Part/Step 01. Please understand, all humans are created equal, but we do not behave equally well.
What is that feeling we get when we see someone, anyone, doing their best? Do you get that feeling? Do you understand what I am saying? What is that feeling we get when we see a stranger apply themselves, dedicate themselves, even, to a task?
Respect.
We can call that feeling “respect”; Or “admiration”; Or refer to it as “a positive general opinion of the individual in question, even if momentary”. We are decidedly and oddly drawn to people doing their best.
I will make a distinction at this juncture. We are also decidedly drawn to people doing well, even perfectly. However, our attraction in this case is not odd. It makes sense. Our interest in people doing well can be fueled by envy, or love, or any number of plausible emotional phenomena. Nothing new. But, our interest in people doing their best is strange. Strange because someone’s best is not necessarily good enough, let alone good.
Picture yourself competing against a person whom you consider less skilled than you are. Imagine, for instance, that you are a 22 year old university student playing a game of basketball against the 5 year old kindergartener you are baby-sitting. Let’s call her Katie.
Odds are that you will trounce poor Katie in a full game of basketball. 100–0, perhaps, if you do as you should and show no mercy. Still imagining, consider two outcomes at the end of the game.
In the first, you score your 100th point by tornado-dunking over Katie for the 16th time that evening, triggering Katie into a tantrum and sending her scurrying to her mummy in a fit of unsportsmanlike rage. In the second outcome, because even in hypothetical situations she deserves no mercy*, you score your 100th point by tornado-dunking over Katie for the 16th time that evening, but this time Katie responds by picking the ball and shuffling across to your rim as you floss in celebration. She scores her first points of the game and challenges you to a rematch.
By the metrics of ‘Skillfully winning a game of basketball’, Katie did not do well in either outcome. In absolute terms, she lost by a record-breaking margin and should strongly consider a different career, and you won so hard you could feasibly join the ‘95-’96 Chicago Bulls.
In both outcomes, however, as a 5 year old playing against an ordinary adult, Katie was a great sport for getting to the end of the match. And in scenario two, she kept her head in the game, showed resilience, and acted in a way that generally suggests she was doing her best. It is fair to say that 5 year old Katie earned some respect in both scenarios, but more in the second scenario than in the first.
As a species, we have an innate sense of context.
We can look down, or up, at an individual or group and asses whether said individual or group did its best within the given context. “Best”, of course, is a nebulous term, but, thankfully, it does not matter for this argument what ‘best’ actually is — as long we agree that it exists, ie, that B can be better than A, and C even better than B.
Does it just ‘make sense’ that we are drawn to people we respect? That is, does it matter that when we are otherwise not ‘impressive people’, per se, we can become impressive and earn respect simply by doing our best? My answers, respectively, are, ‘No, it does not just ‘make sense’’, and, ‘Of course it matters.’
Context matters.
With two subjects in a given context, all other factors held constant, and respect available in free supply, it matters when one subject does their best and the other does not. Even if both subjects underperform, the subject who did their best earns respect and the other does not earn any.
My goal is not to create yet another way to socially stratify ourselves. In fact, on account of the bitter-sweet fact that death comes for us all at the end, I personally think most forms of social stratification are a net-negative venture and thus ultimately pointless.
That said, our behavior has a tremendous conscious and subconscious impact on our perceptions of self and others, both in isolation and in groups.
Ask yourself, for instance, these questions:
Have you ever done your best at a task?
How did that experience compare with doing less than your best?
Have you ever failed at something but felt better about yourself because you did your best?
Do you know any people who do their best at a task on a regular basis? If so, how do you feel about these people?
Do you know any people who have out-performed you at a task without doing their best? If so, how do you feel about this people?
Context affects how we perceive ourselves. And we often perceive ourselves in the context of others.
Part/Step 01 to being better than your comrade is doing your best.
Please understand, all humans are created equal, but we do not behave equally well.
Part/Step 02. Please understand, they are not you, you are not them; But, together, you are.
