We are constantly trying to understand the value of what we do and who we are. In pursuit of this we create categories and prizes, symbols of the reality to make it easier to think about them. One of these symbols is the idea of the "valedictorian", the best student in a class. But we don't think about what the reality really is -- IS the "best"student the one with the highest grades? What is the reality that grades stand for?
My seminary had very small classes, partly because the bulk of the courses were taken at the University of Chicago Div School where the students were graded alongside Ph.D. candidates who would become professors, rather a different kind of person who makes a good minister. But what IS a good minister? A flashy preacher? A church builder? A voice of love in a time of despair? Emil Gudmundson was asked to find all the members of his graduating class when they were retirement age. He never told me who the valedictorian was, but the idea (rather covert) was also to find out how they had fared in the world.
Afterwards he marveled at a classmate who had made no waves in the larger world. He had not progressed up the pyramid from small church to large church. He wasn't even serving a very important church in a city. Rather, for many decades, he had served a stable congregation, without fancy workshops, just doing the basics: hatching, matching, dispatching -- as well as a bit of low-key afflicting of the comfortable. He didn't write books or raise scads of money -- he just maintained a certain level of being that appreciated everyone and accommodated variation.
David Brooks has an article in the NYTimes that I can't read because I don't subscribe but it is called "The Rise of the Haphazard Male" and is about what a man can do to find an identity if he has no job because that kind of work has disappeared. Brooks claims it doesn't work to just remain open. Unitarians have insisted on an "open" denomination though all congregations have a socioeconomic style and theirs had been "educated upper middle class." This has attracted the attention of ethnic minorities looking for indicators of their value, just as it did the women earlier. They have changed the denomination. Just as they changed universities and as we hope they will change politics.
Brooks: "At the very moment economic forces detach many working-class men from stable careers, the autonomy ethos teaches that it’s right to be semidetached, with your options perpetually open. It’s not working. Opinion | The Rise of the Haphazard Self. How working-class men detach from work, family and church." Wait! This is how the NYTimes summarizes the article and it's not what I said at all. It is the opposite. Even as some men and many women want to be part of an organization, Brooks is talking about men who are loners.
I am a loner. I am a woman. I often want to claim something that is normally gender-assigned to men, like paying my own way. How do I know it's worth doing? My thoughtful consideration? Emotional response? Opinion of others? (They're mostly confused.)
People who are unassigned, who do not have a cohort that relates to them, might be troubled, may go off into territories that seem damaging or even "evil." Or we have thought maybe they were good for a gig economy, resourceful, adaptable. Maybe lucky to have a partner who can accommodate change or maybe lucky to have a partner who is stable, a refuge when things go wrong. Sometimes partners suggest themselves as someone who can tolerate a loner, and then become someone who tries to build fences, to guarantee relationship. It's painful.
What about the artist/writer in a society in the middle of uproar? Does one reflect the chaos, maybe choose the freedom to be obscene? If this turns out to be "successful", everything will change. Being a loner faces a determination to capture and share the value by interface managers: agents, sales, customers. If the work never becomes popular or even known, is the artist a failure? Is the life a waste? Some thoughtful folks decry lives cut short by death though the person was promising. What about the people who fulfill but are never noticed? No prizes, no TED talk, no publication or exhibit.
If a loner is demonized, which happens rather often, at least then they are "known," even famous. If Pollock or Basquait had never been so vividly controversial, they would have been invisible. Probably many worthy creators are simply passed by. Possibly publicity would have destroyed their creativity.
Loners/misfits sometimes become criminals or addicts, something that destroys the larger community. "If you can't be the president, become the president's assassin. You'll be just as famous." We get a lot of that today. It is one of the good arguments for a baseline security for everyone, regardless of status. This lets the "state" become the reliable partner who is a refuge when everything goes blooey. It prevents the idea of suicide as a cure-all because it promises a chance to regroup.
The most evil thing we do -- Brooks might agree -- is to "farm" those who have been accused of failing. I wonder if anyone has done a study of how many "valedictorians" are incarcerated. I know there are studies of people who utterly failed academically as youngsters, but became successful later in life. So what good is a grade point average? Might that be the fault of the school rather than the student? How does one educate a loner? Or a person who appreciates loners?
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