So why are some kids successful and others are not?

 Interesting lecture by  Malcolm Gladwell, but then again where are the resources and bibliography in the description box for the claim that extremely high IQ kids succeed if their parents are rich, while their poor high IQ counterparts fail? If I just stop to think about what the logic tells us is that generalizations are ok, but not entirely accurate and therefore not entirely true. Especially if the speaker have not conducted any type of research. Or he has but I haven't paid close attention to his somewhat dense and too verbose style. Ok, he's probably not a researcher, but still, bibliography would serve us just fine. Despite it's shortcomings, this lecture gives some interesting insights regarding why some kids excel in sports and others do not. Sports being taken as an example.

Not saying what he claims here is totally right or wrong. No. It just does not seem too accurate, given the fact the lecturer is a sociologist among other things. Gives an air of a Renaissance type of scholar. Fingers crossed. 

In my opinion, not everyone with a high IQ must go to college or any type of a higher education.  I claim that the best thing in life is not a high IQ or university diploma, but the ability to be happy i.e. satisfied in doing what you are talented for. Usually what you love doing is not profitable, so the generations of unhappy people are created. Being successful is another topic, yet. So Harvard is not your goal unless attending it will make you happy in itself. Not only the fat paycheck after graduation and getting employed. 

Even if you have rich parents or rich people to back you up, you still have to work hard at it. 

My question is why do we all have to excel? Why the Western society highly praises entrepreneurship or PhD? Probably because of the underlying fear of mediocrity. Why does word mediocrity has a negative connotation? 

Automatically if you are not successful you are a loser. And who is the arbiter of success? Isn't the postmodern society full of TicToc mediocrity? 

You can be a mediocre writer - look at all those best sellers sprawling like weed. Yes, in Shakespeare time they gave money to writers who were truly talented, as one of a kind. Now everyone has a talend. But not everyone is modest enough to admit that maybe their talennt is an average one. No shame in that and that doesn't make you a failure. On the contrary. It makes you wise. 

So everyone GOT TALLENT and anything goes. And everyone is happy. Is that really the case?

Cashing in on the tallent, being it a beautiful face, singing or writing poem,s is what makes adults happy. I think St.Exupery would agree with me on this. So too much mediocrity results in too many best sellers sprining up like mushrooms. The devaluation of literature is evident all over the world. Devaluation of good literature points out directly at the Devaluation of human spirit and inner richness. And not only in literature. Anywhere you want it.

 Devaluation of literature requires not only poor spirit but the ensuing  devaluation in tastes and demands. I would say devaluation of tastes of publishing houses, for instance. Or Hollywood studios. They probably justify that to the readers who want that kind of thing. Well, if your education sucks then the readership or audiences will suck. They'll demand cheep pleasure and entertainment. Just like in the antient Roman times.

 Keep people sedated, placid and comfortly nimb by entertainment, narcotics, red or blue "medications" loans, hedge funds, and money tokens. That is social engineering at its best. 

Gigantic corporations, like Hollywood, convince is to believe that we actually want to see what they have to sell. That if the screenplay doesn't follow the paradigme, we will get bored. On the contrary. As soon as I see the paradigmatic movie, I know how it's going to play out. I immediately get BORED. Thanks Hollywood, but I am not as stupid as you think me to be. That is how any type of industry grooms us into buying all sorts of crap they produce. 

Yes, you are free to choose. But they forget that many of us are sick and tired of the garbage they feed us. Simply because we are the generations of the 21st century, who read and watched much better content, having been edified on different authors and directors, and with higher moral standards. Now in this "day and age," anything goes; morals are irrelevant and relativized which is unheard of. In conclusion, things are going to get even worse.

So I do not see anything wrong with being mediocre. Not everyone can be Aristotle or Tesla. People forget that those people were extremely humble. That is what makes you a genius. Humbleness. Not your IQ.

Malcolm Gladwell

Again and again. Mediocrity is a spirit-soul thing. It`s a lack of spirit. When you are poor there, vanity creates mediocrity. The negative type of mediocrity where you loathe yourself and despise anyone who does not "Excell". That's a tragic mediocrity.  

People who are geniuses are usually humbly accepting that not everyone can excel. Why do no we teach our kids that fact of life? Why do we lie to them that everyone can be anything they want to be if only they work hard? That is how you create frustration.

 I met some pretty happy cooks. They loved it and they made it a very successful career. So they did not sit around trying to compare themselves to the rich people or engineers. Or ended up feeling depressed or despising others. They realized early on what they wanted, they went after it and they are now the happiest contended people I have ever met.

And they are not mediocre. They are not wildly successful. They are not rich. They are successful because they figured out their place in the coordinating system, accepted it probably instinctively, and are happy, happy happy. Happy because they found their calling. And not their job. 

Another observation. If a society is not interested in supporting poor kids, through schools, extracurricular activities, and whatnot, then what do we expect? If you want to teach someone to fish, give them a tool. What message are these kids subliminally receiving? That they are not good enough. So "why would I bother, when I will never make it anyway (become rich and therefore successful)"? So if people are just talking and doing nothing, because teachers are underpaid, then this is the reason why education in the western hemisphere is dying and there will be more and more intellectually brilliant but undereducated and therefore stupid. 

It seems the world we live in exactly wants just that.  That`s no conspiracy. Nor a theory. Nor a hypothesis. That`s a fact.

So this is why I opted out from teaching at school because I realized immediately that I would not be teaching them curriculum but how life is and how valuable they are and helping them find their true talent. I would try to teach them about love, and how false love and hope hurt, whereas true love and hope heal. How there are books that can change your life. How you can learn to read red flags, evil people, and people in general, and get yourself protected. How to discern right from wrong; good from evil. Yes, there are evil people in the world. You should be able to intuit them even when they look like benevolent grandmoms. These subjects and more should be taught at schools. So that is why I am just a mediocre translator. Otherwise, if I were a secondary school teacher they would probably sack me anyway.