You might have heard before that most people believe themselves to be above average at anything. Ask them about attractiveness, competency, or personality, and most people won’t want to be arrogant, but also not feel behind. And really, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to feel behind. Being in the “bottom 50” of anything hurts on some deep level by calling your adequacy into question. There are near infinite ways to measure oneself; there’s at least one thing that all of us can recall having these thoughts about. It’s only a coinflip for each metric that decides if we’re above or below average. So, to keep ourselves happy, we “probably aren’t anything special. I’d say maybe average or slightly above.” There isn’t any direct loss in it; an individual can host this idea without any harm done to themself.
When asked to rate things out of 10, the most common instinct is to rate things as a seven. A five would of course be average. So now a seven is the new average. I’ve heard a similar thing described about how people study for college exams, but it’s applicable here as well: in a movie theater, everyone starts sitting. But the first person who stands will have a better view, so they stand. That restricts the view of everyone behind them, so they too must stand. Before you know it, everyone in the theater is standing, and no one’s view is any better than it was before, which would qualify as pretty severe indirect harm. The ideas don’t do direct harm to individuals, but they harm the group, which circles back and harms the individual anyway. It’s the same thing as the theater when we consider a six out of 10 below average, or consider a B a bad grade. We cannot stomach falling behind, even though it isn’t some moral failure. Sometimes you aren’t even behind, and it only looks like that because of a fork in the road. Sometimes you might be behind now, but moving at twice the pace as others in front of you. A “six out of 10” certainly doesn’t describe that.
Most people believing that they are above average is guarding against the thought that maybe they’re behind, which is understandably terrifying. It’s also a bit sad, because most people aren’t. The fear of lagging behind only exists because we see it as a moral failure to be behind, as if life were some equation and it was our job to stuff a bigger number into it, undoubtedly seeking a larger output. We fail to really measure the output at all, or what it’s even worth to us, but people don’t really question that part of the process until all of the hoops are behind them and they realize that their performance has not been for them. If everyone feels the need to be exceptional, then the most exceptional thing that you, my dear reader, can do is know that you’re alright exactly where you are.