Discussion thread #2: Your best examples of the "leaden mean"?
Hello, dear readers! I had a lot of fun unpacking the term “psychological safety” with you in our first discussion thread, so today I want to get your input on another term that’s been percolating in my head—only this time it’s a term of my own invention.
Recently I was telling a friend about my halfhearted efforts to teach my toddler Russian (which happens to be my native language, and about which I’ve been even more than the usual amount of ambivalent in recent years). In telling the story, I realized I would’ve been better off either taking the more serious “only Russian with mommy” approach or just letting go of the whole campaign, rather than the maximally costly and minimally effective “middle ground” I’d landed on.
And then my friend and I started recalling other instances in our lives where we’d gotten the raw end of our own bargain by trying to “strike a balance” between 2 potentially legitimate paths. Like those awkward “hybrid” meetings where half of you are IRL and half are on Zoom; or when you want to move in together but neither of you wants to give up their place, so you keep half your stuff at their place and they keep half their stuff at your place and no one ends up feeling fully at home anywhere. Or like the final torturous months of my enrollment in the Tufts / New England Conservatory dual degree program as an undergrad, wherein I half-assed my vocal performance studies on one end of town while treading water in my psychology and philosophy classes on the other end.1
This phenomenon, we both agreed, is common and damaging enough to warrant its own name. Contra the many cases where it’s appropriate and helpful to strive for the “golden mean”, this is a distinct type of case—which may even look similar at first blush—where the “mean” is the worst possible solution. Usually it involves trying to reconcile two equally valid but mutually irreconcilable approaches, whether because we genuinely (but falsely) believe they can be reconciled, or we’re still conflicted between them, or we’re simply afraid of commitment.
I propose we call it “the leaden mean.”
What do you think?
Does this framing help describe or clarify what’s happening in these kinds of situations, beyond existing conceptualizations in terms of “indecision” or “false compromise” or “having your cake and eating it too,” etc?
Any examples of the “leaden mean” you’d be willing to share from your own life?
Thoughts on what might make us especially vulnerable to these types of compromises, or how to predict whether a given compromise will turn out to be a “golden mean” or a “toxic” one?
As before, feel free to riff on these questions, or to stray from them entirely. The goal is to connect and exchange ideas with like-minded people, so all comments in that spirit are welcome!
I ultimately chose the psychology and philosophy classes, in case that’s not obvious. But I did it in a more embarrassingly delayed and round-about way than I care to admit.
...I like the idea. Not identical but reminded me of a saying that you can't cross a 20 foot chasm with 2X10 foot jumps.
This makes more sense to me if rather than a linear mean we think of multidimensional means.
If we put this notion into the physical world and imagine your values as part of a physical object - then your central purpose could be that which is in the center of your values. From a physical perspective the central purpose can balance your values. However - for physical objects the center of mass may not be part of the object (think of a ring - its center is in the middle where there is no actual mass - you cannot balance a ring on its center of mass unless what you are balancing it on is larger than the ring).