There are some human abilities that are equivalent to superpowers, in that they seem superhuman. The most obvious examples are certain kinds of athletes and performers. Some of these people can do things that are hard to believe a human can do. In watching acrobats and contortionists, one worries they might hurt themselves.
I have some athletic ability. I’ve played sports and I’m decent at juggling. My greatest physical skill was hacky sack or, if you prefer, footbag. I played all the time and even invented tricks that were quite impressive. But even then there were surely thousands of other people just here in the Midwestern United States that were at least as good as I and probably far better. My skills, as great as they were, were not at the level of the superhuman. I’m not a genius in physical ability, just above average.
That is fine. Most people don’t mind having limited athletic skills or whatever. We live in a society that only moderately admires and rewards such abilities. For all the wealth a professional athlete can accrue, a popular movie star or powerful CEO will still make vastly more money, and no one even cares to watch the CEO. Besides, the movie star or CEO doesn’t have to worry about potential physical injury and permanent brain damage that might lead to chronic pain and a shorter lifespan.
What gains respect in our society, more than anything, is cognitive ability. Even the entrepreneurial businessman is largely admired because his success is supposedly a sign of intelligence and innovation, whether or not that corresponds to book smarts. It’s a different kind of cognitive ability than a professor or scientist, but it’s the same basic quality that compels respect in a society such as this.
Yet, at the same time, Americans tend to only appreciate outward forms of intelligence as they manifest in worldly achievements and positions of authority. A scientist, for example, will be much more respected if he invents a new medicine or technology. It’s the rare scientist, such as Albert Einstein, who is respected for merely developing a new theory.
That is the rub. Intellectual capacity is rarely obvious. The most brilliant people, even geniuses, don’t get much respect or reward for all their talents, no matter how hard they work. It’s partly because the greatest thinkers don’t tend to have an immediate and spectacular impact on the world around them, as any society will be resistant to change. To appreciate the impact of a great thinker might take centuries, until the rest of society catches up.
Plus, many people with immense cognitive abilities have their talent wasted. They are working at jobs that don’t make use of their intelligence, creativity, etc. I suspect more geniuses are never discovered than those who get the opportunity to live up to their potential. Working class jobs, poor communities, homeless shelters, prisons, etc are filled with lost and wasted human potential.
It’s not unusual to meet people with all kinds of talents and abilities. Rarely are these people doing much with what they have, partly because life is tough and most people are simply trying to get by. Being smart most often won’t do you much good if you live in isolated, desperate poverty with few positive outlets of intellectual achievement. But it doesn’t require poverty to obscure human potential. Let me give an example.
My friend’s father is a bookdealer, although he collects books more than he sells them. This guy easily could be doing greater things than running a practically nonprofit book business. He is smart, clever, witty, and has a near perfect memory filled with vast information. He was working on his dissertation when stress and a psychological breakdown caused him to drop out. Despite his being well respected by other bookdealers, few others would suspect that this slovenly guy is anything special.
There are many people like that.
I live in a town filled with smart and well educated people. A large part of the working class around here has college degrees. Many people I know don’t do anything with their education: someone with an architecture degree who is a busdriver, someone with a psychology degree who is a postal worker, someone with a history degree who is a bartender, someone with a religious studies degree who is a baker, someone with an art degree who is a maintenance worker, etc. One of my coworkers who works as a cashier has a PhD. Even the homeless population around here is far above average.
That’s just talking about the well educated. Genius is a whole other level. If you met a mental genius, how would you know? Someone could be having genius thoughts right in front of you and you’d probably not notice anything unusual was happening. It’s harder for a physical genius to hide their talents while using their talents because, well, they are physically apparent. You might not pay close attention to the street juggler as you pass by, but you most likely will at least notice that juggling is happening within your vicinity.
In reading books, I sometimes come across a writer who has amazing knowledge, understanding, and insights. Most of the time, such people aren’t famous and well paid authors. There seems to be a negative correlation between how brilliant a writer is and how well they are rewarded in their profession. The more brilliant a writer is the far fewer readers there will be to appreciate their brilliance. It takes above average intelligence to even recognize brilliance, much less fully appreciate it.
That is the difference. Anyone can watch physical ability and be awed by it. Cognitive ability, at the extremes, tends to just go over people’s heads or else is ignored. A scientist doing cutting edge research often would have a hard time explaining the research to most people in a way that would make it both comprehensible and interesting. The fact of the matter is most scientific research is boring and, besides, it happens in laboratories few people ever see. Scientists are hidden away while doing their scientific work. That is the nature of most intellectual pursuits. They are outwardly unimpressive and not easily seen, at least until some worldly result is achieved, which comes out long after all the hard intellectual work was done.
The work and thought being done that will change the world in the future is happening all around us. Knowledge, ideas, and inventions slowly percolate through society. Meanwhile, a large part of the population is watching sports.
Access: Public 
Nicole said
Ben, I learned some important things about you tonight. Thank you. I really look forward to seeing your fiction when you’re ready to start unveiling it. It’s great to see you again! I’d missed you. Big hugs.
1Vector3 said
Hey Ben, thanks for sharing your story. Never thought about the inspiration thingy and all the aspects of it you mentioned. New perspectives for me, goody.
I didn’t become a writer, I always was. It’s not something I do, but what I am. Breathe, write. No-write, like suffocating, or being strait-jacketed. Not to say this is better or worse than becoming a writer. Just noting a different life experience.
However, despite maybe 3 forays into fiction in my whole life, which weren’t totally lousy, I really have NO talent for it. Just can’t think up anything [my forays were school assignments.] So I really admire the heck out of you folks who have that kind of creativity. Really beyond me.More power to ya for contributing fiction to the world !
Finding the “inner motivation thingy” is crucial. If I were a praying person, I would pray for you that you find yours. I do “know” it is there, everyone has it. But sometimes it takes awhile in life to emerge, although often it get suppressed or repressed, and is actually visible if one knows where and how to look. Like: what feels like breathing? what did you do naturally as a kid? what would you pay to keep from being prohibited from doing? what gives you a feeling of elation, exhilaration? (even under the depression.)
Gee, idea-fiction, no dearth that I can see. Hesse? Ayn Rand? Colin Wilson (The Philosopher’s Stone, The Mind Parasites, etc.)? Theodore Sturgeon (e.g. Godbody, one of my top fave books.)? Ursula LeGuin? Just for starters. Maybe some don’t qualify for you, for some reason…..
Lots of depression is I think possibly basically biochemical, but I also go with those who say many depressions are really actual sadness about an actual something –a something which is kept outside of awareness – and I also go with those who say many depressions result from giving up on having or being or experiencing what one most deeply and profoundly wants in life. And of course there is the inward-turned aggression theory. Do you know anything useful about your own depression?
I just don’t believe anyone has an “apathetic nature.” I believe a lot of folks got squashed, I have seen a 6-year old totally bored with life, it broke my heart, and I could see how the parents had done it. OTOH some young children are more exuberant and enthused than others who appear less interested in the world, the external world. And an introvert might get labelled “apathetic” and accept the label, but it wouldn’t be true.
Well, forgive my ramblings, and I don’t mean to pry for info, just offering my perspectives on matters you mentioned. No need to respond.
Keep ’em coming, I like the way you mix the personal and the abstract in your writing. Trying to think of other writers who have that combo. Lewis Thomas? Don’t remember him well enough.
Blessings, OM Bastet
Marmalade said
*Hugs* to Nicole. I suppose fiction is a different side of me, but you’ve seen some of that side of me with my discussion of PKD. When it comes to fiction, I lean towards the imaginative which can take two forms: serious imagination or outright weird.
Now, to OM. You gave me a lot to respond to. I’ll respond in the order you wrote.
Becoming a writer. Its an interesting thing. I wasn’t raised with parents who were writers, but I was raised with parents who were thinkers and talkers. So, I was raised with language, my mom is a speech pathologist afterall. I also had a word-retrieval problem as a child and so I learned to compensate by having a large vocabulary. As I said in the blog, I liked stories even though my parents weren’t all that into reading stories to me. Reading books was one of my favorite escapes early on. I was an imaginative kid and my bestfriend was very imaginative. Still, I only started writing on my own in 8th grade.
There was one teacher who set my direction in life towards writing. He was a decent teacher and I suppose I enjoyed his class fine, but he didn’t inspire me. What he did do was challenge me with difficult texts. He had us read many classics such as Jude the Obscure which is heavy reading for a highschooler. It was also from the bookcase in his classroom, that I discovered Hesse.
I’ve at times felt envious of people who were raised by parents who read to them and encouraged them (or had teachers who inspired them or otherwise discovered writing early on). My dad is a professor and so he helped me out with writing non-fiction papers for class assignments. He taught me to communicate clearly and in an organized manner, but that is a long way off from fiction. Being raised by parents who have absolutely no sense of fiction has been a challenge for me as an aspiring fiction writer. My parents taught me how to think and to write clearly, but my imagination apparently was a gift of God or otherwise a genetic mutation.
Writing is something that slowly became more and more my identity. Basically, writing is secondary to my most basic motivation. I desire imagination, wonder, and understanding… but I also desire to express those things, to give them form. I’m not a person who writes just to write. I always have a purpose for my writing even if its just entertainment value sometimes. I’m not a poet who just loves language for the sound of it.
Marmalade said
OM Part 2:
I must admit that I sorta do know what my inner motivation thingie is. The single running theme of my entire life is curiosity. I’ve been asking questions and wondering about life longer than I can remember… meaning my mom tells me I was asking deep questions as soon as I could speak.
I realize that idea-fiction in a general sense is not lacking. I have many similar authors I could mention, but I definitely agree with you on Hesse. Beyond exaggerating for effect, I was meaning a specific type of idea-fiction. I have a wide-ranging curiosity which isn’t easily satisfied. Too many fiction writers are narrowly focused or else there ideas aren’t grounded in a deep sense of subjective experience. For instance, one can find enormous amounts of ideas in SF and one can find enormous amounts of terrible writing. It takes a special talent to combine fiction and non-fiction, the personal and the philosophical.
Partly, I’m just a picky person. I know what I like and I have no desire to spend my time on anything else. I doubt I’m actually communicating to you what I’m meaning about my perception of a particular kind of lack, but it will have to do for the time being.
Do I know anything useful about my depression? That is an interesting question. I know a lot about my depression and depression in general, but I won’t be so presumptuous as to claim any of it useful. lol
Any number of theories may apply to my depression including the ones you mentioned. One thing I’m sure is that it isn’t a single factor.
As for the apathetic nature statement, I didn’t intend any grand significance to it. I mostly see my occasional apathy as a side effect of my depression. As depression seems to run in both sides of my family, I have a strong suspicion that there is a genetic component. In that sense, apathy is a side effect of my natural predisposition which doesn’t mean its absolutely determined… just a tendency is all. Opposite of apathy, some people use depression as a way of driving themselves harder and accomplish much that way.
I don’t worry too much about depression. Its just what it is. I feel no need to make a value judgment about it or try to get rid of it. Personally, I don’t think its a disease nor a personal failing. Ultimately, its just a label given to a pattern of behaviors. Its just a word.
Marmalade said
I had a few more things I wanted to share about my talents.
The hackysack is an odd example because its not as if one can make a career out of being a professional hackysacker. However, my talent for physical tricks actually started with learning juggling as a kid. I dated a girl who was going into juggling as a career and I went to a convention of professional jugglers. It was very interesting, but I don’t have an interest in being a performer… back to not liking to show off.
Another talent I didn’t think of earlier is massage which is another odd talent. I always liked giving people massages. Eventually, I decided to go to massage school. I liked learning about it, but I quickly realized I had near zero desire to do it as a profession. Maybe its the same thing about not wanting to perform.
As a strong introvert, writing is more my style.
Nicole said
dear ben,
i think you have a very healthy approach to your depression. you seem to have a really good way of coping with it from the many conversations we have had around it.
it’s interesting what a rich environment you had at home, though it lacked some elements for which you long. it does help to explain a lot about how you got to where you are now, a very unique person. yes, i know we are all unique, but i think you know what i mean.
serious imagination or outwright weird – well, they both can be good 🙂
i think you have a lot of important qualities which are helpful to you as a writer, for example, your intense ability to focus and do research for a long time; your ability to organise your thoughts and ideas, even when they represent a huge range; your amazing, zany sense of humour; and your astonishing flexibility in points of view.
Of course, that’s only the beginning of your qualities.
1Vector3 said
I so appreciate your elaborating based on my comments !!! I enjoyed all you said. I have nothing particular to say in response right now, nothing has formulated – yet….
Well, perhaps two things I can begin to word:
Ultimately, depression IS just a word, but I guess I would be motivated to do something to make it less. I have noticed certain limitations I have accepted with the passing years, based on things not working out, and I can see that sense of limitations is kinda like a depression, and I am working to get back the sense of open possibilities that younger folks have.
BTW I underline that I too perceive the four qualities Nicole nailed so well just above !!! Your research ability is SO amazing it almost looks so prodigious that it seems to me only the manic folks I know could do something like that. Strange to say !!!!
Asking deep questions, wide-ranging curiosity, “I desire imagination, wonder, and understanding… but I also desire to express those things, to give them form.”
Are those what is partly captured by the labels INFP?
I have a friend who has discovered 35 SOUL archetypes (beyond personality) and I think this fits one of them. I will ask him, and perhaps get a description for you, so you can see whether the other aspects fit you too. Just as an expansion of self-knowledge. Just a label, from one perspective, but it’s nice when things that seem separate somehow cohere, or can be seen to be various manifestations of/from a single source, I think.
Well there, I did manage to say something !!
Yes, Lord keep us from those who write to be writing, ditto those who talk to be talking. Myself, I think I write to improve things/people/life/the world/systems/institutions/methods, etc etc. To be useful, a resource, for improving things. (Not so great at motivating improvements, but really good at facilitating improvements folks have already decided to make.)
The world needs more picky people. Go for it. LOL !!!!
Blessings, OM Bastet
Marmalade said
Nicole, thanks for the kind words.
I don’t know if I have a good way of coping with my depression. How I think of it is that its good enough.
OTOH, OM, I understand what you mean by how we can tend to accept limitations as we age. I don’t know if this is necessarily problematic as aging does bring real limitations. But, even within any set of limitations, there are always possibilities. I guess that is where my sense of curiosity and wonder comes in… keeping me from feeling stuck.
Was my self-description related to the INFP type? I’d say that it fits many INFPs. The latter part of wanting to express would depend on how well they had developed their auxiliary Extraverted Intuition (and other social factors of course).
Type is a strange thing when considering family. My parents are very different types than I am. Research seems to show that some personality traits are genetically passed on. I’m sure I get my Intuition (N) from my dad and my Introversion (I) from my mom. From what I understand of my grandmother’s personality, the genetics for the Feeling (F) and Perceiving (P) maybe came from her and skipped over my dad. That is strange to consider how we carry genetics that will manifest in later generations even though they don’t manifest in us. My grandmother died when I was around 6 and lived far away. She wouldn’t have had much psychological influence on me and so I assume that it must be genetics (excluding any paranormal influences).
I unfairly downplayed the ways in which my imagination has been influenced by my parents.
My dad’s family has a very strange sense of humor. My grandfather was and my uncle is the kind of person who is constantly playing around and getting in trouble… a combination of physical and intellectual humor. So, there is an immense creativity that I get from that side of the family, but they aren’t specifically artistic types and my dad has almost no interest in fiction. My mom does like stories (ie movies) and she likes thinking about human behavior. She does have some aesthetic sense when it comes to practical activities such as decorating a house, but definitely not an artistic type.
Another aspect is how my parents’ minds work. My parents are people who constantly think but in very different ways. My dad is constantly doing things or planning to do things, constantly reading and learning, constantly questioning. From my dad, I learned that no question is taboo and curiosity is a very good thing. My dad is very thorough when researching something, and is a very innovative thinker. My mom has a mind that is even more active than my dad but not as much in an intellectual way. Her mind is a wandering mind that runs very fast. When my mom and I are having a conversation, we can talk very quickly. Our minds resonate. Even though our minds wander, we also can ruminate on the same thing for hours.
I think that I’m a product of combining the innovative creativity and silly humor of my dad with the wandering focus and interest in people of my mom. Somehow that all adds up to an interest in the imagination conveyed in fiction.
Plus, it seems my grandmother may have been more of an artistic type. I suspect that she might have been an INFP. She was a person of creative chaos and was lazy/apathetic in that she wouldn’t do anymore than absolutely had to be done. She was always looking for meaning and was impractical in her idealism. If that ain’t an INFP, then I don’t know what type she might’ve been.
BTW, OM, I’d love to hear about the SOUL archetypes. I’m always curious about different systems, different ways of understanding people. Because of Nicole, I was looking at the Enneagram recently. I hadn’t looked at it in a while, but remembered myself to have been a 4w5. I took a test that Nicole linked to and I came up as a definite 4 with some leanings towards 5. The 4w5 description fits me as well as INFP.
Nicole said
Yes, same here, OM, as Ben says, I found the Enneagram very helpful recently in understanding more about myself and my friends, always looking for more grist for the mill.
It’s wonderful, Ben, that you and your mom can connect like that, and to see so clearly the influence of your family on who you are… I am fascinated.
1Vector3 said
I’ll see what I can do about getting info on the soul archetypes to you, Ben. The technological challenge is considerable…..
yeah, the Enneagram is IMO one of the top 3 or 4 typologies of real value in understanding self and others. Knowing my own type has been of major major major help in my own healing/wholing process. I do plan to post sometime my paper on the Enneagram One, The Healing Thereof, but it’s sooooo long, about 15 pages… But, I think, an easy read, at least structually if not in content !
Much as I have tried to study the Enneagram, and taken many workshops from a variety of teachers, and read several books, I can’t seem to retain the info about the points other than mine with a few exceptions like the 8, 3, and 5. Oh well.
And BTW I do not care for the Enneagram as it is commonly presented and taught, as a personality classification system; there it is IMO not much more useful than astrology. It doesn’t hang together. It only hangs together if you study it as a spiritual typology [which it was originally, apparently, in the Sufi origins] much more basic than personality.
Sandra Maitri’s book The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram is the only good book I know of re that approach, but it kinda buries the crucial foundational info. She learned it from A.H. Almaas, and I have a friend who also studied with him and wrote a much more clearly fundamental and lasered paper, which I have ambitions to make available on the Internet, am moving toward that. Almaas himself did write, and I have – I blush to say – yet to read anything he wrote.
I agree, Nicole, I am very impressed, Ben, with the eloquence and clarity you have around your parents’ characteristics and how these have interacted with your own.
Blessings, OM Bastet
Marmalade said
Nicole – Yeah, the way I can connect with my mom is odd. We are very different types, and yet our minds completely resonate. Its kind of funny because my mom is super practical but also kinda spacey. I apparently only inherited the spacey part. lol
OM – I’d appreciate any info you’d like to share about the Enneagram. I have yet to study it thoroughly. For some reason, I’ve never really connected to it… and, like you, I can’t seem to retain the info. OTOH, the MBTI immediately made sense to me and I found it easy to remember, but it took a while to understand the more complex aspects.