Everything is Shit

I recently wrote about listening to a radio talk show in New York where the host would call his former teachers and pull a gag on them. I don’t remember what the show was (I’m not from that part of the country) but a few months later I was listening to the same show where they stirred up a debate about a kid who used his extraordinary I.Q. to finish school early and begin his career young, with the goal of curing a major disease and retiring while he was still young.

I don’t think I ever heard quite so much reaction to any other radio talk show. One after another, the listeners mounted an impromptu guilt campaign to bully the child and his parents to repent and allow the child to, “Be a kid”, or he would never “fit in” and would likely grow up to be an “evil genius”. You would not believe how many times I heard that phrase: “evil genius”, over and over, I had to wonder where had these people — each of them remarkably average — absorbed their fear of intelligence? It was as if forcing the child to be less than what he obviously was could ameliorate the caller’s fear that somewhere, someone might outwit them at pinochle.

The problem of course, is that a child like this will never fit into a world designed for the average. Look at a child who has an I.Q. of 60, which is 40 points below the mean (average) of 100. The difference is obvious — fair or unfair, they stand out. The same is true of children with I.Q.s 40 points above the norm: they stand out from the crowd and serve as targets for violence, at least until they can find their way into a world of people like themselves, and be among people who can understand what they are talking about, people who don’t fear them.

The child on the radio show had an I.Q. over 70 points above the norm. How can anyone expect him to fit in? If you put him on a construction site do you think he would be just one of the guys? There are some things even the best actors can’t fake day in and day out, and this kid was no actor.

You want to make an evil genius? You want something to really be afraid of? Take a kid like that, a kid with a seething intellectual curiosity, and force him to learn something he already knows — far better than his teachers ever will — day after day, year after year, for twelve years. Do this to him while excluding him from all social interaction, all while being insulted and getting the tar beaten out of him, and knowing he will have to work years later in life than he otherwise would have just to achieve the same goals he could have many years earlier. Do you really think he will feel any loyalty to the home team team after such abuse?

Let that kid go, let him become what he can be, let him populate the intellectual world he was meant for, and be kind to him and teach him to be kind in return — free him to cure cancer and ease the suffering of the people he will remember, long after they have forgotten him.