“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” –Groucho Marx
We humans are tribal beings. Each of us belongs to various “tribes” determined by our family circle, our religion, sports interests, political views, career choice, socioeconomic status and a host of other personal choices. Within each group, there are various criteria for ranking people according to their perceived competence, character or value. In professional sports, the criteria are reasonably well-defined are reflected in the monetary values of their contracts. When athletes of the present are compared with athletes from previous eras, the question about who is “better” is determined by achievement in that sport.
Among business people and entrepreneurs, success is usually measured in wealth. Forbes magazine publishes an ongoing list of the wealthiest people in the world and ranks them from the richest on down. In academe, success is often measured by the number of papers published or cited, and in Hollywood, Academy Awards and box office receipts are used to rank actors.
The value we assign to individuals, is an aggregate of our perceptions of their rankings on several criteria and depend upon the importance we attribute to various characteristics such as intelligence, beauty, fame, wealth, athleticism and character. Consequently, the ranking of people will depend upon the values of the individual doing the ranking. In athletics, where performance is relatively easy to measure, most people will agree on who is “first rate” and who is “third rate.” Such agreement is lacking in the judgement of politicians, because the criteria for assessing competence are less precise and not universal.
So the short answer to the question as to whether A is “better” than B depends on the values of the observer. That is, the judgment is subjective. One person’s “terrorist” is another person’s hero. Furthermore, the universality of agreement about who is better will depend upon the realm in which people are compared. The famous Brazilian soccer player Pélé, would be regarded by most people as “better” than any other soccer player, but it would be difficult to get consensus on who was the best politician in modern times.
Waxing eloquent on group membership, comedian Julius “Groucho” Marx famously said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” In spite of his assertion, Groucho belonged to a variety of in-groups. As one of 5 brothers born in Manhattan to Jewish parents of German and French extraction, he was a member of several tribes including the Marx family, the Jewish community, and the community of comedians and society of cigar smokers. His unique persona, prompted Irving Berlin to make the following value assessment in rhyming couplet, “The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.”
