Last time when i was on the ballet class, there was a four years old boy who's showing great interest on the ballet and danced there by himself on the corner of the room.Unfortunately, few minutes later his mom found him and took him away immediatly, leaving a word "there's never been a chance for you to become someone if you learn ballet".Few months till now, i still have the cute boy on my brain and wonder if he'll get any chance to start ballet again. It's no doubt his mom loves him very much and hope him to become a successful business man not an artist, at least not a ballet dancer. That's a familiar success theory, a commen sense for many Chinese parents , and, if the kids deviate the setted path, they'll do whatever they could to keep it as the planned way.
In my gym, one of my friends weights herself everyday and if there's any variations from the BMI, she'll be upset and don't eat anything on the following days to keep her index on the average level. While she's not alone,there's another interesting man who believes that a normal person should walk at least 20 000 steps per day to keep healthy. So he got a sport bracelet to track his walk steps and it's kept the good records for the first few days. However it's more difficutl to keep the same 20 000 steps few weeks later while he came up a brilliant idea to wear the bracelet to his dog. No doubt that the tracking records would keep more than 20000 steps everyday going forward.
Obviously the persons from above is not alone, every day we're measuring ourselves against different standard metrics to judge if we're deviating from the average.However, Rodd Rose, a prefessor from Harvard, tells us that no one is everage from his book《The End of Average : How the Succeed in a World That Values Sameness》.Like it said, it would help us understand our true uniqueness - and that of thers- and how to take full advantage of individuality to gain an edge in life.
1. The normal growth timeline for babies & the most beautiful face
Pediatricians often have a schedule which is usually from the average records from the research data about when the kids begin to crawl,stand,walk,speak....They even have standard steps about how and when the child would be able to walk.Once the kids are deviated from the timeline, it may be a sign of obstacle of growth of other potential problems,resulting the anxierities for many parents.The truth is that one pediatrician used to observe 28 babies while there're 25 different ways for the babies start to walk.Not to mention that many brilliant people used to start to walk or speak very late than normal kids' timeline, but everything is going on well with them from the later growth until becoming adults.It's kind of nonsense to judge a baby with some problem once deviating from the average growth timeline ignoring the uniqueness of the individual gene.What we can do is just trust the babies with completely faith and support their growth.
After growth of babies, let's discuss who's the most beaitufl lady and most handsome gentleman.The picture of below shows the average characteristic of the standard face from left to right from Korea,Mainland China and Japan. The more close to the standard face, the more beautiful or handsome you are. We don't know how many person are exactly the same as the standard face, but surely if everyone is the same as the stardard face, the human would become an dull,boring species. Actually, there're so many charming and handsome ladies and gentleman in our lives which is far away from the standard faces, but we're still attracted and fascinated from their uniqueness.
We humans, a species surviving on the planet for thoughthands of years, are varying from individual to individual and everyone is unique.It's time to stop being anxious if different from average because that's who you are and why you're existing on the earth.
2 Is Lionel Messi a genious athlete ?
Below radar map shows the overall performance of Messi during a season.It's clearly told that he's doing extremely great from dribbling, skipping,scoring a goal, passing and secondary attack( blue area ) which is dramatically higher than the average level (orange red).There's no doubt that Messi is a great athlete, however, the point is that it's applied a set of metrics instead of a single criteria to decide the athlete is great or not .
Followed with the question : how many companies would hire people with radar map ? The answer is NIL.
Google,for example,one of the greatest companies in the world.Even most of the graduates are proud of joining Google with the high package with good reputation ,there's no special way for its hiring: Universities,GPA,SAT.etc. As for competency of project, cooperation,innovation...sorry, you're not Messi and you can't enjoy the privilege of being reviewed overall by radar map .The good news is that, Google is capable of innovating at the frontier of knowledge as well as hiring and promoting employees with sufficient funding support.They've researched nearly 300 criteria and frustrated that none of them is working.Now Google have to abandone the normal criteria and decide it based on specific scenario with complex strategies.
Let's come back to the radar map of Messi, though he's excellent performace from the blue area,he's weakness too .for e.g. losing too many goals,tackle... That's not hard to explain : Messi is an offensive player and has more chance to be stopped to lose the ball, however, it won't change the fact that he's an genius. The team would prefer more can-do genious in some area rather than all-round average player. As long as all the genious cooperate together,a good game can be showed to the world.
3 Are you a good person ?
Normally, psychological research won't take any personality into account,as we've introduce earlier, take the human as average-person. Specifically, the research would tells us, how would most of the people react from different scenario
When we introduce someone, we'll phraise him/her as an nice or good person. We also classify people as friendly,wicked;diligent,lazy;shy,open.... How could we explain that a little girl would be open to all her friends at home parties while be shy on the restaurant? Is she shy or open ? How would you define a person's personality when he's nice and easy going at office while mean to his wife ? Not to say someone is diligent from his intereting studies while lazy for some other papers ?
From the latest research, it would be more scientific to use "If-then signatures". And it would be more reasonable to describle a person with a set of personality instead of a single criteria : The little girl would be shy in front of strangers while open to his familiy and friends.
It seems to be out of date to introduce someone as nice/friendly person as we've ignored the conditions. Next time when you've met a well-matched friend, it doesn't mean it's a perfect one and still need to know more in different conditions. There's no more better way to know a person from how could he/she handle different tasks in different situation.
Though out history, the thought of average has gone too far away, especially we've enjoyed the huge benefit from the method designed and developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor. If we've studied more details about that time, most of the workers hadn't had enough training and education, the stardard and average working hour and method has benefit both of the employee and employer.
The same way for different people is, to a large degree,the result of the mass production from education or imitation from each other. we overlook how talent,context and disposition fold together to create individual quiqueness like the boy with interest in ballet at the beginning of this paper, would be tought to follow most of others,becoming a successful man as business or scientist rather than a dancer. However, we humans, not the mass industrial products,have unlimited potentials to get a way without the standard and average way to live our lives.
Yuval Noah Harati tells us that the studies of history is not to predict the future, but to enable more freedom for humans,exploring more different possiblitities for the species .It's the time to live up our potentials.
Nowadays, even we're in the world weighting the algorithm as the highest level for objective decisions and strageties,we, humans ,create the world with special meanings and explain the significance.Algorithm will never care about what's going on in this world, only people who CARES.
Let's end up with Stanford' motto to end the average :Die Luft der Freiheit Weht
Reference:
《The End of Average : How the Succeed in a World That Values Sameness》/ Rodd Rose,Jan.2016
《Sensemaking : The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm》/Cristian Madsbjerg,March. 2017
《Homo deus a brief history of tomorrow》/Yuval Noah Harati , Feb.2017