Extraordinary Ordinary People

1. An Introduction

One perspective of the idea.

This introduction begins the new series on Homo Vitruvius for paid subscribers, Extraorinary Ordinary People. The first entry will come next Monday. Both this week’s offering and next week’s are free to all as a preview of the series.

Extraordinary Ordinary People: An Introduction

We begin with the chosen words and when we get to where we’re going with them, we keep the words in mind with us because they got us there. What, then, is meant by “ordinary”? Merriam-Webster says, “routine, usual.” Then, a little more derogatorily, we read, “of common quality, rank, or ability.” Finally, in this meaning of the word, there is no holding back: “deficient in quality: poor, inferior.”

Damn! Who wants to be ordinary? (Some people, actually.)

If we return to that first sense of the word, Webster more fully states, “of a kind to be expected in the normal order of events.” Order is key to the understanding here, as, containing the word root, it takes us to ordinary’s etymolo…