*Posted by Kirk Spencer
First the Dodo marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (the exact shape doesnt matter, it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no One, two, three, and away, but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out The race is over! and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, But who has won? This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it stood for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.
Lewis Carol
Description of the Caucus Race
From Alice in Wonderland
This summer I was at Church Camp watching my group of preteens playing various camp games. In each case, at the end of the game, the campstaffers would ask them, How is this game like the Christian life? A very abstract question for pre-teens, since they have not entered Piagets Formal Operational Stage (where abstract thinking becomes easier)but they did their best. And their answers were very entertaining: Some answers were oddly irrelevant, some were obviously just what was in their heads at the time and some were things they had heard grown-ups say (sort of). However, none of this mattered because every answer was correct. After asking the question, How is this game like the Christian life each camp-staffer was quick to add this consoling affirmation: Dont worry there are no wrong answers. Not only did I hear some wrong answers, I heard answers that were completely incoherent. But they were all correct. And all the children were proud of their answers, even the ones that didnt make any sense. Each correct answer was accepted with the easy distinction of a quick thats right before moving on to the next correct answer. As I stood there listening, it struck me as a warm-hearted thing to dowarm-hearted but wrong-headed. Yes-we-can confidence, no matter how warm-hearted, is wrong-headed without doing-it-right competence. It misses this important point: The seductive power of affirmation-without-correction produces confidence in abilities that do not exist. It taps into the natural propensity for our incompetence to extend to the knowledge (or rather lack of knowledge) of incompetence itself. In other words, Ignorance is often ignorant of its own ignorance.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
Charles Darwin
From The Descent of Man
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Shakespeare
From As You Like It
If we fool ourselves into believing unqualified affirmation produces authentic qualifications, we have something to learn, or relearn: Competence includes more than just words of affirmation and many wrong answers are required before we get it right.
Trophies
I saw a table once, a long table, covered with trophies from end to end, rows and rows of trophies, all of them the same. Someone told me that they were having a tournament that day and those were the prizes. I said, Thats a lot of winners. And they said, Everybody gets a trophy. The cost is figured into the tournament entrance fee. Then they explained that several years before the parents of children who didnt get a trophy were upset because their childs feelings were hurt because they didnt get a trophy. Then the next year, feelings were hurt again because someone got a bigger trophy. So now the trophies are all the same and everybody gets one. I remember thinking that the human-race was becoming the Caucus Race, everybody has won, and all must have prizes. Even doing nothing, you can still get a prizeeven a Nobel Prize. And if you are too big to fail, you wont. Risk is removed and everyone wins. But if everyone wins, then no one wins and so, we could just as easily say that everyone loses.
When I was a child, only the best got a trophy. To get the trophy, you had to turn the battle to your favor. I have read that in ancient Greece, the location on the battlefield where the battle was turned was called the trope (the turning). It was there that the enemy was routed and the victory won. On the trope, the victorious warriors would collect helmets, armor, shields and weapons and arranged them into the figure of a man.
This human figure was called a trophum (a sign of victory). The hard-won victory, and the effort exerted, and the lessons learned transformed those who won. And so the trophaeum or trophies given in competition today are (or at least were) just such a sign of victory symbolizing the transformation that comes from turning the tide, showing your metal and becoming who you were not before. But now trophies are given to all, even those who do not try, to those who did not turn the tide, those who are just the same as they ever were. They possess a symbol of something that has never occurred, a sign of credentials they do not possess.
Chameleon Culture
Trophies, and other credentials, that are given away to the over-privileged cronies and the under-privileged tokens, are no longer tropheum of victory but totems of belonging to our chameleon culture where appearances are everything. In a Chameleon Culture, its not what you know but who you know; and looking good is more important than being good. In Chameleon Culture, perceptions are king; and pretense is persevered by claiming credit for others work and blame for ones own incompetence is transferred to others, all within a safe cocoon of cronies. All are put into play to produce the entitled privileged position of infallibility where there is no wrong because that would not be affirmative, maybe even discriminative, if the charge can be made to stick.
And so we have come full circle and what began as Childs play is now in the work-place. Success is something given, not something earned. No one can be successful on their own because they were not the only ones to work hard. In such a climate, it is only natural that monetary success, which was also given (not earned), should be spread around to those who did not do the work (or work hard enough). Redistribution is no longer from a heart of charity, but by force of law as a way to buy the loyalty of a (temporarily) free people. The 19th Century political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville touches on this progression of dependency in his Democracy in America. At the end of the chapter on What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nation Have to Fear, De Tocqueville comments on how the governments minor subjections of its people gradually breaks their spirit and entices them to surrender the exercise of their own will to rulers that manipulate the electorate like play things.
It is in vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power It is indeed difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
From Democracy in America
Could it be that in our generation, the American Dream of equal opportunity is progressing into the Marxist Pipe-Dream of equal results? We certainly see signs in this false functional equality where everybody wins without even trying and the natural hierarchy of merit is made taboo to the point that the government takes away the results of trying. And if folks stop trying, we will be easily diverted further into the doldrums of diversion where we no longer want to be better at allnot growing, not learning, not winning or losing. Equality will come to mean equal in forced indifferent mediocrity. Making everything free may very well be the end of freedom. Not because we cant do what we want to, but becausewhen we can get it without tryingwe dont want to want to anymore. Then the Caucus Race will reach critical mass and the Dodo will speak, when everything has been taken, borrowed and spent, when everyone is forced to share whats left, when prizes must be paid from whatever is in our own pocketsmainly just fuzz covered breath mintsthen everyone will wait for the affirmative entitlement they have long expected.
But who is to give the prizes? quite a chorus of voices asked. Why, she, of course, said the Dodo, pointing to Alice with one finger; and the whole party at once crowded round her, calling out, in a confused way, Prizes! Prizes!
Lewis Carol
From Alice in Wonderland
My wife was telling me about how, in her preschool class, if you are quiet and still during nap-time you get a sticker, and if you actually go to sleep (or pretend you are asleep) you get two stickers. The very first week a mother complained that her daughter was crying because she did not get two stickers and then the mother said this: Why are you punishing my child! The mother was irate and wanted it changed.
Everybody gets two stickers nowno matter what. Everything is equal and fair And dont worry, there are no wrong answers and everybody has won and all must have prizes. I just hope theres enough to go around (maybe someone should check into that?).