Does society hate smart people?

S

St. Onan

Onanist
Nov 26, 2007
31
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www.corrupt.org
Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8778/Why-Intelligent-People-Tend-To-Be-Unhappy

Morons are happy however, if you feed them feces twice a day and adjust their anal plugs.
 
intelligent people tend to be unhappy?

as for Mensa, having a high IQ---having the capacity to be intellectually valuable---doesn't mean you necessarily have societal goals, or a strong work-ethic, or even good ideas, so it wouldn't surprise me if these aren't the most exceptional people the world has to offer.
 
Mensa: The club for people who desperately want to believe they're smart.

Anyhow, I think the idea that society hates smart people is going way overboard. I would agree that it "isn't set up to nurture" them, but it doesn't hate them. It just doesn't care. But then, I don't really see a whole lot of societies that genuinely nurture the best and the brightest. Maybe the best and the brightest rich people.
 
Society pleases as many people as it can. And unfortunately, most people aren't smart people. And a lot of smart people have what are considered problems like ADHD (which I have) and Einstein had too. My I.Q. (which can determine intelligence better than other tests but isn't perfect) is above 120, my dad won't tell me what it is exactly. I guess he thinks I might act like I'm better than everybody else. Although every person who tested me said it was "unbelievably high)". Anyway my point is I'm not doing that great in school. School is tough for me and its not like they fucking care. They go way too fucking slow for me. I can get a math concept if my dad explains it in less than a minute. (The descriptions in the book suck) . The teacher though spends 50 minutes on it, yet I still don't get it. Teachers often seem to get amazed or intimidated by my ideas (if they let me voice them). Anyway the system isn't designed for people like me, they won't let me draw in class, which actually helps me. Because I am keeping my mind awake while listening to what is going on. I learn Kinisthetically. Writing notes helps me but so does listening while I am doing something with my hands that has no auditory output. I played games on my calculator for an entire period and completely remembered the lesson. My grade in Algebra right now is passing, (I don't do too well in it now, they lengthen the problems every year to make them more challenging, also I end up not grasping the concepts too well due to not learning in the same way) although my teacher moved me to the front because I wasn't working once. She at least knows trying to make me look like an idiot or look different or strange motivates me. Although she can go too far. Almost every day she singles me out, I want to skip class but know better. Its hard to deal with a bunch of eyes looking at you as the teacher makes you look stupid. I don't have as much trouble in other classes as Math. In Spanish I am doing good because I am half Colombian, in English I am doing fine due to my ability to memorize vocab and also my spelling skills and reading speed, In Gym I do good, cause its Gym, in Science I am starting to do well just because I am trying harder now. And in History I have an interest so it helps me.

ADHD is thought of as a problem here. It is far from a problem, its a good thing. Edison, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and other people who shaped the modern world had ADHD and had trouble in school. Edison dropped out, Einstein had horrible grades and was held back before, Franklin was said to be unteachable. But in India, people who have ADHD are considered holy, supposedly they reach Nirvana at the time that they die.
 
Feathers & Flames said:
Society pleases as many people as it can. And unfortunately, most people aren't smart people. And a lot of smart people have what are considered problems like ADHD (which I have) and Einstein had too. My I.Q. (which can determine intelligence better than other tests but isn't perfect) is above 120, my dad won't tell me what it is exactly. I guess he thinks I might act like I'm better than everybody else. Although every person who tested me said it was "unbelievably high)". Anyway my point is I'm not doing that great in school. School is tough for me and its not like they fucking care. They go way too fucking slow for me. I can get a math concept if my dad explains it in less than a minute. (The descriptions in the book suck) . The teacher though spends 50 minutes on it, yet I still don't get it. Teachers often seem to get amazed or intimidated by my ideas (if they let me voice them). Anyway the system isn't designed for people like me, they won't let me draw in class, which actually helps me. Because I am keeping my mind awake while listening to what is going on. I learn Kinisthetically. Writing notes helps me but so does listening while I am doing something with my hands that has no auditory output. I played games on my calculator for an entire period and completely remembered the lesson. My grade in Algebra right now is passing, (I don't do too well in it now, they lengthen the problems every year to make them more challenging, also I end up not grasping the concepts too well due to not learning in the same way) although my teacher moved me to the front because I wasn't working once. She at least knows trying to make me look like an idiot or look different or strange motivates me. Although she can go too far. Almost every day she singles me out, I want to skip class but know better. Its hard to deal with a bunch of eyes looking at you as the teacher makes you look stupid. I don't have as much trouble in other classes as Math. In Spanish I am doing good because I am half Colombian, in English I am doing fine due to my ability to memorize vocab and also my spelling skills and reading speed, In Gym I do good, cause its Gym, in Science I am starting to do well just because I am trying harder now. And in History I have an interest so it helps me.

ADHD is thought of as a problem here. It is far from a problem, its a good thing. Edison, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and other people who shaped the modern world had ADHD and had trouble in school. Edison dropped out, Einstein had horrible grades and was held back before, Franklin was said to be unteachable. But in India, people who have ADHD are considered holy, supposedly they reach Nirvana at the time that they die.
Click to expand...

That was a very interesting post to read - you see, I'm a teacher, and I work in a team with another teacher, an elderly woman who is very, very focused on letting kids learn individually, in ways that suits each kid the best. I am learning from her every day. I always allow kids to draw, that's for sure, I did it myself when I was in school. You should really try and talk (or let your parents talk) to the school's leadership and tell them that you have different learning needs.

We have had great success with our last class, where every student was allowed, with our aid, to find out how they best learned stuff, and progress in their own time. I had a very, very active student, possibly ADHD but not diagnosed, who over the course of three years went from running apeshit around the buildings to getting excellent final exams, among the best. His brother, of the same type, has teachers not practicing learning strategies/individual learning styles, and is falling through...
 
My parents talked to the school. I'm on an IEP. It doesn't help, if not it makes things worse.
 
^ I know what you mean, I felt the same way at school. My only advice is to become self-sufficient and try not to play by their rules. Don't waste your time doing work which is of no value to you unless you can't avoid it. Take responsibility for your own learning.
 
I have one of the worst cases of procrastination that I know. I am not just saying that either, like I am really, really bad and I don't know what to do about it. I -can't- seem to study, I rarely do homework... I am in college now, I just started and I rarely go to class. I have honestly missed more then I have gone to in English. I go to physics and play on my laptop. The thing is I am also one of the most naturally gifted people I know.

Perfect example, 11th grade, I would copy my friends homework every single day. I would listen in class, but never take notes. Then the test would come around and I would ace it every time. My friend would get soo pissed. "Why do you copy me every day and still get higher scores then me!?"

Now however, in college, I am getting decent grades I suppose, but I have little to no motivation to go to class, just because I am lazy. I want to study computer science, but am scared I won't learn what i need to because I don't go. And it's not like you can tell me "suck it up and go" cause I really think I have a problem. Even in college I ace my phys tests even though I don't go that often or ever do the homework... so I am afraid I am going to be wasted talent. Can anyone give me some advice?

...sorry for going off topic :rofl:
 
I know this won't be very convincing. You have to tell yourself to work, and make yourself want the results of hard work.
 
That's the thing, right now I am able to pretty much coast by without doing much work... but I am afraid I won't be able to do that for much longer...

...and yah, the topic...

I agree with some of the above posts, I don't think they are treated badly, I think they are ignored. Society isn't going to make things easy for the smart ones like the athletes. The athletes and actors can stay famous far after they do... well.. anything. The smarties have to invent something... or something along those lines. But even then, their are sooo many people that don't even know who invented (or i should say improved upon) the light bulb, the phone, or any number of common inventions. I guess its society as a whole that has to relate or want to aspire to be what is going to be seen as 'good'. And like a few other posts said, even if you're the smartest person alive, if you're too lazy to get any work done, then you won't amount to shit.
 
don't go to class. it's that simple. If classes don't work for you, if you don't learn anything while you're there, just don't go. sitting in a classroom, gaining nothing, but having the happy feeling that you've done something right is the worst kind of procrastination.
Go home, and study the way you want to, the way that works for you.
I've done it for four years, I only go to classes that are either mandatory (and do a LOT of sudoku there) or really interesting (which happens about once a month, sadly) and I'm one of the best people in my class. Just find out what's best for you
 
What's going on that you're not learning anything in your class? Either you already know it, in which case you shouldn't have taken the class or degree, or the teacher sucks. Anyway, each of my classes only take 3-5 hours per week - that's not a whole lot out of my time.
 
Most of the time? Yeah, the teachers suck. Around here, they have absolutely no motivation to try and become good teachers, because they have life-long tenures and their paycheck shows absolutely nothing about their quality of teaching.
So, there's 200 of us, they stick us all into a classroom for 150 people with no windows and lousy ventilation and expect us to spend the next 5 hours listening to a guy that's reading a classification of kidney injuries from his PowerPoint slides, that he made 5 years ago, when the classification in question was in fact different than it is now. Let's just say I can learn a lot more at home, from a textbook, in a lot less time. Oh, and I'm a med student, I'm supposed to be able to use this in practice in 2 years. Have I seen a patient with a kidney injury? 'M afraid not. So, instead of going to a class, I find a friendly urologist that shows me a patient with a kidney hemorrhage instead of giving a me a list of diagnoses.
And that's one class. I have nine this term. I didn't choose any of them, they're a given once you decide whether you want to be a lawyer, a doctor or whatever.

As for the topic: just because you have a person in Mensa also has a "lowly occupation", doesn't mean society didn't give him all it could to develop. There are other possibilities: A) as already mentioned, he could also be lazy and B) maybe he likes his occupation and chose it himself, or at the very least, chose not to pursue an academic career and decided to take whatever life brings and ended up wherever he did
 
I think that there are plenty of opportunities for every type of person in society, they just need to know how to access it (see Marx's idea of Cultural Capital) and also what does "smart people" actually mean, is it looking at their IQ, looking at their social skills and life experience. A man with a low IQ maybe able to fix up a car and a man with a high IQ can't (just an example, and besides IQ tests are socially constructed, they are designed for people in the western world.

A study once IQ tested people living in different jungle tribes, they were given different puzzles to assemble etc. and the idea would be to see how fast they would do it, but the tribes people would start the test, then stop and go off and do other things and come back to it later, they would still complete the test but they dont have this rush and urgency to do everything straight away.

also if you look at questions on IQ tests they are more knowledge tests then intelligence tests, there was a question with 4 names written backwards, 3 of them of authors, 1 of them of a composer, the question asked you to spot the odd one out (i.e. the composer) how ever if you have never heard of the composer it doesnt mean you are unintelligent it just means you dont know of that particular person.

the problem is Intelligence is measured by what you know, rather then how quickly you could get to grips with an alien problem or situation, or how well you can apply skills that you have learnt to something.
 
Depressed? I blame the thinking, myself. All those genes; all that Positivism. Do you brandish your IQ at me, sir?
 
Of course, as the thread is built on the wonder of generalization, I will continue with generalizations myself.

I truly believe that many, if not a majority of highly intelligent people (however one wishes to define intelligence), are stuck in lowly jobs and for a variety of reasons.

First, I think intelligent persons are prone to contemplate life and the world, at a more frequent and deeper level than the average person. With this contemplation, I assume or infer (another generalization) said intelligent person realizes the horror or folly of much of society, and also of their own meaning in relation to it. With this full knowledge, a great many of these intelligent persons decide to rebel against the world. This rebellion includes finding lowly jobs that have no relation, nor help to support or further the present day society: pointless bureacratic jobs, lowly coffee house jobs, etc. Other very intelligent persons, rebel by a total lack of ambition in their current job; happy to be stuck in a moderately paid position with little influence or power, as the very assumption of power in something the intelligent person considers corrupt or pointless, is a form of acceptance of the corruption, or of the actual meaning of the job. I truly meet countless very intelligent persons who fulfill one or the other category.

Second, and building upon the previous paragraph's reasoning, this contempltion also relates to other aspects of life, such as operating in society, building a family, etc. As contemplation of the world/society and ones meaning in it, reveals the pain, folly, meaninglessness, and corruption of it all, many said intelligent persons decide not to reproduce, or to even to marry. Many others refuse to take part in the usual everyday acitivities of society--entertainment, parties, television, pop music, movies, etc. as they find them pointless and meaningless.

Sure there are many intelligent persons who do go on and become integral parts of society--furthering it, sustaining it, being a part of it. However, I have noticed that many successful businessmen, developers, capitalists, bureaucrats, (insert job here), are those of average to above average intelligence, who do not contemplate the world or themselves, and thus go forward with enthusiasm, ambition and vigor with their lives (be it work, family, etc). So, yes, based on experience I have noticed the thread starters comment to be true.
 
What I hate in all this talk of "modern society" is that I don't think things have been better at any point in history.
 
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