I think mediocrity means average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.
It's like the Japanese saying: A nail that stands up gets hammered down. If you're different, especially in a better way, you will likely not be appreciated by others (at least until the superiority of your ideas has been demonstrated so that even the unimaginative can understand their merit). Further, people scorn what they don't understand and envy what they fear might indicate superiority in others. As Elbert Hubbard says: To mediocrity, genius is unforgivable.
Genius is dangerous because mediocrity requires little, if any, effort. Genius requires sweat and ideas. It requires vision, taking chances and tenacity in the face of adversity. Most people, whether they admit it or not, are like sheep. They want to be fed and watered and they are content. We all know what ultimately happens to sheep. Who remembers the mediocre people? I remember Sir Isaac Newton, but no one person who knew him.
A genius basically has two choices, either to flee the city or country and lives in exile, or become a mediocre himself. But there is another choice, which not many people have the strength to pursue, and that is to remain a genius and try to bring forth the truth! These geniuses suffer at the hands of mediocrity, but still working relentlessly towards a greater good. But unfortunately this “greater good” is unrecognizable to mediocrity who finds the genius a threat to themselves. And when nothing worked they put an end to the genius. Jonathan swift said: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Galileo is a prime example from the past. He was charged with ‘having held the opinion that the earth revolves around the sun’ for which he was sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the church’s