It’s not good to be smarter than all your teachers.
And everyone else in your life. Siblings. Parents. Neighbors. Adult or child, big or small, male or female, you’re smarter and stronger than them all.
And without even trying. It’s not even close.
And children need people smarter and more powerful than them to act as guardians, authority figures, moral teachers, and sources of greater wisdom.
Most importantly, it lets children feel like they are not alone in the world. That there are powers above them keeping them safe and looking out for them. That it’s not just them alone in the world, to sink or swim on their own.
No child can survive on their own. Not even the geniuses.
Growing up, I always knew I was smarter than my teachers. And not just that. I knew I could defy their will whenever I wanted too.
I inherently grasped that authority requires cooperation. I knew I could just stand their and refuse to comply and there was nothing they could do. I knew that I could outsmart, outwait, and out-stubborn them.
Again, it wasn’t even close. This is what I mean when I say I was and am more powerful than they are.
And yet, I was innocent in my omnipotence. I knew no better. I was just being my sweet little superpowered self and had no idea that I was casually defying (and defiling) the laws of the social world that bound everyone else.
What a silly little godling.
The teachers didn’t know what to do with a funny little critter like me. And I was too delicate and otherworldly to demand what I needed from anyone.
I didn’t even know that was an option. Hell I didn’t even know what I needed, or even that I needed things I wasn’t getting.
I knew I was scared and lonely and often very very bored. I wanted the attention and the approval of my teachers because that was all I knew how to get.
I didn’t know how to get along with my fellow kids at all.
And it was mutual. They didn’t know hot to get along with an alien child either.
I mean, who does?
The thing is, I was pathetic. I say that not as self-criticism but as a descriptor of my effect on others. I was very wimpy and clingy and desperate and that kind of thing makes someone very hard to respect.
And yet, at the same time, I demolished school work without even slowing down and was so far ahead of the others they could barely see my tail lights.
I was one weird little duck.
If only there had been a higher power to take me on. Someone strong enough and powerful enough in mind and will to handle me.
They didn’t have to be smarter than me. My babysitter Betty handled me just fine and while she’s no dummy, I was smarter than her too.
But she had a strong will and personality and that worked.
I feel like in some ways, I’ve been looking for her replacement,
More after the break.
Not all baby birds fly when they’re kicked of the nest.
Some fall to the ground to die in broken agony wondering what the hell happened to the warm loving world they knew just moments ago.
The birds consider this to be just the cost of doing business.
They concentrate on the ones that made it.
The others don’t matter any more
Tastes too good
Here’s a science fiction-ish concept to explore :
What if someone invented a food that tasted so good it was instantly and deeply addictive? Something that activates the reward center of the brain with such ferocious intensity that people immediately lose interest in everything else?
The first victims would be the people who developed it. I picture mature, sober, intelligent scientists getting into brutal fistfights over the samples.
The question then becomes how does it escape the lab. I picture there being an automated process that uploads the results from their research to a central server once a day and co-locates it a bunch of other places so it can’t be stopped.
The product is flagged as “very promising” so lots of people make test batches, and the madness spreads from there.
Because there are always those people who absolutely must share the great new thing they have found with everybody.
People who have tried the product become shells of their former selves, caring about nothing except for that next glorious bite.
In fact, the economy only keeps going because someone has the bright idea of paying people in the product.
Let’s call them Cookie Yums.
At some point, the public becomes aware of this threat and reacts. Vigilante groups pop up vowing to keep their area Cookie Nums free. Stores that stock them do mad business but risk being firebombed by angry mobs. So do the factories of companies trying to create their own version of it.
For there is NO YUM but the TRUE NUM!
Governments scramble to keep up. Laws banning any addictive food regardless o chemical content are drafted and re-drafted and wrangled over and sweated over and finally passed, but it is far too late.
It spirals out of control as mobs of Yummies take over factories and force them to produce nothing but Cookie Yums 24/7.
Yummies splinter groups start kidnapping prominent anti-Yum leaders and forcing thjem to try the Yums. The anti-Yums start attacking trucks carrying Yums, which quickly escalates to them attacking the factories making them,.
The news becomes like reports from a war zone. with news of this factory being taken over by Yums and this other one lost to Anti-Yum mortar fire.
Finally it would be straight up civil war all over the globe.
This idea came to me when I was reading about supra-normal stimuli and the terrible ways experiments with these over-strong stimuli have messed up test animals.
It could happen to us.
And I am not sure what the hell we could about it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.