Warning - what follows is not going to sound good.
I feel I must say it, however, if only as a record for the future, perhaps helping to explain when and how I finally started to lose it with the civilised people around me.
I've never been particularly good at fitting in to the society I found myself born into, but that was mostly explained to me by the adults in charge of my education and conditioning as an unavoidable by-product of being so highly intelligent.
At a measured IQ of over 150 - later in my young adulthood it hit 170-175 quite regularly - I've normally had a problem understanding why something which was quite obvious to me wasn't even on the radar of most folks around me.
For a while I pandered to this sense of superiority by studying Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy - the 'hardest' sciences I could find, which seemed to give me some kind of pleasure and even more of an explanation for being different. Eventually, however, as I became sensitised to the actual, real world in which I found myself - the world of Life everywhere, and much of it nonhuman - and as I finally began to grow up a bit, I noticed that this feeling of not fitting in had not gone away. It was more pronounced than ever.
And so I find myself resident in a country with an average IQ of just 70, surrounded front and back and on all sides with humans who seem to me the epitome of insanity - if insanity can be imagined as that quality of not giving a shit about the future, the matrix which sustains you, and the nonhuman intelligences all around one.
I'm having a pity party right now, yes. I'll snap out of it in due time, I know. But right now I feel my strangeness very keenly, and the only explanation I can put upon it is that I'm still diverging widely from the culture of my birth.
The Wetiko culture, the culture of the dangerously insane, the culture of the zombie.
Thanks, that even helped me, too.
ReplyDelete:¬)
Yes, as Misko says, that was in fact helpful.
ReplyDeleteSeeing the stupidity, and that to others this is "normal," is in fact a very divisive experience. You've written before that you don't like people, while making it clear that you will do what you must to serve them well; might this stupidity be a contributing factor to that dislike?
And it's hard to "like" those who insist on being dumb as rocks.
May I suggest that your willingness to help, even in the face of your own dislike, makes you something of a hero?
If misery enjoys company then I am a kindred spirit, steadily becoming invisible. Its the empathy that verges to anger, and then cycles at times to depression, which writing helps to ease as an exorcism of toxins as well as sharing the wonder that life is, as incommensurable as it's mysteries are. I sense we have been here since the beginning, some of us in various guises waiting for the others not to trample on a gift. I hope all this finds you peace in the rubble, and smoke. You are not alone in this.
ReplyDeleteI feel this very keenly as well.
ReplyDeleteThere are days (which I've blogged about) when I look at the people around me and feel like I must be an alien, visiting a strange planet. I feel so disconnected from my fellow humans.
Everything seems so wrong. I sometimes feel like I'm slightly out of sync with reality. I feel like perhaps if I can just wake up, all that seems to be reality will turn out to be a dream.
Yeah, that didn't sound dissociative at all did it? :-D
Been feeling it too. I don't fit in here. I can't blame them, though. This prison was designed for us. It makes sense that only the mutants can see the bars.
ReplyDeleteOh I feel you on this one. It is hard, especially when you can't connect to people that you care about anymore. It's like you waving your hand in front of their eyes screaming, "hellooo? anybody home" and they just stare blankly ahead.
ReplyDeleteI found what helped me is finding people who are like minded and connect to them as much as you can. With your writings you are attracting what you're putting out, and realize you're not alone in this. :)
Another vote for feeling like an alien or a freak or a ghost. Or something not as easily programmed or assimilated as other people. Be proud of these feelings; they prove that not only are you smart but intuitive and insightful.
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