Read about the origin of the story, here.
If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, start here.
Excella Er is the dusty blue planet right in the middle. It bases its culture on the Maximizer theme.
People exceptionally talented in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb. — CliftonStrengths
The name Excella is simply a variant of ‘excellent’ and you would assume excellence would be a common theme on our planet, but only one country has Maximizer as its leading strength—Japan.
And only one with Maximizer in the third place.
Maximizer does not present in the top five for any other countries in my spreadsheet1. No wonder only 12% of people get to do what they do best every day.
Does anyone else feel compelled to visit Japan and/or Korea?
My strengths themes are Futuristic, Strategic, Maximizer, Intellection, and Relator, but Maximizer is the theme I present to the outside world. If you were in one of my classes, be it process engineering (PE) or Sunday school, you could not miss my consistent encouragement of your strengths. I even developed a software platform to boost people’s PE strengths. Yet, if I ruled the entire world, many people would not benefit from my benevolence, for my other themes constrain me. Tell me you aspire to sing, dance, or play sports and I’ll yawn and say, how nice, but if you say you want to explore theology or the cosmos, well now you have my attention.
What do you consider excellence?
So, if a planet is to be perfectly excellent, it must provide multiple strengths communities (or guilds) and Excella Er has the perfect conditions to support a Maximizer culture.
The treacherous blue mountain ranges enable the development of rich cultural traditions separate from their neighbors. Of course, if someone is born in one province whose strengths are better supported by another, they can find a way to traverse the mountaintops and join another guild. But there will still be those who find no fit within the orderly confines of any province. These people, excluded from the economy and unable to work, resort to crime and often are angry and violent.
Two guilds on Excella, the Traddeshe (lawyers) and the Moddeshe (scientists), flourished side by side for many generations until threatened by an unexplained increase in crime.
The Traddeshe, staunch supporters of inter-galaxy immigration, know Travelers transport people of robust character, but the Moddeshe do not find their arguments persuasive because most immigrants arriving on Excella were not strategists. Strategists were more apt to immigrate to Lierne or Salek, so the Moddeshe blamed the increase in crime on immigration.
Their anger boils so hot they declare war on the unrelenting Traddeshe (they know they are right) and kill the immigrants taking solace within the Traddeshe province as well as anyone who stands in their way.
In the story, we watch hundreds get tossed off the mountaintop to be dashed against the rocks below, including Mille and Klado.
Fellow humans... Can we just stop killing each other like this?
Substack Notes
My spreadsheet contains only the countries whose data set is greater than 4999 respondents.
Another really interesting post! 😊 I have plans to visit Japan in the next year or two. I'm a big fan of anime and manga, and other Japanese media, and I get such a tantalising glimpse into the culture through those mediums. There's a lot about the culture and values that is so different from western culture and I really want to go and see/experience some of it myself. I think you can learn a lot by visiting other countries... there's always something positive (ideas, lifestyle, values etc) to bring back and apply to your own life. It can be a really enriching experience. I'd love to visit Korea too one day.