typical Nollywood story line but tweaked it for suspense and complexity. He then shot the film on celluloid and subjected it to sophisticated Hollywood editing and post production. When he was done he screened the movie for free in select Nigerian theatres. Very few Nigerians showed up despite an aggressive publicity campaign. The movie was a commercial disaster. Nigerians found the movie too sophisticated for their aesthetic palates. Its story was not relatable and was riddled with twists and suspense that Nigerian viewers found confusing. His theories of Nollywood deficiencies thoroughly confounded, our Western artistic savior packed up and sauntered away.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only in Nigeria that the sophisticated and esoteric are shunned for the simple and digestible. Parallels exist everywhere, including in the United States where I live \u2013 where Hollywood is both devoured and criticized for its effete distance from the simplicity of everyday aesthetic. So ubiquitous is the counter-culture of folk aesthetic that it was immortalized in an episode of Seinfeld<\/em>, that sitcom of all sitcoms. In season 9, episode 1, Jerry, a stand-up comic played by Jerry Seinfeld discovers that his good friend, George (Jason Alexander), may be a secret fan of the act of his comedic rival, Kenny Bania.<\/p>\n

Jerry\u2019s \u201csophisticated\u201d act has been no match on the stand-up circuit for the relatable simplicity and penetrating silliness of his rival\u2019s jokes. The popularity of Bania\u2019s act is inexplicable to Jerry, who regards his jokes as inane, obvious copouts. When George seems to relate to one of Bania\u2019s jokes, Jerry pounces inquisitively to confirm his suspicion, asking, \u201cYou think that\u2019s funny?\u201d Under pressure, George embraces his love of simple, unsophisticated humor, retorting with what has become one of the most memorable lines ever delivered in a sitcom: \u201cI don\u2019t know, I like stuff you don\u2019t have to think about too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nigerian cinematic consumers are like George. They like stuff they don\u2019t have to think too much about. They prefer to have their motion picture entertainment delivered to them in simple, accessible packages. Similar tastes abound in the centers of sophisticated art in the West, explaining the bewildering popularity of folk art, street music, and other unrefined artistic productions deemed too mediocre and too obvious in communication to be admitted into the high canons of their genres.<\/p>\n

The Nollywood story got me thinking. Here is a home video industry that is as crude as its stories are amateurish. Here is an industry that thrives on technical mediocrity. Yet thrive it has. Mediocrity apparently has an audience. Badness must have its appeal. Crudity can be a virtue. Nollywood has shrewdly\u00a0and profitably catered to the appetite of Nigerians for mediocrity.\u00a0Perhaps not everything has to be sophisticated and technically sound. Just as not everyone has to be an overachieving workaholic.<\/p>\n

If artistic mediocrity is entertaining, so is the mediocrity and laziness of bums and slobs. We hard working members of society entertain ourselves with slobs and couch potatoes. The figure of the \u201closer\u201d is perhaps the most popular figure of entertainment and mockery in American popular culture. We laugh at their social awkwardness and their failures. Whole television shows are built around the \u201closer\u201d and countless movie scripts are inspired by him.<\/p>\n

Yet, we need the couch-sitting loser to validate ourselves, to rationalize our slavish devotion to work and the endless production of value. The unspoken capitalist myth that keeps us working and achieving even at the expense of our freedom, happiness, and health, is that we could end up like the loser if we stopped working hard. We resent the slob and the failure that he supposedly embodies. Yet he is freer than we are, and he controls the way we live our lives; we are constantly striving not to become a loser, and so we are imprisoned by work and the pressure to achieve more. The degree to which we loathe the figure of the slob determines how devoted to work we are. Ironically, then, the metaphor of the lazy bum keeps us wedded to excessive work and determines our choices in life.<\/p>\n

What is the unsavory consequence slobbery? How does the life cycle of a slob affect or destroy us as a society? There is an obvious economic cost to slobbery in lost economic value, but this is offset by the centrality of social laziness \u2013 vain consumption \u2013 to capitalism. All said then, I cannot think of any significant cost imposed on society by slothfulness. If anything, it is central to our self-esteem and is a fulcrum of our capitalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Praise of Laziness and Mediocrity Moses E. Ochonu I\u2019ve been thinking. Is mediocrity the greatest sin in the world? Why are badness and laziness vilified in such unforgiving terms in most societies? I mean, everybody can\u2019t be an overachieving hard worker in a world of zero sum equations, can they? It\u2019s a matter of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-171","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions\/667"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}