Today’s video is anything but… nondescript.
That’s because it’s my first video made entirely in Descript, that website/app I’ve been talking about lately.
And I have to say, I’m not sure if Descript made it all that much easier.
Obviously it’s a little easier to edit a transcript than it is to edit video, and it’s entirely possible I was able to find and remove a lot more of my ums and ahs than I am when I am editing the old fashioned way, but I still dunno.
I will at the very least try it again. It could be that once I am more familiar with Descript, and therefore more relaxed when using it, it will obviously way, way easier.
It’s worth a shot.
Plus messing around with Descript was kinda fun.
On to the subject of the vid. It all started with this animation.
Like I say in the vid, that got me thinking about the whole subject of a lack of social awareness and how it can cause grave levels of misunderstanding.
Especially amongst us nerdy folk.
As I have mentioned before, I consider being a nerd to be a mild form of Asperger’s the same way Asperger’s is a mild form of autism.
And the key to the whole thing seems to be the social awareness I talk about in the vid. “Normal” people have it, but for the most part, they don’t know they have it and are therefore unable to articulate it.
After all, nobody explained it to them. It’s something they learned via social interaction and I think the heart of that might just be the desire to “fit in”.
In trying to fit in, they tap into an intuitive sense of what the other monkeys are thinking and doing and adjust their behaviour in order to remain in sync with them.
This is all going on subconsciously, for the most part. It does not involve the rational, conscious mind at all. And that’s where the problem starts.
Growing up nerdy means “choosing” (in the purely developmental sense) to focus on the sort of logical abstract reasoning skills that things like school rely on.
This often leads to introversion, as said skills require a very robust ability to listen to one’s “inner voice”, and that requires screening out the outer world.
But the outer world is exactly where that social awareness comes from.
Basically, you can’t learn social skills if you’re all wrapped up in yourself.
Hence the continuum of nerdiness and sociability. It really does seem like the more nerdy you are, the less socially skilled you are, as if there is a finite amount of potential and the more you invest in one end of the scale, the less you have for the other.
Seems vaguely unfair.
But like I said in the vid, that does mean there are compensations for one’s lack of a social cue. We tend to do quite well in school, and in general have a strong grasp of abstract reasoning in all its forms, and that leads to a certain point of view.
One based on “leading with your head”, in other words, dealing with the world primarily through one’s abstract reasoning skills and not through other faculties like social awareness, empathy, and intuition.
Those without our advanced mental faculties have no choice but to rely on those other faculties in order to navigate through life.
That’s the main reason there is such a disconnect between us nerdy left wing liberal types and the more middling masses.
We don’t speak one another’s languages, so to speak.
But as the “smarter” half of the equation, it is incumbent upon us to learn their lingo. To learn to see the world through their eyes, without judgment or criticism, and through that learn to lead them in the right direction.
In many ways, we’re the grownups of the world. And it’s up to us to raise the kids right.
More after the break.
They just can’t
To carry on where I just left off (for once) :
Let’s take another stab at one of ghosts that haunts me, one that just becomes more solid and real as time goes by : what if the average person simply cannot see the world the way a liberal intellectual like myself does?
Their hardware can’t run our software. And it doesn’t matter how articulate, or compassionate, or “nice” we are, there is a complexity to our thought processes and point of view that their brains simply cannot handle.
If so, then our capacity for compassion and understanding will truly be tested because it would mean that to get through to them, we have to communicate with them in a way that we ourselves would find insulting.
We have to talk to them like they’re idiots, essentially, or what we would interpret as such if it was directed as us.
And yet, we also have to avoid talking down to them. That would even worse than just talking over their heads.
It’s a very difficult needle to thread, I will admit.
But it may well be what we have to do to lead them effectively. And it’s better than constantly beating our brains out trying to get them to see things our way when it is entirely possible that they simply cannot.
This is a traumatic thought, I realize. I don’t like thinking about it and I’m the one who thought it up in the first place. It flies in the face of the egalitarian roots of modern society which necessitate viewing everyone as fundamentally equal.
And I’m not suggesting there is a moral difference or a difference in worth between us and them. I am vehemently anti-elitist.
Which is probably why discussing this subject at all makes me feel queasy.
But equal worth does not necessarily equate to equal intellect. And it could be that for us to truly encompass this extremely unpalatable truth, we might just have to dig our own intellectual elitism out by the roots.
A stupid person has the same human worth as a smart person.
Bet you thought you already thought that, right?
But did you really?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.