The Best Myth – Why Bestness Is the Death of Excellence (Part 2)
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 23
- 14 min read
Updated: Oct 2
Fabio da Silva Fernandes knows what it's like to stumble. In 2021, he left his long career in the fintech industry to start his own wellness practice focused on mindfulness and Reiki, and now he explores the complex topic of resilience on his inspiring podcast called The Stumbling Spirit.
In Part 1, I talked about myths and how, in this day and age, they can be used to misrepresent the truth. I also showed how we have become a culture that seeks constant attention and validation on social media. As humans, we are voicing our opinions as never before, and have a captive audience to consume our every shared thought, photo, and video. It’s the kind of freedom of speech that we have never before seen, and in the same way that we are influencing our followers on social networking platforms, we are being influenced to buy into viral trends, news reels, and ideologies. We are caught in a maelstrom of information overload and opposing forces that are vying for our attention. Throughout history, there were powers that used propaganda to sell the masses an ideal of bestness as a means of manipulation and control, and scapegoating others because of their very existence. Sadly, this is happening today. In this second instalment, I will discuss how we have regressed as a society and show where there is hope. This is Part 2 of 3.
Regressive progress
According to the Library of Congress, “The American republic was founded on a set of beliefs that were tested during the Revolutionary War. Among them was the idea that all people are created equal, whether European, Native American, or African American, and that these people have fundamental rights, such as liberty, free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, and freedom of assembly but some found that the ideology was far more acceptable in the abstract than in practice.”
Looking at U.S. history, we can see that these ideals have been a struggle when we consider the decimation and ill-treatment of Native Americans, the unspeakable horrors of African slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the Segregated South. These inhumane events in American history are what galvanized the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and gave way to other movements spilt over from the 20th century, aimed at improving human rights for Women, Queers, and the Disabled.
Today, American society is a lot more diverse, yet the progress made in the latter half of the 20th century seems to be on a tailspin, given the regression of human rights, limits on freedom of speech, and political pressure by the Executive Branch on the judiciary. We could chalk it up to the current U.S. Administration, but the truth is it was decades in the making, and likely stemmed from the seeds of intolerance that scattered across the Western World post-9/11, starting with Islamophobia.
The aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks brought Americans together in a show of widespread nationalism, and the U.S. received overwhelming support from its allies, several of whom had lost their own citizens in the Twin Towers on that fateful day. In its resolve, and perhaps misguided haste, to exact punishment on those terrorists responsible, the U.S. led a coalition into multi-year wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Back home, cracks in the fabric of American society quickly revealed themselves as people searched for someone to blame. To many, it amounted to a witch-hunt fuelled by fear, rage, and ignorance (driven by disinformation about Islam by Western Media). Hate crimes against Muslims rose in the U.S. and around the world, and it’s still an issue today. The United Nations established March 15th as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia to address this very issue. Further, it “stresses that terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group.”
Immediately after 9/11, suspected terrorists were rounded up and sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they were “held without charges and fair trials” and “subjected to torture and other ill-treatment,” as per Amnesty International. Since 2002, 780 Muslim men and boys were detained at this detention centre, 35 remain (none of them laid with formal charges).
Nationalistic bestness can divide people within a society where one sub-group (typically a majority) sees itself as better and more entitled than the other. It becomes a breeding ground for xenophobia, racism, and abuses of power.
One advantage of smartphones and social media is that we get to see this kind of bad behaviour in real-time, with the many “Karen” reels circulating online, as well as the viral dash cam recordings of cops overstepping their authority.
In general terms, when a country or a people thinks of itself as the “best,” it’s often done in a vacuum, in the sense that they might not know or care about what’s going on in the rest of the world, and perhaps not appreciate how things are done differently and maybe better than at home. There’s a quality of ethnocentrism in this way of thinking, and it creates a major blind spot in the progress of any society.
Bestness can exclude other nations and alternate approaches to resolving common problems, from the standpoint of ignoring them, taking them for granted, and disregarding multilateralism altogether, eg, the U.S. trade war. The truth is that bestness relies on individualistic thinking, even in the context of a specific group. This selfish mindset is evident in the various systems that we humans have created, such as colonialism, slavery, imperialism, etc. These are all systems of oppression that favour one crowd over another.
When it comes to democracy, one can argue that there are stronger versions than the American brand. In fact, some of the most stable democracies in the world, and closest allies to the United States, are parliamentary democracies, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, to name a few.
It goes without saying that strong democracies are not only relegated to anglophone nations. As per France24, there was a recent conference in South America, hosted by Chile, where Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Spain met in concert to discuss the preservation of democracy, especially after American protectionist and interventionist policies.
It can be debated that the capitalistic success of the West has been and continues to be at the expense and exploitation of what is termed the “Global South” and developing nations. In fact, some experts say that capitalism runs in direct opposition to democracy.
Harvard Business Review explores this very topic. Laura Amico writes, “In a recent global survey, Pew found that, among respondents in 27 countries, 51% are dissatisfied with how democracy is working. Further, Millennials and Gen Zs are increasingly disinterested in capitalism, with only half of them viewing it positively in the United States.”
In this same article, professor and academic Isabelle Ferreras explains that “Capitalism, as we can see across the globe, is compatible with all different kinds of political regimes, liberal democratic, communist, autocratic, and now illiberal democracies, too. Democracy is a system of government based on the recognition that people are equal “in dignity and rights” and should therefore have equal political rights. Capitalism is also a system of government, but an unequal one. It grants political rights based on capital ownership. Its core institution is the firm, which is made up of two classes of investor, capital and labor. The only citizens that matter are those who own capital, in other words, shareholders. They exercise the power and reap the bulk of the financial returns, while labor investors (i.e., workers) are disenfranchised, and the planet’s resources are exhausted. Capitalism and democracy both need markets, not each other.”
The planet’s resources are exhausted! The climate crisis is real and our environment is being negatively impacted by ever rising temperatures. Although scientific data backs up this fact, our governments and industries are not doing enough about it because of our current economic system and the lack of will on the part of elected officials, who often gain power by appeasing constituents and political party donors to be the “best.”
On Season 3 of my podcast, Environmental Scientist, Dr. Jonathan Barichivich, shared this stark warning, “I think as never before, the future of our environment, it’s in our hands, and things are not looking good and every time a new president comes that basically dismisses science, we go decades back because it takes a generation to undo these changes and we don’t have that time. So what I think is that probably the planet is going to collapse, as humans, our daily life is going to change. Societies are going to collapse, and in some places, nature might collapse too.”
This is a part of the arrogance of bestness, that somehow we are going to outdo the forces of nature.
Medical Anthropologist Dr. Gregory Philips links this kind of thinking to colonialism. In Season 1 of my podcast he explained that, “Colonization means the human beings think that they are better than the Earth, and so they detach themselves and their governance and their power and sense of self from the Earth, and believe that they are superior to the Earth and to humans and animals, and so that process we can call colonization, and it means that one tribe gets greedier than the next and wants more land or more money.”
We see this happening in real time with Trump’s tariff war with the world, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza (as reported by the BBC).
Dr. Philips is Aboriginal himself, of the Waanyi and Jaru peoples in Australia. He emphasizes that Indigenous cultures the world over see themselves as an integral part of the Earth, not separate from it, and the Earth is very much connected to the spirituality of Indigenous Peoples.
With excellence, humanity has an opportunity to create a bold vision for a bright future with a stable climate and healthy environment, and one where we can all coexist in peace and prosper.
As people living on this planet today, what legacy do we want to leave behind for generations to come?
Supervillain diplomacy
As mentioned, bestness is the Achilles heel of excellence. It can stifle collaboration, stave off innovation, and starve interest in other ideas, people, cultures, nations, and even different ways of being in the world.
Unfortunately, in this new reality of American populism and protectionism, U.S. multilateralism is on life support, and the economic pressure that the Trump Administration is applying to the rest of the world through its trade war is tantamount to extortion.
Furthermore, the U.S. President has shown little to no regard for court rulings against his domestic and foreign policies, as reported by The Independent and BBC. Adding to this friction is the questionability of the U.S. Supreme Court acting impartially or along party lines (eg, overturning of Roe vs Wade).
As per Gallup, there’s a chasm between extreme right-wing and leftwing ideologies, and it seems that Americans who identify as moderate are caught in the middle of a tug-of-war for a new political centre.
Alarmingly, freedom of speech in the U.S. has declined with the muzzling of colleges and mainstream media from pressure applied by the Trump Administration, i.e. Harvard University, the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and the resignation of Bill Owens, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes.
Arguably, the Trump Administration's increasingly authoritarian approach might embolden other global leaders to do the same.
This fractured backdrop is also playing out on the ground with the American public and with people across the globe.
Anglican minister, Rev. Gary van der Meer, shared his thoughts on this topic on Season 3 of The Stumbling Spirit Podcast, where he said, in part, “It does seem to come out of a Spider-Man movie and the villains in a Spider-Man movie, there are the obvious ones. They are the political leaders of superpowers that are really getting our attention right now, and if you look to the U.S., that’s where a lot of people are going to look because, as Canadians, we’re deeply affected by everything that happens south of our border and so, of course, we’re anxious about what we see, and that anxiety is getting expressed in a new revised version of Canadian patriotism.”
Having interviewed the Reverend, I know that his sentiment in using the term patriotism refers to Canadian unity, which is different from patriotism. Unity is so important in this era of divisiveness. However, we should be cautious about getting swept up in a wave of patriotism with flag-waving supporters because there can be xenophobic and racist undertones, and, quite frankly, overt white supremacy in the crowds. We have seen it with the numerous anti-immigration marches across the globe, including Australia, the UK, Ireland, and, sadly, Canada (albeit to a lesser extent). That being said, Canadians, in general, have rallied together against the trade actions imposed by the United States, which has translated to boycotting American products and travel.
Although much of the media attention has been placed on U.S. tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, the Trump Administration is using tariffs to pressure other countries like Brazil to change course on domestic issues. For example, the U.S. had applied economic pressure on President Lula and the Superior Court of Brazil to cease the coup trial against Jair Bolsonaro, who is now convicted of attempting to overthrow the Brazilian government, conspiring to kill his rival, Lula, and inciting the riots that took place in the nation’s capital, Brasilia, on January, 8th, 2023 (similar to what happened in Washington, D.C., on January 6th, 2021).
Not only does it seem that the United States is attempting to weaken the economies of the world in favour of its own prosperity, its interventionist approach appears to aim at destabilizing sovereign governments and justice systems as well.
The United States has long been a beacon of liberty and freedom, but no longer, and it is now up to the rest of the world to hold a better standard.
The heart of any nation is about the values that it holds dear. We need to ask ourselves, what do we value as a society? What do we value as humans?
This is deeper than political stances and affiliations, it’s about knowing who we are as human beings on this planet and working together to bridge differences to achieve our common goals for the betterment of everyone.
In recent days, it occurred to me that perhaps Pope Francis predicted these darker times when he had invited the world’s comedians to the Vatican a couple of years ago, where he said to them, in part, “Help us, with a smile, to see reality with its contradictions, and to dream of a better world.”
Pluralism and diversity
Canada’s history is also complicated and traumatic.
This is evident with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which documents the stories of survivors of residential schools. This oppressive system of discrimination contributed to the displacement, cultural erasure, and severe abuse of Indigenous Peoples across Canada.
From the very beginning of Canada, it has endured the ills of colonialism and, at the same time, has relied on cooperation to ensure its very existence. For example, despite the undercurrent of separatist sentiment in Quebec, and to a lesser extent, Alberta and Saskatchewan, there have been ongoing achievements to mend localized ethnic and cultural divides to keep the country together, but not without struggle.
French Canadians and Acadians, as cultural minorities, have historically been discriminated against by English Canadians, who held (and still hold) the vast majority of power across Canada (except for Quebec and maybe New Brunswick). The discrimination included French language suppression in provinces like Ontario and Manitoba. In Quebec’s case, the drive to secede from Canada was initially due to economic disparity, but today it’s about the preservation of Quebec’s unique French language and culture (Quebecois), as per Britannica. The history is a lot more dense and multifaceted, but at its highest level, this is what contributed to the separatist movement in Quebec.
Many might recall the nail-biting Quebec referendum of 1995, where sovereignty was on the ballot. Just over 50% of Quebecers voted “No” in favour of remaining in Canada. The separatist movement of the ‘90s was peaceful in comparison to what happened decades earlier in the lead-up to the “October Crisis” of 1970.
Between 1963 and ’70, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) set off over 200 bombs in Montreal, which targeted minority anglophone communities in Quebec, and popular landmarks, such as the stock exchange (where 27 people were injured). This terrorist activity culminated with the kidnapping of two prominent politicians, British diplomat, James Cross, and Quebec's Deputy Premier, Pierre Laporte.
On October 16th, 1970, then Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau (Justin Trudeau’s father) invoked the “War Measures Act” and sent in troops to Montreal. The following day, the FLQ announced that Pierre Laporte had been executed. After a series of demands and negotiations, some members of the FLQ were granted safe passage to Cuba, while others were arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder. James Cross was released 62 days after his captivity.
Today, albeit subdued, Quebec nationalism is very much alive with strict French language laws in place and restrictions on religious expression. As per the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Bill 21, “bans people [in Quebec] from working as teachers, lawyers, police officers, and more from wearing religious symbols such as crosses, hijabs, turbans, and yarmulkes.”
While some argue that these measures are justified to preserve Francophone culture and secularism in Quebec, others say that such actions are heavy-handed at best, and ethnocentric and xenophobic at worst. Quebec still has a minority anglophone population and is very multicultural.
In fact, it was a Quebecer, Pierre Trudeau, who, as Prime Minister, introduced multiculturalism as an official Canadian Government policy in 1971, and by the end of ‘80s it was enshrined in the Canadian constitution and passed into law. (the first country in the world to do so).
As per the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, “Multiculturalism was intended to preserve the cultural freedom of individuals and provide recognition of the cultural contributions of diverse ethnic groups to Canadian society by assisting cultural groups in their development, assisting individuals in overcoming discriminatory barriers, encouraging intercultural exchange and assisting immigrants in learning French or English.”
Despite these intentions, Canada has had to figure out, through a lot of pain and protest, how all of its citizens deserve equal human rights to peacefully coexist with dignity and respect. This work continues today, as well as the ongoing reconciliation process with Indigenous Peoples.
Multiculturalism feeds into the concept of pluralism, which is often celebrated in Canada as a part of its national identity because, in theory, it’s about embracing differences and diversity rather than forcing people to conform to an all-Canadian “best” ideal.
According to Merriam-Webster, pluralism is, “a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups maintain and develop their traditional culture or special interest within the confines of a common civilization,” and, Global Pluralism Monitor underscores that, “Pluralism encourages societies to make changes that lead to the recognition and belonging of diverse peoples. This allows people’s lives, communities, and institutions to be enriched with new perspectives and ideas. Pluralism is vital to security, peace, and prosperity for future generations.”
I believe there’s a direct correlation between pluralism and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
As DEI Professional and Trans Advocate, Jade Pichette, said on Season 3 of my podcast, “DEI is a whole host of different practices that are really there to make sure that everybody is included, everybody has a fair shot, because historically people haven't had a fair shot, and so we really want to create that. And we know that organizations that have active DEI programs, that have diversity, that have inclusive cultures, that take equity seriously, perform better in the marketplace. But we also know it's just the right thing to do. The other piece is diversity of thought. We know that when people come from different experiences, different perspectives, they create better solutions. If people feel like they're psychologically safe enough to share their opinions, to share their knowledge, to share their experience, they're going to come up with better solutions and have a better impact”.
Unfortunately, there are ideological forces and movements within Canada and around the world that would prefer to do away with diversity altogether.
Canada still has more work to do.
Related article: The Best Myth – Why Bestness Is the Death of Excellence (Part 3)
To learn more, book me for a talk and consultation today. To listen to The Stumbling Spirit Podcast, click here or find it on your favourite podcast streaming platform.
Read more from Fabio da Silva Fernandes
Fabio da Silva Fernandes, Resilience, Mindfulness, and Reiki Enthusiast
For most of his professional career, Fabio da Silva Fernandes worked in the tech industry as a customer support leader. About a decade ago, Fabio began his mindfulness journey, incorporating the practice of presence into his life on a regular basis. In his pursuit of personal wellness, Fabio attained several mindfulness certifications and, in 2018, delved into the world of energy work and started his Reiki training. Fabio is now a certified Reiki Master and Reiki Master Teacher. In 2021, Fabio left his career in fintech to launch his own wellness business called Resting Bell Wellness Inc., which is now branded under the name of his resilience podcast, The Stumbling Spirit.
