\n\n\n" }\u00e2\u0080\u009cBut, Dave,\u00e2\u0080\u009d you cry, \u00e2\u0080\u009cWalt Whitman tells me I\u00e2\u0080\u0099m my own version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!\u00e2\u0080\u009d And I don\u00e2\u0080\u0099t disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another\u00e2\u0080\u0093which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality -- we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point -- and we\u00e2\u0080\u0099re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that\u00e2\u0080\u0099s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it... Now it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s \u00e2\u0080\u009cSo what does this get me?\u00e2\u0080\u009d As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans. It\u00e2\u0080\u0099s an epidemic -- and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune... one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School... where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement. And I hope you caught me when I said \u00e2\u0080\u009cone of the best.\u00e2\u0080\u009d I said \u00e2\u0080\u009cone of the best\u00e2\u0080\u009d so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You\u00e2\u0080\u0099re it or you\u00e2\u0080\u0099re not.
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