You know I was just standing on the platform at Waterloo this morning around 7:45am and this blaring tannoy announcement was made. “I’m pleased to say that today we have a good service running on all London Underground services”.
I looked around, I was standing on the Waterloo and City line platform, after having queued all the way down the slope, I was about 4 train loads back. I’m sure those of you who have taken this ride before know exactly what I mean.
So there I was looking around and TFL had the audacity to say that there was a good service! So is this really the standards which people have come to accept?
Looking around I saw that nobody paid any attention to this message. It was bleated out again not long after the first one, and again no one took any notice. In fact as I’ve said before, people looked more like automatons that real people. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t in a dream.
Have people really gotten so ground down by society’s norms that they’ve become totally stupid?
Chatting to my fantastic personal trainer and friend, Lazo Freeman (please go check him out if you are thinking of a health overhaul), we talked about how many things in life and society is absolutely stupid and ridiculous and the more we talked, the more I realised that really there’s something more fundamental in society which causes the general acceptance of all this stupidity.
I think it’s because people have come to expect a lower standard of excellence and also that they don’t take responsibility for anything in life.
Did you know that there are some awards called the Stella Awards which actually celebrate the most stupid lawsuits to come out. The Stella Awards were inspired by Stella Liebeck. In 1992, Stella, then 79, spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee onto her lap, burning herself. A New Mexico jury awarded her $2.9 million in damages, but that’s not the whole story. Actually she had the coffee nestled between her legs as she was driving, I mean who would think that you might spill it right! Ever since, the name “Stella Award” has been applied to any wild, outrageous, or ridiculous lawsuits.
Is stupidity really celebrated? We even reward people for sending in acts of stupidity to TV shows like You’ve Been Framed or even watch shows like Jackass that made it from a TV show onto the cinema screen. So it must be acceptable then to be stupid?
If we accept lower standards, we are not fulfilling our potential. It also perpetuates a vicious circle of accepting lower than average standards. If you accept it as ok from someone else, then they learn that to be complacent is ok. Then they also lower their expectations and thus the circle carries on.
I’d like to think that most people pursue excellence as much as I do, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking. Consider this for yourself, have are you willing to accept as your personal standards in life?
If you have other stupid stories, let’s hear about them!
[videojs youtube=”http://youtu.be/Q6o3qTykxKU”]
