Having a High IQ: Problems, Challenges, and Frustrations
November 13, 2019
Let’s talk about something serious that
no one appears to be talking about: the challenges and problems you face as a
high IQ person living in a world designed for average IQ people.
This article does not aim to provide
solutions to many of the problems presented, it only aims to discuss them, and
hopefully, provide some sanity to struggling intelligent people.
Starters
IQ is generally presented as a purely
positive thing, i.e., more is always good. What could possibly be bad about
being more intelligent?
However, just like everything else, high
intelligence is a trade-off. What you gain in raw brainpower, you lose in your
ability to fit into general society.
You see this all the way back in school,
where ‘nerds’ are
ostracized, to workplaces where higher IQ people are made to feel like
misfits (“Low EQ”) and forced to follow ultimately flawed instructions from
bosses who insist on obedience.
Having a high IQ, just like all things,
has its pros and cons.
The pros are easy to spot – more
financial and career success, more academic success, more business success,
better analytical ability, etc. The cons are far more subtle, to the point that
it is mostly believed that there aren’t any.
And because of this myth that
intelligence can have no cons, the problems created by a high
IQ often go misdiagnosed.
This leads to high IQ people trying to
fix the “wrong source” – which in turn makes the problem worse.
You are told you need to work on your
“people skills” – meanwhile, you can’t figure out why people find enjoyment in
watching other people play football on TV (the answer is tribalism).
This misdiagnosis and dead-end “wrong
source” fixes make many intelligent people feel confused, hopeless, and full of
despair over time, especially when combined with the insanity of not being able
to know what’s wrong with you.
Reading this article will not solve your
problems, but it will tell you the source of the problem.
The world was not made for us:
We’re freaks
From a statistical perspective, we’re
freaks. This is neither good nor bad, it just means that we’re merely
different.
If you have an IQ of 120, you’re in the
top 9% of the population, intelligence wise.
At 125, you’re in the top 4.8%.
At 130, in the top 2.7%.
At 135, top 1%.
Take a moment to pause and think about
how small that is.
Once you see how rare your level of
intelligence is, you’ll understand that the real problem lies in the economies
of scale: “The world is not meant for you.”
Society as a whole evolved to meet the
needs of the many; it exists to serve the majority of the population, which
just so happens to not be as intelligent (the vast majority of people fall
within one standard deviation from the mean i.e. the 85 to 115 band).
For example, if you have an average IQ,
there are a lot of options available for you to find people and entertainment –
for example, you could go to a nightclub, or grab some beer at the bar, or
watch some sports, etc.
For some high IQ people, this sounds
like fun too. Still, for the vast majority of intelligent people, these are
painful experiences because they do not give us the mental stimulation we need
– they seem pointless and futile activities.
This is how it has to be: While
this “optimization for the majority” may sound unfair and even discriminatory,
this is how it mathematically has to be. The world designed for the majority.
You can’t have a highway system designed for the minorities of the country; it
has to serve cities and dense population centers.
Likewise, you wouldn’t want to create
irrigation infrastructure to supply water to places with very few crops; you’d
first divert resources to areas where there is a lot of agriculture taking
place.
Why no one else “sees” your
problem: Imagine being physically disabled. Think
of the problems you’d face: being unable to climb stairs, being unable to drive
– you’d meet a bunch of daily hurdles that non-disabled people don’t even think
about simply because they don’t have to.
Physically disabled people face the same
problem: the world was not designed for them. It was designed for the majority
– the non-handicapped people.
Or course, we make minor adjustments for
both disabled people and high IQ people, but the larger structure of the world
– social, political, economic, romantic, commercial, academic, etc. it’s entire
makeup and composition is built and designed for average IQ (~100) people.
This basically guarantees that if you
have a high IQ, you’ll face some “adjustment problems” with the rest of the
population, be it in the form of having to waste time being forced to graduate
school at the same speed as everyone else, to being forced to wake up early in
the morning to go to work in rush hour traffic even though you work best at
night and can do the same (if not more) work from home (“but how do I know you
are working if I don’t see you working”).
In nearly all aspects of your life, your
IQ is going to present at least some kind of problem that others don’t have to
face (and don’t see).
Social Isolation
Let’s take a group of clinically
retarded people (typically considered as with an IQ below 80) and place an
ordinary person among them, and force them to interact with each other.
While the ordinary person would be able
to interact with them, the interactions are going to be a bit painful for him;
he just won’t fit in. He wouldn’t feel “at home”.
Now let’s take a group of average IQ
people (IQ ~100) and place someone with a high IQ (120+) among them. It’s a
very similar experience, because relatively speaking, the average person is
slightly retarded by comparison.
The high IQ person will be able to talk
with them, but he wouldn’t “feel at home”.
This is what happens to high IQ people
in general – they live in a world of people who appear to be slightly retarded.
They can interact with them, but they don’t feel at home.
Average and below outnumber high IQ
people 10 to 1 – HIgh IQ people often end up feeling somewhat isolated, even
when they are among people!
They just don’t “fit in” with everyone
else, and often end up feeling like there’s something wrong with them.
Culture and Entertainment
As and television and mass communication
have become ubiquitous, culture and entertainment have also been optimized for
average people.
Look at how 80% of humanity entertains
themselves every day:
- “Keeping
up with the Kardashians” – reading and watching celebrity gossip (ooh
Angelina Jolie had a break-up!!!!!)
- Watching
people play sports – kicky ball and whippy stick are the most popular I
hear
- Mindless
feel-good nonsense on talk shows (Oprah said follow your passions and the
money will follow! Imma gonna do jus dat! It make me feel gud.)
In other words, ultimately pointless
things.
Most high
IQ people just aren’t into consuming mainstream entertainment at all.
I’ve never met a smart person who likes
to sit and watch someone play whippy stick and jumps up and down when the ball
flies into the air.
In fact, most smart people don’t watch
sports or read celebrity nonsense at all.
Average and low IQ people primarily
consume these forms of entertainment, and that is all they usually talk about.
This creates a significant
conversational divide between high IQ people and everyone else.
High IQ people (in general) want to talk
about world events, technology, history, culture, and other real-world things
that stimulate them, not about pointless sports and celebrity gossip.
And because high IQ people are so few
and far in between, there are hardly any decent conversation partners available
(the internet solved this to an extent – but you can never replace physical
human connection).
While high IQ people can have a myriad
of hobbies and focus on their education, careers, dating, businesses, etc.
– having a high IQ undermines the most fundamental and important thing
in our lives – other people.
High IQ or low IQ, we’re all people, and
we derive most of our happiness from other people.
You can have all the money in the world,
all the books and video games, all the gadgets to keep you occupied, but it
will feel meaningless without family, friends, and loved ones. We need
human connection.
And abnormally intelligent people are
robbed of a large part of the human connection pool.
Envy and Insecurity
Just like all qualities, a high
intellectual ability triggers people’s envy and insecurity.
Often, this leads to negative
interactions with people for no fault of your own:
- Your
boss undermines your work because he feels threatened in his position by
your intelligence
- People
try to “one-up” you to feel secure in their self-worth (in school, this
leads to bullying)
- etc.
This can make it harder to make friends
and progress in your career as so many people instinctively go in competition
mode with you.
Democracy: You Pay for People’s
Stupidity,
And it’s a Thankless Job
The vast majority of those reading this
post live in a democracy, and in a democracy, you often have the masses
exploiting the “top 5%”.
Most of the tax revenue is contributed
by the top 5% of the population – business owners, entrepreneurs, risk-takers,
people in well-paid careers, etc. – almost all of them are high IQ people.
And a lot of the money is spent on
stupid people:
- Welfare
for people who were so bad with their finances that they cannot afford to
survive in their old age on their own money even after having a 40-year
long career
- Paying
for the scholarships and grants to idiots studying vegan coffee gender
studies and PhDs in jungle style belly dancing
- Paying
for people who keep having children they cannot afford to raise by
themselves
It’s essentially a “smart person tax”,
where intelligent and productive members of society pay for the mistakes of
everyone else.
And you’d think that you’d be respected
for your contribution – that you sacrificed some of the wealth generated by the
application of your limited time on the planet to shield them from the consequences
of their mistakes, but it turns out that much of the average population hates
you for it.
They consider you an “evil rich fat cat”
who “didn’t earn what he has” and “owes it to the rest of society” to “pay
their fair share.”
And because of the way democracy is
structured, they don’t realize that you’re bearing their burden. They never
face the consequences and assume “this is how things are” and keep doing more
of the same things over and over again.
And you get to pay for them!
High IQ Students and The Education
System
The modern American education system is
not modern at all.
It was redesigned and implemented in the
mid-1800s during the industrial revolution in order to produce successful
workers in factories, plants, mines, etc.
It succeeded in producing great factory
workers by focusing on compliance, robotic discipline (such as following a
schedule and being on time), and obedience.
Times have changed, but the education
system is still the same. “Modern” education focuses on producing obedient
workers, not on producing excellent thinkers. It does not encourage creativity
and innovation (in fact, in many “stick to the curriculum” cases, it is
actively discouraged).
Further, in such a system, everyone
progresses at the same rate, regardless of ability – the smart kid who
understands everything and the dumb kid who doesn’t end up progressing classes
at the same rate.
In other words, smart students are
bored. Many of them do not develop the discipline to work hard in school
because everything comes so quickly to them. Many intelligent kids think they
are stupid because they keep dozing off in class.
A lot of smart students could have saved
many years of their youth if they were allowed to progress faster than the
standard system. This wastage of time is just another price smart people pay by
living in a world designed for average people.
Also – it does not help that smart kids
are often bullied in school. Nerds
are too smart to be focused on being popular (they see that popularity in
school is pointless).
Intelligent people are generally good at
what they do. However, there is one thing that is the bane of abnormally
intelligent people’s existence:
“Soft” or “People skills”
People skills come naturally to average
IQ people because they’re around people of the same intelligence level they are
– they can relate to each other.
Intelligent people often cannot relate
to the need for being indirect and fluffy when it comes at the cost of
efficiency and effectiveness.
Intelligent people often do not waste
time trying to protect other people’s emotions and feelings; they get straight
to the point – they are seen as blunt and insensitive.
Intelligent people’s solutions solve
problems, but they often step on people’s precious little toes.
They are far more likely to say what
they really think rather than what the other person wants to hear.
This causes much friction in their
workplaces, and they’re told they need to work on their “people skills”.
In fact, many intelligent people do not
even know what “soft skills” exactly are.
They know it has something to do with
presentation and people management, and that they need to develop them, but
they don’t “understand” them and wonder what they’re doing wrong.
I’ll cut to the chase – soft skills are
a euphemism for ass-kissing skills.
If you have something to say to someone,
how do you say it without “hurting their feelings”?
If you deal with average people the same
way you deal with slightly retarded people (by being overly nice and
understanding with them), you would be considered to have excellent people
skills.
Unfortunately, many high IQ people just
don’t get it (because they can’t relate to the problem nearly as much) and keep
crashing and burning with their bosses and coworkers.
And they always wonder what they do
wrong.
Conclusion and Solutions
If you’re a high IQ person, you’ll
always have “fitting in” issues wherever you are – be it your school, your
workplace, and even with society in general.
The solution to this is to reduce
reliance on other people as much as possible – in other words, entrepreneurship.
A good book you should read is Robert
Greene’s 48 Laws Of Power (India, UK, USA) –
it will help you “know the rules of the game”.
Other problems, such as social
isolation, don’t have real solutions other than finding like-minded and
intelligent people online.
Intelligence has many benefits, but the
problems it creates are part and parcel of your life – you have to deal with
it.
The purpose of this article was not to
provide solutions but to answer the “what is wrong with me” question that a lot
of intelligent people go entire decades asking themselves.
I hope I have answered that question for
you, and provided you with the sanity and acceptance that can only come when
you know the source of the problem.
– Harsh Strongman
References and resources:
The article heavily draws upon (and in
many parts blatantly plagiarizes) the ideas and words of Aaron Clarey (with his
permission) as presented in his book Curse of the High IQ (India, UK, USA).
If you are a high IQ person or married
to one, or suspect that you have a high IQ child – I highly
recommend picking up this book.
https://lifemathmoney.com/having-a-high-iq-problems-challenges-and-frustrations/
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