Here’s to the losers
10/24/2011

Let’s assume for the moment the Republicans are right: the 99% of us who do not make up the financial elite are losers.  We didn’t accumulate the most toys.  The 1% holding most of the marbles won. 

But a culture that defines success so narrowly that only 1% qualifies is a culture on its way to extinction.  Because no one is born a loser.  Each child is born unique, with a purpose, a gift, a reason for being here.  Republicans proclaim this loudest of all—while the child is en utero—insisting that the sanctity of fetal life even trumps that of the mother’s if the two should ever be at odds. The child only becomes a loser upon being born.

True, many children enter the world with the odds stacked against them—and addressing that injustice is our collective responsibility.  Holding a child responsible for the circumstances into which she is born is the antithesis of opportunity.  In fact, it’s the caste system all over again.  Why should people contribute to a society that excludes them?  In a democracy, they will rewrite the rules of engagement—as is their right and their duty, as proclaimed by our own Declaration of Independence.

So-called primitive cultures know that every person comes into the world with a gift—which means that we once knew it too. Native Americans made a space in the community for the heyokas, the contrarians, the tricksters, and believed these stand-outs had a special connection with the divine.  Similarly, Dagara shaman Malidoma Somé says, “We all come into this world with a gift that must be given to the world.”  “All,” he says, not “some.”  Depth psychologist and author Michael Meade reminds us, “Everyone needs some help learning who they already are.  That’s the root of genuine education and the task of real culture.”  And Nietzsche said, “Every man is a unique miracle…uniquely himself to the very last movement of his muscles; more…in his uniqueness he is beautiful, and worth regarding, and in no way tedious.”

Contrast this with the prevailing view of the Occupy Wall Street critics: that only white, male, professionally educated, financially successful men, and well-groomed, sexually attractive, heterosexual women are beautiful.  We’ve seen this narrow-mindedness before, in Germany, and it didn’t end well.  Worse, it excludes by definition, everyone “outside of the box.”  In other words, innovators, rebels, artists, musicians, idealists, visionaries, scientists, trouble-makers, inventors—in short, everyone likely to give the world anything other than what we’ve already got.

If you think I overstate the case, consider the oft-quoted reference to Einstein, who didn’t speak until the age of four.  Or Beethoven, who was born into dire poverty and was deaf.  Or Michael Jordan, who was cut from his high school basketball team.  Or Steven Spielberg, who was rejected by three film studies programs because of his lackluster grades.  Or Oprah Winfrey, who was told that she’d never have a career in broadcast journalism.  Or Stephen Hawking, confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak, and almost completely paralyzed, who has nevertheless transformed our understanding of the universe.

The losers, the misfits, are the ones who—ironically—enrich our lives. Without them, life would have a bland sameness—not because we are all actually the same; but because we all try so relentlessly to conform and play the game by the rules, rather than challenge the rules and enlarge the game.

Steve Jobs, whose death has reminded us of his life, helped to write the Apple ad copy that accompanied the company’s “Think different” campaign.  It went like this:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world…are the ones who do.

Life is not a footrace or a game of marbles.  It is a collective enterprise.  Human beings are social animals and we need each other.  We need even the “weak” among us: the infants—they’re our future; the old ones—they’re our past, our memory, our wisdom; the immigrants—they seed our culture with new food, music, customs, clothes, language, and ideas; the “disabled”—if nothing else they teach us compassion and, if we pay attention, they often inspire us with their resourcefulness, resilience, and breathtaking courage. 

What's especially ironic is that our country's veterans--who are so loudly applauded when they're in crisply pressed uniforms going to or coming back from war--are so piteously rejected when they are the dirty, toothless, and homeless on city streets. Talk to these men--and women--some time. You will find that they are not so mentally ill as you may imagine. Rather, they have been traumatized by what they have seen, and done, and have no way to integrate themselves back into a society that rejects them.

The social contract we’ve been busy unraveling over the last few decades is what knits us together through good times and bad.  It’s the diversification in our portfolio that hedges our bets against future challenges and optimizes our chances of game-changing breakthroughs.  It is well worth the investment of those of us who are temporarily strong—the healthy, employed, or independently wealthy—to support and encourage those of us who are temporarily weak or vulnerable.  We will all—if we live—be weak or vulnerable one day.