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Those who can do, those who can't.. Of course, going by the norm and the condoned, you would say the verb that grandly caps the aphorism, is criticise. But I wish to digress.

Not so much because I believe the saying is pass,, or because there are more critics among us than doers, but because I'm beginning to discover a third category. And they, to paraphrase the familiar dictum, 'Toady, because they can't'.

Toady their way into the good books of the superiors, positions, promotions, perks... and out of the need to endorse the traditions of merit based attainment.

'Toadyism' as a definition for sycophants who set no limits to the depths they would stoop to, was first coined in the Middle Ages, when fawning minions swallowed live toads and drank the healing elixir concocted by their wizard bosses in a truckling display of their admiration of the big kahuna's talents. Whether the wizard was truly talented or not was a different matter altogether.

Though people don't swallow live toads anymore, the practise of toadying not only continues, but has also been exalted to near protocol status. Masquerading as the innocuously circumspect, politically correct 'office politics', it is an integral ingredient of the ambulatory process that propels a person onward from an ordinary wooden chair in a dumpy corner to a well-padded swirling seat by the sugar bowl with perks to match.

I have nothing against calling the truckling 'office politics'. Even the gurus of edgewise thinking claim that a certain degree of office politics is essential if the mechanism of workplace pique is to be kept well lubricated. But I do ponder about these 'politicians' who fuel the fires of 'office politics' and conspire to commit the traditional concept of merit to obsolete status.

Of course, following the spade definition, calling them toads would be a tad uncouth. But that's by the way, for what's more riveting is what makes an 'office politician' an 'office politician'.

My friend Freddy claims it is mediocrity - a talent deprived, competence bereaved, inferiority complex, that necessitates these people to blandish and flatter and grovel and fawn and even conspire against their colleagues to get ahead. Because they simply can't - do what is expected of them, that is. He says mediocrity is the mother of office politics.

In fact, he tags it as being the vagrant mother of a whole lot of illegitimate outgrowth that has maligned our civilisation.

Freddy being Freddy, the potentate of all matters picayune and the paltry and at rare moments the profound, what he says normally needs a pinch of salt or more for acceptance. But in this instance, it does make sense. Toadyism is indeed the prerogative of the mediocre. And given the multitudinous of the mediocres in our society, the tyranny of mediocrity has become an overwhelming 'in-your-face' kind of reality.

There is no ignoring either mediocrity or subservience propelled toadyism. Palpable, perceptible and almost tangible, its there in addled-headed and phlegmatic shapes occupying sidewalks and high offices, media rooms and marketplaces, and just about every place, even the table by the sugar bowl.

Mediocrity has often been described as the most damaging and voluminous of human contribution to the world. Perhaps this is one reason why we constantly dangle on a precipice of disaster. Most crucial decisions that affect the fate of millions are often made by mediocre people, who have either manipulated or forced themselves into positions of power.

It's another matter though that more often than not, pomp, power or wealth, or all three, hide the innate mediocrity of many a king, president and boss.

But in the real world mediocrity does not feature so much among kings and presidents as it does among the minions - the sycophants, pen-pushers and hangers on - who are in fact the genuine worker bees of mediocrity.

Unimaginative in their thinking, unenterprising in their outlook, and their judgment mired in congealed reflections, the bees do sometimes have practical sense, but no vision or originality to convert them into reality.

So they fawn and flatter and fake to get ahead. In the mediocre realm, the purpose in life is two-pronged: to survive and to entrench (and whenever possible increase) the privileges. This means the mediocres among us are a debauched kind of animal species who will flow with the tide and have the intrinsic cunning to abandon ship when the going gets tough and join the winning clan.

In dull bureaucracies and still duller office, the worker bees also play a very low kind of office politics, that's not dissimilar to a predatory game where survival is the grand prize. The aim is to draw blood and the weapons are back stabbing, sleazy manipulation, slander, character impugning, reviling, backbiting... Mediocre people are skilled at wielding these weapons and often they make their killing with a comradely pat and a convivial wink.

Those who can do, and those who can't..... need one say more

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