I read an article on very high IQ people the other day. These were folks who had IQ’s of 160+. Many of them were men. It was a very interesting piece. Many of them had very low incomes and quite a few were living in poverty or near poverty. Many lived alone and most rarely dated, even though they were heterosexual. Terminal bachelorhood seemed to be chronic. Consequently, many were very lonely. Quite a few were either unemployed or employed in jobs far below their abilities.
It was common for them to be very introverted, odd, strange, weird, nervous or anxious. The introversion was often so strong as to be be described as “painfully introverted.” The author did not feel that any of them were autistic or Asperger’s types. Instead, they were more properly what we think of as “neurotics.” Nowadays, idiotically, everyone thinks that odd introverts are “Aspies.” But this is not true. In fact the vast majority of odd introverts are probably just neurotic, or perhaps they are just introverts. Introversion and oddness have been known to go together for a very long time.
Another thing the author noted was that many of them had turned into some sort of misanthropes. They were disgusted with the world and humanity, mostly because they thought the world was full of “idiots,” as they put it. They had gotten so tired of dealing with what they considered to be a moronic world that many of them had just given up and sought solace in solitude.
I am starting to suffer from the last one – misanthropy. Not because I like misanthropy – actually I hate it. But increasingly I feel like I am surrounded by idiots, and I do not mean people with low IQ’s.
I mean people who do not know how to think about the world. I mean people who have stupid ideas and stupid attitudes, not low IQ’s. I mean people regard whatever garbage and lies society told them as some sort of a cookbook about how to live your life. I mean people with black and white, either/or thinking to whom nothing is a shade of gray. I mean people who are allergic and hostile to the very idea of shades of gray or continua in the first place.
I mean people who do not know how to reason logically, which has little to do with IQ. Many people with IQ’s of 90-100 can reason very logically. I mean people who won’t think outside the box. I mean people who do not know the meaning of words. I mean people who understand little or nothing about human psychology and the psyche.
I mean people who cannot seem to grasp logical, simple, obvious truths of the human condition because they go against whatever “cookbook” they were brought up with. The main problem seem to be people trying to get along by thinking only along society’s dictates and not moving out and forging their own way in thinking and in life. Societally mandated thinking and it’s preposterous “logic” which is not logical at all is nothing but a prison, but it is a comfortable one.
I guess what I am getting at is wisdom. A lot of folks are pretty wise, but it is the ways in which they are not wise that bothers me most.
It’s really starting to get on my nerves.
