Dealing with Smart Person Syndrome

A Guide from a Fellow Sufferer

Visit Yakub’s lab, you said. He’s a genius, you told me…

According to multiple tests, my IQ is 2.5 to 3 standard deviations above the norm. Among Substackers, these scores aren’t really that impressive. I follow several writers who are much Bigger Brain Nibbas than yrs. truly. Yet most of us BBN types are not particularly wealthy, nor have we achieved any appreciable levels of political power or social clout.

For a long time I veered between considering myself a misunderstood genius or a wastrel who had squandered his talent. There was some truth to both, but ultimately I figured out that what I craved was acclamation. I wanted to be acknowledged as the Smartest Person in the Room, but I had no plans as to what I was going to do with all that excess brainpower.

Based on my circles of supersmarties, this is par for the course. A powerful mind without a directed passion generally ends up running in circles or retreating to quiet contemplation. I’ve tried both options and prefer the second. But I also discovered that quiet contemplation can quickly turn into huffing one’s one own farts in an ivory tower. And so, having tired of flatulence, I decided to spend my remaining years doing something to change the world.

Money interests me only in so much as it lets me support my family, pay bills, and buy books. I have neither the desire nor the aptitude for wielding power. And so I figured my most effective strategy would be to help other BBNs who have a craving for one or both to transform their genius into accomplishment. To that end, here are some of the mistakes that can hold supersmarties back.

Too much self-doubt leaves you paralyzed. Faced with his father’s murder, the intellectually-inclined Hamlet fritters away his time wondering whether to be or not to be. His indecision leads to several deaths and ultimately to his own. For many BBNs, weighing and measuring options becomes an end rather than a means. Faced with mortal danger, we hold a skull and wonder what poor Yorick might have done.

But, as fellow supersmarty John Michael Greer often reminds us, the opposite of a bad idea is generally another bad idea. We can get passionate about ideas the way others get passionate about football teams or K-Pop bands. And we all know what Yeats said about those who are filled with passionate intensity. When we decide to take action, we often put our brains to work proving that our ideas are correct and those who disagree are either stupid or evil.

Because we’re smarter than the average bear, we have an easier time justifying the unjustifiable. We can write articulate, detailed essays about why parents should be allowed to sell their children to the highest bidder. Libertarian philosopher and Mises Institute founder did just that in his The Ethics of Liberty, where he explained that each man owns himself, his body, and his property and goes on from there to say:

[T]his means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights…

Now if a parent may own his child (within the framework of non-aggression and runaway freedom), then he may also transfer that ownership to someone else. He may give the child out for adoption, or he may sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children. Superficially, this sounds monstrous and inhuman. But closer thought will reveal the superior humanism of such a market.

The less intelligent 99.5% who recoil in horror are clearly letting their emotions override property rights and the trustee relationship. They’re simply not smart enough to ignore the fact that we have a long history of buying and selling each other, and it has rarely worked out well for the human merchandise.

Rothbard would dismiss this argument by pointing out that in a truly Libertarian society slavery would be a violation of the slave’s property rights and individual autonomy. His vision of a baby free market features loving childless couples who desperately want a child but are held back by the state-sponsored adoption monopoly. He never stops to think people might buy children to put them to work in their farm or factory, or see their new purchase as a sex toy.

Rothbard’s arguments are logically sound, but he ignores all evidence that points out the consequences of putting his logically sound theory into practice. His ivory towers are architecturally splendid, but have a lousy view of the world below. Many other high-IQ types have taken equally well-structured logical arguments to equally horrible conclusions. In a 1999 book, Libertarian Mary J. Ruwart Ph.D. defended child pornography by noting:

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

You’d think we of all people would be smart enough to see through these beautifully designed roads to Hell. But you’d be wrong. We’re the people who are most likely to fall for a well-crafted argument, just as con artists are more likely to fall for scams. We want logical answers the way the con man wants an easy score, and so we wind up falling for schemes that rest on tempting but false premises.

Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

The smartest person in the room often leads a lonely life. When your IQ is three standard deviations above the norm, talking to a bright normal is like a bright normal conversing with a Down Syndrome adult. They might be wonderful people, and you might find their simple kindness heartwarming. But if you’re looking for sparkling conversation about your favorite topics, you’ll be disappointed. Supersmarties don’t fear and envy smarter people. They welcome the chance to meet somebody they don’t have to talk down to.

Unfortunately, people don’t like being talked down to even if it’s necessary. Barack Obama was one of our smarter presidents, possibly the smartest man in the Oval Office since Woodrow Wilson. But he was largely ineffective because he had trouble making conversation with politicians who weren’t as smart as him. Like many high-IQ types, he felt that he could win his opponents over if only he could explain why he was right. He never grasped that most people don’t run on logic. Or that he came across like a third grade teacher lecturing a class of slow learners.

For better or worse, Bill Clinton was a more successful Chief Executive. In addition to his high IQ, Clinton had genius-level social intelligence. He was a Rhodes Scholar who was able to talk like one of the fellas and schmooze with allies and opponents alike. While he had notorious problems with controlling his little head, he was able to use his big head to good effect in both contemplation and conversation. But this degree of skill on two levels is rare, and many supersmarties (yrs. truly included) are social morons.

Because of this, we tend to form tight cliques with other socially-challenged BBNs. Those cliques often lead to groupthink. Some of this is simple smiling and nodding, or staying silent when we disagree. But we also absorb ideas by what René Girard called mimesis. We’re pack primates, and we tend to follow our pack. We know we’re smart and we know our friends are smart. Why wouldn’t we trust ideas from smart people? For good and for ill, we’re shaped by the company we keep.

At best, a gathering of intellectuals can be a great breeding ground for creative and novel solutions. At worst, it can become an echo chamber and an excuse for failure. You don’t care if your ideas don’t trickle down to a place where they might make a difference. The fact that nobody else understands is just another sign of your superior intellect. Instead of becoming a fulcrum for change, they become a club to bash the normies who don’t understand genius.

Nothing brings a tribe together like persecution and forced segregation. Jews are a small minority in most countries. Yet they’ve gained a great deal of political and cultural power by sticking together against a hostile outside world. A small self-reliant group can accomplish more than a large deracinated one. But the same techniques that have helped them have often become a hindrance.

Given Jewish history, it’s not at all surprising that Jews worry about anti-Semitism. From an early age observant religious and secular Jews receive a thorough education in those ugly incidents, along with warnings that they must protect their own and make their enemies afraid or unable to engage in genocide, violence, or forced conversions. Again, this is perfectly logical—until it starts resulting in coverups of crimes and attacks on anybody who disagrees with them on Palestine statehood.

There’s an old canard that “The Jew will always tell you what happened, but they will never tell you why.” The fact is that most Jews were never told why. And when they’re introduced to the mitigating evidence by trolls named KikeSlayer1488 or Uncle Adolf, you can hardly be surprised when they reject the evidence out of hand. This leads them to see any criticism, no matter how anodyne, as proof of Jew-hatred and violent intent. In doing so, they drive away many potential allies and turn many formerly well-meaning people into enemies.

High-IQ cliques can fall into the same trap. We can mistake hard but justified questions as hostile attacks and respond with sarcasm or emotional outbursts. Since Mensa doesn’t dox its opponents or get them fired, we generally don’t do as much damage. But we wind up pushing away a lot of potential listeners who might actually take our message to heart. We use criticism to strengthen our in-group preferences while ignoring the out-group’s potential dangers, a trap that few Jews are supersmart enough to fall into.

Think about how many high-IQ LGBTQ+ folks aggressively defend their in-group’s groomers, predators, pedophiles, and sex pests. Every time you deflect with “what about Christian/Republican/etc. child rapists,” the world hears “We’ll circle our wagons around our bad actors and we’ll attack you if you criticize them.” This leads, inevitably, to a growing number of people who think your group is comprised of a bunch of groomers, predators, pedophiles, and sex pests. An in-group needs self-policing if it wants to avoid hostility from the out-group.

Meme stolen from Wesley Yang’s “The Midwit Wojack and the Rittenhouse Affair”

“Midwit” is a common slur used to denigrate those of merely above average intelligence. A common meme features Crying Wojak tearfully spouting back mainstream media rhetoric while low-IQ Grug and high-IQ Sage Wojak see through it. As Yang (himself a Very Smart Person) puts it:

At the center of the [Bell Curve] distribution is a caricature of the midwit, typically one of several variations of “Crying Wojak”, a crude but strangely evocative sketch of a person of slightly better than average intellect who is emotionally invested in the conformist babble of today’s right-thinking striver class.

This figure is smart enough to rationalize himself into a cultivated pseudo-intelligent idiocy that the natal idiot, shown at the left edge of the curve, is too dumb to understand — and that the sage, depicted on the right is wise enough to regard with contempt precisely because he does understand.

There’s a grain of truth in most stereotypes. We’ve all encountered people who demanded verification from trusted sources, but defined “Trusted Sources” as the mainstream media websites favored by their friends. The blustering blowhard spouting facts he doesn’t understand is a famous comic figure. But even the supersmart fall prey to many of the same behaviors as the midwits they despise.

You can see this in play when you hear writers, producers, and game designers complaining that their product failed because stupid bigots and racists rejected it. But the whole point of designing a creative product is to appeal to your audience, which involves knowing your audience. If you don’t care what you’re audience thinks and aim only at pleasing your fellow creatives, you’re engaging in that fart-huffing I talked about earlier.

“Midwit” implies that the critics are of superior intelligence, and think themselves more enlightened than Grug and Crying Wojak. At its core it comes from the same place as “the audience was too bigoted to accept a Black Transgender Female playing George Washington.” It’s a boast that your rarefied ideas are too arcane for the masses. It’s also an admission that you have no interest in seeing your ideas take root outside your circle.

While the data varies, the average IQ of American physicians is around 120, while the average IQ of American lawyers is around 112. That would place most doctors and lawyers squarely in the midwit category. But both score higher in earnings and accomplishments than a 140 IQ social media influencer and Starbucks barista. IQ, like everything else, is subject to the law of diminishing returns. In terms of success, a socially adept bright normal has two legs up on a socially challenged genius.

The big takeaway from this: if you’ve lost the midwits, you’ve lost the game. If your movement consists entirely of embittered geniuses you don’t have a movement, you have a social club. If you can’t put your core message into words a 7th grader can follow, your message is too complex and unwieldy. If you can’t help showing disdain for your inferiors, you can hardly be surprised when they return the favor.

Thinking is not doing. Repeat this until it sinks in. Your thoughts are important only insofar as you can put them into action. If you find yourself repeating this often, you’re in good company. I still struggle with it. Those deep thoughts in your head are meaningless until you present them to the world. And when you do, you should do so with a clear idea of what you hope those words will accomplish.

Keep in mind that “make people laugh” is an accomplishment. Laughter is important, and being both smart and funny is a great social asset. As we’ve all known for some time, the Left can’t meme. This limits their appeal to young people, and young people are the ones who fight in wars. If you expect a war, and I do, you need to start rallying fighting-age men to your side immediately.

It’s not hard to turn your opponent’s weaknesses into laugh fodder. It’s also not hard to turn an opponent’s attacks against them. When Biden called Trump supporters “garbage,” Trump, another genius-level social intellect, showed up to a rally in a garbage truck “in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.” Supersmarties can fall prey to taking ourselves too seriously. If you can laugh at jokes that insult you, you take away their sting. If you hop up and down and scream about oppression and persecution, you only encourage more insulting jokes.

Winning people to your cause is an accomplishment. Keeping your current supporters happy is important, but gaining new supporters is key to any political movement. The choir is already on your team, so you don’t have to spend all your time preaching to them. Think about what your cause has to offer your target audience, then make statements that appeal to them with both emotion and facts.

Ten good men are worth more than 1,000 hangers-on. You don’t have to pitch your cause to the world. Focus on what you want in your members and aim your work at the people who can benefit your cause. What’s that? You don’t have a cause? Find one. You’re here and you’re gifted, so don’t bury your talent in a field. Surely there’s something you’re passionate about. And if you feel embarrassed about your lack of direction, don’t be. There are lots of people out there looking for a cause. Once you have yours, you’ll find lots of people who need what you have.

Making a difference is an accomplishment. Changing the world starts with changing a few people’s minds. You may feel like that’s impossible. It’s hard, but hard and impossible are two different things. And completing a difficult task successfully is yet another accomplishment. You may have given in to nihilism and hedonism; lots of people have gone down that dark road. But you can turn back and you can guide others to follow your lead.

Doing nothing is not an accomplishment. Spouting slogans for upvotes and asspats is not an accomplishment. And sitting on your ass thinking about how the world would be a better place if only people listened to you is not an accomplishment. As Batman explained to Superman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, “the world only makes sense when you force it to.” Making sense of the world is what we’re wired to do. We just have to know where to apply the force.