It’s not easy being a wizard.
That’s what you basically are when you are blessed with a very high IQ. The basic, gut-level definition of magic is “the ability to do what seems impossible or otherwise inexplicable” and that is what a very high IQ lets you do.
In fact, it comes naturally to you.
Note that I am not talking about the well known link between high intelligence and social awkwardness and/or the autism spectrum. That’s a topic for another time.
No, I am talking about my own brand of spookiness, which has no definition or diagnosis that I know of.
I’m talking about the kind of smarts that lets you intellectually dominate others with such smooth ease that you don’t even know you’re doing it. The kind that leads to doing astounding things like learning to read at the age of 3. Or being a straight A student without ever having to study, which most people would consider impossible. Or being a small child who talks like a tiny professor.
You can see where I’m going with this.
That sort of thing weirds people out, and makes you seem superhuman and therefore not entirely human. Even if you’re as personable and friendly as I am, you are still going to put out a strangely chilly vibe no matter what you do.
In fact, the contrast between my warm demeanor and my chilly intellect makes me all the weirder, even if you subtract my social anxiety making me want to run away while still putting on a friendly façade.
This is why I keep circling back to the question of whether or not I would be better off being the typical arrogant and superior neckbeard that lurks within me. At least then I would be sending signals that people could recognize and I would fit within a known archetype that let people feel like they know how to deal with me.
And there’s something to be said for taking what I’ll call a challenging attitude toward the world, like you’re just daring the world to knock that chip off your shoulder.
Nothing printable, of course, but still, there’s something to be said.
Instead, my natural instinct seems to be to remain enigmatic. Perhaps I suffer from a strange compulsion to force people to get to know me for me, without the help of labels.
Not that there’s any labels that really stick to me anyhow. I am a very unique dude, for better and for worse, so I defy categorization without even trying.
And that’s creepy.
For the most part, people want to be able to file you away in an already well known folder in their mind. They don’t want to have to keep thinking about who you are and what you might say or do. It’s taxing.
And like I said once long ago in this space, if they can’t label you, they can’t predict you and therefore can’t feel safe around you.
At least, on a basic intuitive sense. The smarter type people will register that you are weird but friendly and harmless and even kind of fun to be around.
But that pesky high IQ threatens people, and it threatens the smarter types most of all, and that can lead to trouble no matter how hard I try to be nonthreatening.
The fact that I’m a 6’1″ behemoth doesn’t help either, of course. Some people will hate you just for making them feel small.
That goes for the intellect too, come to think of it.
Then there’s peoples instinctive hatred of weak leaders. Intelligence is a dominant trait and therefore a non-dominant intelligent person reads as a weak leader to people and arouses their contempt.
This is the instinct that causes younger, stronger leaders to push out weak ones, and for the rest of the tribe to support that.
This is, I think, at the core of all nerd-bashing.
And a depressingly large amount of politics, come to think of it.
More after the break.
Liberals with alpha energy
The world is in desperate need of more of them.
And that will require more than just putting the call out. It will take a fundamental realignment of how liberalism works and how liberals think and see themselves.
Right now, by default, people with strong alpha energy are not welcome in liberal circles. Liberals think they do not wish to be led and do not need a leader and anyone who might fill that role will be rejected as being too angry, confident, cocky, too unwilling to compromise, too pragmatic, too strident, or just plain not “nice” enough.
That’s why true progress requires a leader with incredible oratory charisma like Barack Obama or JFK, and even then there’s no guarantee they will actually do anything.
They might just be like Obama or Bill Clinton, charismatic but lazy and still too “soft” and corrupt to b willing to fight to change things now that they themselves are at the top.
It’s always easier to do nothing. Nothing is always the easiest option. And why shake the tree when you’ve finally made it to the top branch?
That’s why the world needs more people like Bernie Sanders. He’s as liberal as they come – besides me, of course – but he is also an unrelenting prick who can and will pound away at the exact same issues over and over again and attack any and all who are standing in the way of progress until the easiest thing is to give him what he wants.
That’s the kind of person who can truly change things.
And that’s also the kind of person liberals reject as not being “nice”.
There’s a reason he had to toil alone in the wilderness of politics for all those years before trying to change the system from within.
And even now, there’s plenty of liberals who want to reject him for not “playing ball” or understanding that the real job of a liberal politician is to placate the herd so that they don’t notice when the true powers that be shear them.
Right now, we’re lucky. We’re in the exact kind of age where we kill the dinosaurs of the old guard so that the next generation can take over and actually change things. Dipshits like Chuck Schumer and the rest of the paddle-waving stooges at the top level of Democratic politicians are enraging the left wing masses with their limp wristed and ineffectual opposition to Trump’s insanity and pretty soon that is going to boil over into some kind of radical action that will make Schumer and the rest realized that their only options are to get out of the way… or get run over.
Come to think of it, I’m a liberal with alpha oratory energy.
I should probably do something with that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.