Friday, February 29, 2008

Comfort in Average

In Vas, Square claims that by screening for birth defects, we are in fact making a decision as to what is good and what is bad. These sorts of screenings happen all the time. When children visit their pediatricians, their heights and weights are taken and plotted against the rest of the population of children of similar age and gender. I personally was always a small child and my height and weight were never anywhere near the measurements expected for a kid my age. I understand that to many parents it is important to see how their child is developing as compared to his or her peers, but by telling me I was shorter and skinnier than most, I always felt that these were negative qualities even though I had no real control over them. Any time we model anything with a normal distribution, we are suggesting that certain qualities are uncommon and sometimes undesirable. So why are we so comfortable being average? Why do we find comfort in the mean? Sure, being tall or having an above average IQ are enviable qualities to many, but being an equal distance away from the mean on the opposite side of the curve is rather undesirable. How is comparing yourself to everyone else a good indication of the quality of person you are? Every time we judge ourselves against the rest of the population, we are acknowledging that average is fine, and a divergence to one side is admirable and to the other is unsatisfactory.

3 comments:

Ana said...

I think that if we didn't compare ourselves to others we would end up living a very unfulfilling life. It's not that I want to particularly believe this, but I think human beings are competitive not just by nature but by need. Maybe I can get corrected here by the psychology major in our class, but just from what I've experienced in my own life and from what I've observed in the life of others, I don't think people really want to not be compared to anyone. Sure it sucks when you're not at the top, but the struggle and the fight is something we thrive on, and we do it on a regular basis. School is like that... you want to have a better grade than someone else, and you want to be popular and liked... no one really wants to be an average Joe. But if you gotta pick between an average Joe and a loser, I think most people would pick the average Joe. I don't know... the loser has some appeal... at least people know him.

Kyle Caffey said...

I believe that we are focusing on the wrong distributions.
You ask a good question: "How is comparing yourself to everyone else a good indication of the quality of person you are?"
I think that a person's value is much deeper than the skin. This being the case, looking for our value by our spot on the height distribution is meaningless. Same with intelligence distribution. Same with the prettiness distribution...

Brian M said...

I agree with what Ana is trying to say. Everything we do is somehow compared to what others do. Competition exists in nearly every aspect of our lives. Unless we are apathetic towards life, we compete everyday to be superior to our peers. Without this competitive nature, I think our lives would be, as Ana said, very unfulfilled.