Yep, intelligence doesn’t always equate with empathy – the ability to intuit when you might be saying too much or too little, or bloviating or pontificating, or just being flat out self-centered, or off-topic, or missing the main point of the interaction, which is usually to pass the time and connect and not to solve the middle east crisis or reconcile QED with general relativity, and so on
Empathizing with how much is too much is part of the battle, executing it, another
I’m mainly focusing on the empathy part, because I think that’s the harder and more subtle part.
Also, wanting to have this ability to monitor and work with the other person’s feelings (without compromising your own) is a crucial part of having that exact thing, you have to first desire it. the reality of simply not wanting to play that game admits a kind of lack of empathy
chances are that even if you do manage to fall in with a select group of geniuses, they will still want you to put a buck in the douchebag jar every time the suitcase explodes. you won’t make them feel stupid, you’ll just bore them or make them feel sorry for you. einstein may have exploded cities with his genius, but I daresay he knew not to explode suitcases, and got on swimmingly with the janitor, and even preferred him to the pompous asses with tenure.
so you might as well learn the subtlety, if you truly care about relationships
But, one can’t have it all. Einstein may have been the best in his field of expertise and very sociable, but his idiocy when it came to sociological, political and certain philosophical matters may have been beyond compare.
When it comes to the areas where I believe I actually can choose whether or not to focus my energy, such as whether I want to become even better than I am at understand the issues Einstein failed at or if I want to become more sociable, what is important to me is to avoid being a fool. If I’m hated for being anti-social, it’s better than being ridiculed for failing to understand human nature in a more broad sense, by those who excel at it. With that in mind I don’t put to much emphases on becoming more sociable, though I do put some. But I was such a fool for my former self-deprecating and naïve ideologies that I’m more focused on getting as far from them as possible.
Well, do what you have to do, I guess. Many brilliant people are able to do what I’m saying and are happier for it, or, genius only means isolation if you are stupid or around some very stupid and jerky people, usually the case if they are bigots or zealots or suffer from substance abuse or post traumatic stress, or or have genetic mood or mental disorders. So you came up around some idiots and were made to feel like your better self was marginalized. Welcome to the club. Now comes the inevitable reactionary behavior that makes your life just as bad in the opposite direction, and if you are as smart as you say you will beware of waxing grandiose and Zarathustrian and just accept for the time being that you are most likely being an idiot in one way or another. Tread lightly, because most of lives truths have yet to be revealed to you, the alphabet of your fears, and their antidotes; the seat of you purpose and meaning, are probably all just in infancy at this point.
Focusing on your synapse size is like obsessing about dick size. Sure, you need people who you can talk to, people with equal or so firepower to SEE you for what you are. That’s part of the allure of being here at ILP.
But I wonder if you know what it’s like to love deeply and need and grow and discover with the help of a friend or partner who is maybe not a genius. I do. Or how it feels to watch a baby grow into a person and watch their minds flower, to know what a mind is not because you have one but because you made one and raised it, to realize the beauty and endless challenge and joy of having another locus of perception as a foil to your own, regardless of its iq, and eventually you feel this way about everyone, not just your own kid. The joy that I feel talking with you, even though we disagree, the love I feel for you.
And when that happens, you learn first hand that sheer genius is not the whole enchilada, that genius often gets in the way of greater truths. For instance, if you don’t know what your values are, or your values are built out of sand, then none of the neurons do you any good.
There’s a difference between wisdom and genius, awareness and intelligence. Your posts sound like a person who is limiting himself, generalizing, aggrandizing and altogether missing the point, much like some damaged superhero who goes in a cave to develop his mind and body and fight crime in the dark. But that’s a childish way to see things. That’s not to say that many adults, some very accomplished, haven’t clung to this childish orientation from cradle to crave. But we don’t have to.
Intellectual ambition isn’t mutually exclusive with enjoying all kinds of people. If you can’t use your intelligence to broaden the places where you can find nectar, and instead use it to narrow your opportunities for joy, then what good is thought? Sometimes the discerning intellect has to learn how to reject everything before it can rebuild and learn to accept everything and say yes to the universe instead of no. Maybe you’re on that path.
After years of intense contemplation, I’m well past reactionary behavior.
Einstein was a genius and an idiot not because he had weaknesses, but because he pretended his weaknesses were among his strengths. I don’t claim to know about physics etc., precluding me from being an idiot.
Of course as my awareness expands I become exponentially more aware of my ignorance as well, but I don’t recall your reasoning for this treading lightly which you have been advocating.
Do even have to mention the contradiction here? I’ll just say everyone has to discriminate how to spend their time, the way you spend your time speaks much louder than your claim to indiscriminate feelings towards everyone.
Thank you, but I think that while we disagree on the topics of the debate, we actually find each to be agreeable, because of our high intellect.
Gravity gets in the way of much too. I only accept it as a fact and I would only feel the need to mention my susceptibility to gravity should anyone wish to deny it. So it’s not a matter of my intelligence doing me any good. Good for me is to know my strengths and weaknesses or susceptibilities.
I’m not clinging to anything, I went from Christian, to nihilist, to (for lack of a better term) non-nihilist, in less than two years. And I don’t think I fail to see the point you speak of. I know what it is, and I’ve chased it, but then I’ve also day dreamed of flying.
My intellect does force me to be more discriminate as to where I can find joy. It’s no different than an athlete who has trouble finding people worth competing with. He has to put up with the hassle of trying to become a professional to find competition, while the lesser athletes only need to go to any given gym or track. One who is lured into pushing himself into training to become a professional athlete for money etc. or into spending much time studying to become a professional scholar have questionable priorities, but at least they are looking forward to joining an exclusive peer group. There is no peer group waiting for me to become qualified or intelligent enough for me to join, so you question of what good is thought is void. I only engage in thought because it is natural for me to do so.
I already did that, here is a link to my last thread on nihilism or rejecting everything, before I rebuilt.
I’m now trying to accept everything, so when I say I’m intelligent and have little use for most people with lesser intellects and will in fact become very lonely and depressed if I try to limit myself to them, I’m actually being very accepting of the universe.
Referring to your post about nightmares and “good” business news. Speaking in terms of the conscious/unconscious, your conscious has a different idea of success than you do. Maybe you can fight it, maybe you should fight it. But, then again maybe you can’t; the dreams are your unconsciousness’s way of saying to back the hell off, but if you don’t, your unconscious may find a way to sabotage you.
I know the conscious/unconscious dichotomy is only useful to an extent, the point is to make it so that it is a completely useless dichotomy. To illustrate my point I’ll use another dichotomy; my conscious mind and my stomach. Compared to the unconscious mind, my stomach is very stupid; it only cares about eating, not any other of life’s concerns, and while it has no problem telling me when too little, is too little, it sometimes fails in telling me when enough is enough. It has such a draconian outlook; it thinks I may face starvation soon. The unconscious mind, though, is as much a part of one’s mind as one’s conscious so it’s not so dim; it can keep up to date a little better maybe and it knows how to set limits more accurately in both directions.
Something u said struck a chord. My idea of success might not agree with my subconscious idea of success.
Sometimes any change produces anxiety. The bigger the change the more
Anxiety.
Success is a big change. Our mind vines in and around or fuses to our obstacles and we intertwine.
When the obstacle is removed, so too is an adapted part of us. It can even be a part u have come to love. A part that u recognize as strength. Torn away. Such as how you deal with being poor.
I’m sure your only relatively poor. People are not meant to live in extravagance and have such power that large sums of money provide. Anyone worth over a few hundred thousand has the equivalent power of a medieval feudal lord, if they’re one of a higher intellect and have the necessary knowledge of reality. But, a feudal lord is born into the position, he at least is prepared for such power.
You have the intellect and knowledge to have some idea of what such monetary success means, hence your dreams. Your unconscious, which is far wiser than you, knows that you could not possibly be prepared or likely ever become so, for such power. Your unconscious will reflect - to use the ominous term - your will to power, even if you won’t. It not only wants to live but wants to live “well”, “well” as in the near indefinable way that one “should” live.
If you obtain such power your unconscious will have a choice; repress its knowledge so that you can be nearly guaranteed survival to live a ignorant, mostly mundane, yet sustainable life, with little purpose but that of helping make it so that those who matter to you may one day become better than you and actually do what you couldn’t/wouldn’t do; live “well” or let you feel the full force of the power you are so ill prepared for, and let you either grow fast or succumb to complete decadence.
That is why your unconscious screams for you to break the ideological mold you are in and find true potential. Long story short, its easier being stupid.
I never said was poor, I said such “as” being poor, as an example more people could identify with. But it could also be getting your hearing back, or finding a mate, or getting a job, or having a book accepted. All of these things mean a radical departure from the current ecosystem, that good or bad, you have become part of. And if you are smart, you have become VERY enwrapped in any ecosystem you find yourself in for any length of time: vast bergs of yourself grow under those conditions, a billion nervated serpentine tendrils fuse with your surroundings, and then when those conditions are removed or moved past, those bergs must be carried with you and assimilated to the new conditions. BIG PARTS of yourself must be hoisted into new countries where they must be made sense of (or survived) in the new ecosystem. Like gills in the harsh light of air. For the fish who prayed for wings and finally received them! Smart can be a curse, and so can success. It may shed light on why certain smart people seem stuck.
It can be done and it can be done beautifully, and it can be fun to do so, and in fact might be the whole point of any of this. It’s just hard, and hence scary. Thanks for helping me figure it out.
What you said above makes sense, and if my posts - their content mostly withstanding - helped you to think this over, then I’m happy to help… well, I’m not sad to anyway. Still, I believe there’s much I said left unaddressed or unheeded, but then that’s ok with me. Please keep me posted if you ever find yourself looking back at my words and their vague implications.
well i’m not going to give me money away like wittgenstein. and certainly not to you, if that’s what you’re slowly trying to achieve.
and i’m not even talking about success viz financial gain, but just as a concept. When something you have been going after is finally attained, it’s scary.
I’m sorry you feel your words are not understood or heeded. What I got from it was that the subconscious knows shit the conscious doesn’t, hence the dream. i’m not sure what it is my subconscious knows. i guess it might be that it’s afraid of the unknown, afraid of having to jettison old ways, old ways that have become a system, a definition, and not a bad one.
I think you imply the subconscious is making a value judgement on how to live well in the deepest sense, and that sometimes “success” is not consistent with living well in the deepest sense. This is understood, and interesting, although it would become problematic to argue that all things “successful” as labeled by our conscious minds, are at odds with our subconscious mind’s idea of success. More likely, the bugaboo is CHANGE ITSELF, since that seems the simplest explanation. Consciously I might not even consider that changing from a less successful to more successful state would be scary or bad in any way, but subconsciously this stuff comes out, and it was you who pointed me to this idea that the subconscious is wiser, more honest and raw about things.
