The Measure of a Man

The Reverend William L. Edelen is Director of Adult Education at the Plymouth Congrega­tional Church in Wichita, Kansas. This article is from a sermon delivered there February ¹5, ¹970.

One of the most insulting cults that exists in our society today is the religion that has as its object of worship the common man. You hear people say, "Oh, he’s just a common person; you will like him."

What a pathetic distinction to be known as a person who can’t compete with the best, to be known as a common man who is to be classified with the most mediocre, the least informed, the least tal­ented, the most common of society. The word common means: "crude; without distinction; second rate; inferior; cheap; trite; below nor­mal; unrefined; inelegant." Can you imagine any greater insult than to be called a "commoner"?

What a paradox we are! We praise commonness, the common man. Yet, if you have need of highly skilled surgery, you want a very uncommon doctor, not one who is average, inferior, second-rate. If you have need for your life to be defended in court, you want a very brilliant, educated, alert, sharp, talented, very un­common lawyer. You certainly don’t want your life in the hands of a cheap, second-rate, inferior lawyer. In war time you certainly don’t want to be in a company commanded by a common, second-rate, average, or inferior officer.

Too many have become common. Our community, our nation, and world are crying desperately for uncommon men and women who are excellent, talented, trained, competent, alert, distinguished. Ernest Hemingway called this "the millennium of the untal­ented." He said: "We are sur­rounded by actors who cannot act, authors who cannot write, teachers who cannot teach, singers who cannot sing, speakers who cannot speak, painters who cannot paint."

Charles Conrad, Apollo 12 Com­mander, had a recent comment on this subject:

If teachers fail to get through to you, you’ve had it…. I had my mind paralyzed by dull teachers, my wits numbed by uninspired teaching. One glance at my report card under such teachers and you would have washed me out as a failure.

But then my parents transferred me to a private school in upper New York; and there they grabbed me hard, those teachers. They demanded excellence from me. They let me know that we were not playing games, that we were seriously in­volved in a thing called education. They had an honor roll — a real hon­or roll — and rewarded honor roll standing with privileges that made staying on the honor roll a real hon­or and worth the effort. I graduated at the head of my class, and those two years there changed my entire life.

What we do too often is excuse commonness, mediocrity, regard­less of where it is found, if the commonness is sincere. We have this ludicrous belief that if a per­son is sincere, it excuses every­thing. But few things are cheaper than sincerity, and few things can be more vicious. Let me illustrate: Hitler sincerely desired to get rid of the Jews. That didn’t make him nice. Stalin sincerely endeavored to send off to the Siberian death camps any friend of liberty. That didn’t make him admirable. Who is more dangerous than a sincere fanatic? Who is more exasperat­ing than a sincere fool? Robes­pierre was most sincere, even to the point of crying. He wept at the sight of blood, while sending thousands to the guillotine in per­fect sincerity. George Bernard Shaw tells us that the devil praises sincerity.

Mediocrity Replaces Excellence

Well, where does the common man come from? This worship of the common man permeates and saturates our schools and our cul­ture and our homes. Seniority re­places creativity and talent. Medi­ocrity replaces excellence. Slothful­ness is rewarded or overlooked. The common student and common person is rewarded, so much so some times that excellent students are punished, handicapped, and held back by common parents and by common teachers who resent having an excellent pupil or child.

Eric Hoffer put it this way:

Those who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of in­spiration or of ability, or to mis­fortune, rather than to insuff¹cient application. At the core of every true and great talent there is an awareness of the diff¹culties inher­ent in any achievement and the confidence that by persistence and pa­tience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus, talent is a species of vigor.

Why do we fear demanding ex­cellence? In his latest book, No Easy Victories, John Gardner says it well:

Keeping a free society free, vital, and strong is no job for the half-educated and the slovenly. The man who is excellent tones up society and the man who is slovenly, be he jani­tor or judge, lowers the tone of so­ciety. One does not achieve excel­lence by just "doin’ what comes nat­urally." People don’t stumble into excellence. All excellence involves ap­plication and tenacity of purpose. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent teacher or doctor or lawyer.

A recent publicity film of a large chemical company showed a group of workers in a laboratory, and the announcer said this in his com­mentary: "No geniuses here, just a bunch of average, common Americans working together." Here is the problem, may I sug­gest to you: too many want to be a bunch of "average Americans," just a bunch of "common" people. Far too many of us today aspire only to be just one of a "bunch of average Americans."

John Stuart Mill made the ob­servation about England that can, no doubt, now be said for Amer­ica: "England now appears only capable of doing things by groups, by combining; but it was individ­ual men of another stamp than this that made England what it has been, and individual men of another stamp will be needed to prevent its decline." William James told America the same thing, at Stanford University in 1906: "The world is only begin­ning to see that the wealth of a nation consists more than in any­thing else in the number of su­perior men that it harbors."

Hiding in the Group

How we escape, too many of us, into the sanctuary of groups and hide there! As common men de, we say, "I’m with them. I’ll vote with them. I belong to them; what they do is good enough for me, even if they are idiots. I’m with the city group. I’m with the businessmen." Even if they are wrong, we say: "I’m with the rural group, the farmers. I’m with the Legion, the ADA, AMA, NEA, or NAACP. Right or wrong, honest or false, I’m with them. Democrats, Repub­licans, Presbyterians, what they think is good enough for me be­cause I still want to be told how to vote, and how to act, and how to think by someone else."

I can hide in the group, and never have to stand as a man who can think creatively on his own, with only his God as Lord of his conscience. Common men seek the security of the group, the escape of excessive group identification. The group, you see, can save one from the agony and pain and dis­cipline of having to finally face up to knowing oneself and assuming responsibility for one’s own thoughts.

The common man surveys the group and the polls to get his be­liefs, to see what everyone else is doing, to see what he is supposed to be doing. What everybody else is supposed to be doing sets the precarious standard for the living of his days. As St. Paul put it: "They compare themselves by one another, and measure themselves by one another, without under­standing."

Oftentimes we repeat meaning­less clichés for so long that we be­lieve them. I think one such is this: "moderation in all things." A friend suggested to me last week that "moderation" is the key to mediocrity. The uncommon peo­ple who are memorable, who use their time here on earth to the full­est, have usually been most im­moderate, in love, in giving, even immoderate in anger as was Jesus, immoderate in their joy of life.

The Sadducees and Pharisees, within "accepted limits," loved and lived moderately. Jesus did nei­ther; he immoderately loved those whom the church leaders hated, and he immoderately lived by shattering a great many of their rules and traditions. Socrates was not moderate. Buddha was not moderate. The greats of the world — in religion, science, literature, music, art, education — have not been moderate persons. But they have often forgotten themselves into immortality by vast immod­erate creativity and contribution and living. The creative never stay within "accepted limits." That’s why they are creative. The defini­tion of "moderate" is "accepted limits."

A man looks back and too often sees a lot more moderate, medi­ocre quantity than quality in his life. Somewhere along the line he has sold himself for a measly, trifling thirty pieces of silver —even like Judas — into commonness and mediocrity. The life of Judas is proof of one thing! Men and nations and groups who have sold themselves cheap, proceed to be their own hangmen.

The Modern Levelers

The problem of how to dispose of time so that it will yield a sense of fulfillment instead of a sense of emptiness is as old as time itself. We say, too often, "Just give me a little more time" to get my life, my goals, my ambitions, my aims squared away. But time runs out. We quit growing, we quit striving, we quit climbing, we quit think­ing, we quit our ideals, and won­der why life has lost meaning. Too many of our lives are stuck in common grooves.

What groove are we stuck in? We have the same brains as our neighbor, the same thoughts, the same car, the same clothes, the same type house, the same type furniture, the same personality. We are all interchangeable and yet, we talk about being individ­uals, we talk about being original, we talk about being creative, we talk about being unique, uncom­mon individuals.

Federal Judge Learned Hand prophetically observed forty-five years ago:

The mass of us take our virtues and our tastes, like our shirts and our furniture, from the limited pat­terns which the market offers.

At the disposal of those who seek mass production of ideas, tastes, morals, and habits are the press, the tabloid, the weekly, the radio, the moving picture: these are the great engines of our modern levelers. Along with them are sales cata­logues, advertisements, posters, fic­tion, timid, fearful preachers and teachers.

Since our ancestors fully straight­ened their knees and rose upon their hind legs to become Homo sapiens, there has never been one-tenth as many people in the world who felt alike, ate alike, slept alike, hated alike, loved alike, wore the same clothes, used the same furniture in the same houses, approved the same sentiments, believed in the same God, and were all confidently assured that nothing was lacking to their com­plete realization of the human ideal.

Over that chorus the small voice of the individual sounds not even the thinnest obbligato, and it almost seems preposterous for him to sing at all.

The most destructive thing we can do is to compare ourselves with our neighbors and measure ourselves in relation to them. What is your standard of measurement? What neighbor, what group, what poll, what person, what book, what ideal, what philosophy, what un­derstanding of God, what truth, what love?

Great Man Like Lightning

Carlyle used the best words: "The great man is like lightning; and the rest of men waited for him, like fuel, so that they, too, would flam." Have you known such a person who fed you like fuel so that you, too, could flame? If so, you are very fortunate; stay close by that person. Do you want to be around those too much who bring you down to the mediocre, or around those who stimulate you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and raise and inspire you to be­come more truly the person you would like to be? Let some un­common one, like lightning, touch off the spark in you — and start believing in you — and watch what happens!

The uncommon man is contin­ually seeking wisdom, making an attempt to grow in his ability to make wise, independent decisions, based upon accurate facts, clear reasoning and understanding, jus­tice and rightness. The uncommon man, or woman, is excellent, su­perior, distinguished, first-rate, valuable, elegant, intelligent, re­fined. The world is crying for un­common men and uncommon women.

We can’t be all of these things, you and I, but we can start think­ing on these things. For if we, in­dividually, have no goals or ideals or thoughts that have to do with human excellence and human dis­tinction, then, we are, of all peo­ple, the most to be pitied and the most pathetic.

***

What Is My Life?

Human lives begin as diamonds do,
Dull and rough, like common pebbles.
Some are large, blue-white, and perfect underneath;
Most are small, off-color, flawed
But all are precious, latent with a dazzling beauty.
What is my life?
It’s taking my rough pebble, large or small,
And working at it year by year,
Cleaving off this flaw, and that.
Polishing facets one by one,
Until, naked before the world,
My true self stands revealed, calm and proud,—
And adds its small, but radiant brilliance,
To the smoldering fire of man’s emergence
From his savage past.

RICHARD L. ROPIEQUET, President
Alta Industries, Inc., Portland, Oregon