Symbolic Violence with sneaky and surreptitious language
Symbolic Violence with sneaky and surreptitious language
Source: Why You Should Embrace Mediocrity | Crispin Thurlow | TED
Often, we see hotels with names like “Elite Hotel”. We see that they are not really that elite. The rooms are just not big enough to be elite.
Two really important lessons about everyday language:
First,
words are very influential, but their meaning can often be slippery.
And second,
the language of superiority and comparison can lead to disappointment.
Nowadays we’re bombarded with messages about excellence, distinction and success, and we hear voices telling us you should be a top student, or a winner, or a leader, or preferably all three.
Status anxiety
All of this leads to a profound sense of what the philosopher Alain de Botton has called status anxiety. This is a kind of anxiety that arises through our constant worry about not being good enough, or always needing to be someone better, or to have something better.
But the reality is, not everyone can be a top student. Not everyone can be a winner, and not everyone can be a leader. By the simple law of averages, most of us have to live a life more ordinary. We have to rethink or perhaps even reclaim the notion of mediocrity. We have to challenge ourselves to consider the possibility of embracing mediocrity.
Mediocrity
Mediocrity has a bad reputation with sort of connotations like average quality or not very good. But consider the word’s origins and unearth some of its other meaning potentials. In actual fact, the word mediocre has its roots in the Indo-European medial, meaning middle. Essentially, mediocrity is just about existing between two extremes, hence middling or average or otherwise unexceptional or ordinary. Statistically speaking, life in the middle is inevitable and unavoidable for most of us. In fact, the middle is not such a terrible place to be. In fact, it’s quite a privileged place to be. It may not be as good as being at the top, but it’s surely not as bad as being at the bottom.
The trick is to learn to recognize our mediocrity, or at least our averageness or our ordinariness, without allowing other people to make us feel like failures or losers. When we’re surrounded by these voices pressuring us to be the best and to be better, we find ourselves in a world that is bombarded or confronted constantly with a relentless language of superiority and comparison.
Sneaky and surreptitious language
This is not just a relentless language, but it's also often a very sneaky, surreptitious language. And it’s with this in mind that I want to just share with you a couple of my favorite examples of what this looks like.
Here are a couple of case studies.
Elite
This word that circulates everywhere in our lives. And all of these appear in decidedly non-elite spaces.
The use of the word “elite” like this is a very, very common language game nowadays. We see this word attached to all sorts of goods and services, kind of meaning everything and nothing at the same time. In some ways, it’s all perfectly harmless, a bit playful even. But these ubiquitous, constant appeals to eliteness are trying to persuade us that superiority really does matter and that status is something that we should be thinking about all the time. And these little one-word messages also suggests to us that superiority is easily obtained.
The language of superiority and comparison is really good for business. All of these relentless little one-word messages, and ones like them, are trying to keep us aspiring upwards all the time. And if we're aspiring, we're also acquiring. In other words, we're shopping.
And for this, they don’t even need us aspiring to be the best. Just aspiring to be better is often enough. Which brings us to the second case study.
Premium
A good example of this appears in the so-called premium economy services offered by most major international airlines nowadays. And it’s no coincidence that premium economy can be more profitable for airlines than business class. But what's interesting about this little one-word message is that it's precisely not about being the best.
Premium is all about having just a little bit extra or a little bit more, and especially a little bit extra or a little bit more compared with others.
Marketers know only too well that people will pay good money for feeling better off. Even that is when this comparison doesn't make us feel very good for very long.
The most striking thing about the word premium is that it really crops up in way more banal spaces.
Again, premium is just about having a little bit more or a little bit extra compared with others. These comparisons are usually built on illusions, and these comparisons just don't make us feel good for very long.
Symbolic Violence
In fact, all of these silly little language games are a perfect example of what the famous sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called symbolic violence. And in a nutshell, this is about the way that we allow words to manipulate us, even when it’s against our own best interests. So while social comparison may indeed be in our nature, it invariably leaves us feeling insecure, inadequate, unsatisfied. There will always be something more or something better. And there will always be someone better and better off.
How can we avoid doing symbolic violence to ourselves?
Mediocrity might hold the key or a key. Embracing mediocrity might feel just a little bit extreme or uncomfortable for some people. But the point is really just about coming to terms with the inevitability of our averageness and maybe finding a way to find the value and perhaps the privilege in being unexceptional. For this, we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves that it really is OK not to be the best. And it’s certainly OK not to always want to be someone better or to have something better. Nowadays, especially when we are surrounded by this relentless language of superiority and comparison, it takes determination and it also takes real courage to be ordinary.