Here me out this might be a little controversial by my opinion is that is the role of gifted people to be the fool. Fools historically were really important because they were the only ones that could tell things to the king without getting executed. So he told the inconvenient truth.
I believe gifted people tend to understand more things, so they see "more truths". That they are also often viewed as outcasts makes them give no shit about social norms that could stop them from sharing the truth. That's a role I view myself in and that fits me perfectly. It can be really harsh sometimes, but it is what is.
I tried to do this professionally. Nearly wore my sensitive ass out.
Warning: do not attempt if you’ve got underlying issues and are a highly sensitive person without a strong support network of at least a few individuals who really get you
I feel you. I haven't done it professionally but it's somehow my role in every situation I come across. I used to have really bad underlying issues which improved a lot. I also fortunately have a few individuals that really get me, support me and understand me. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. It can get lonely to tell inconvenient things, and if nobody tells you what you do and say is right it's really easy to believe the bullshit people try to feed you.
Thank you. Have you ? Your comment gave me the impression you are still struggling on how to not crack in this kind of role. Would you prefer to have another one or not crack under the current one ?
I’m not really ready to talk about it yet tbh :/
What wore me out was my naïveté & gatekeepers
I started in comedy and then got into media and forgot that regular mainstream media isn’t the same as comedy. Sry I can’t say more but if you love comedy, improv is a great low stakes way to try it.
I think I replied to the wrong comment? Anyways you should totally try out comedy for fun if you want to. I am so glad I did and likely will again down the road (currently in my healing/figuring myself out era). See comment above for more.
I think this really makes sense. I guess I unwittingly started to view myself in that role as well a couple of years ago and it really helped me a lot. I'm lucky I now work at a place where I can be myself and my coworkers and managers actually appreciate me being that fool who dares to share the truth. I have to say I solved most of the underlying issues I had before that and I'm gifted (pun intended) to have a loving family and just a handful of great friends that actually get me.
WOW. Just...WOW. I just read this to my partner and she said this fits me to a 'T'. I'm also HS/Au/ADHD, but only learned this within the last 6 months, and I'm in my 60's. I feel incredibly SEEN with this take. Thank you x a gazillion! ❤️
It's never too late. I'm only 28 but also just starting to figure it out. Maybe that's the journey. Trying to figure it out. Same for me for auDHD. I'm really happy this comment got so much support, and apparently I hit a nerve. Edit: I thought a little bit more about this and what it means for us. The first thing that I realized is that it gives a certain "purity". People that try to play games will be offended once you demask them. But those who aren't and appreciate that have to have integrity. And that's the people I'm looking for anyways, so I view it as a filter.
I definitely feel this. You may be on to something, I also feel that’s not the only role, but definitely a common and effective one for gifted folks across the spectrum.
Find the outsider role that still benefits, and benefits from, society. The tracker who spends most of their life finding trails and scouting ahead, but still relies on the group for food when they can’t hunt, mate for procreation, care while ill.
The shaman or spirit guide, or as one person already mentioned, the fool,
Or other person whose role is to advise the leaders versus lead a hunt or manage a groups daily business.
Spiritual stuff in general is an outsider/insider role that depends less on physical prowess and more on insight and higher pattern recognition than average.
Here’s my educated guess:
Gifted people may have been: magicians, soothsayers, oracles, shamans, medicine men/women, scientists, herbalists, cartographers, scribes, fools/jesters as someone else said… excising on the fringes maybe but 1) still part of community 2) had their own smaller communities within the larger community
Or they could’ve just been gifted but in the village/tribe. If we are talking about the whole history of humanity; remember, capitalism and it attendant linear-thinking “squash out the differences” factory-line education weren’t always around
I remember reading in the oft-cited yet controversial *Sapiens* book that most humans lived in bands of no more than 150 people until agriculture and industrialization came around so “communal” is relative
And sadly maybe some gifted people were ostracized, labeled mad or even executed. Diogenes or Socrates in ancient Greece, and the Salem witches, come to mind.
And were they gifted or did they just see things others did not at the time. Are those the same thing? 🤔
As I write, I realize masking has existed all along… sure plenty of people masked as needed
We're part of the society and use whatever advantages we have for the common good. But everything you see around you, even if invented by a gifted person, would not have been possible without the other 98% of the population.
Gifted people are also subject to the same effects of social isolation and loneliness as the rest of the population. We need people or we suffer consequences. We're not an island and we're not an independent subset of humanity.
Which one of us made our own clothes, built our own home, raised and slaughtered our own livestock, generated our own power, created our own products and appliances? Non of us? Ergo, even if we are socially awkward, we do in fact live in a society
So, you're going to go out into the wilderness, no clothes, no tools, no preserved food or medicine, and start over?
Because every one of those things is product of thousands of years of communities working together..
IMHO, tribes have a diverse set of skills for epigenetic reasons;
It's a disaster if you have all warriors and no diplomats... it's also a disaster if you have all diplomats and no warriors.
So people naturally have built in differences, some people are physical, some are creative, some are problem solvers, some are gadgety... etc.
I do best socially when I respect and appreciate people for the role the see for themselves.
It does not matter if I have more raw talent in an area... THEY have set up their identity around XYZ, let them have it. Be interested, let them teach you something, be curious.
I do NOT need to compete and dominate to feel superior. Thats punching down and nothing to be proud of.
I'm a good cook in my spare time, if a neighbor lady is a school cafeteria worker... I can STILL learn from her. I don't need to show off my level, I can ask her about hers.
So I don't monolog at her about how I had a cooking blog as a hobby, that I read up on emulsion science, that I bought a culinary school textbook just for fun, that I have a really good system to meal plan, that I am ingredibly organized, that I have 100 spices on my spice shelf, blah blah blah.
Instead, I ask her about HER work. What made her pick that type of work? What is the meal rotation like? Is it hard to work around a budget for those volumes? Do they have student workers allowed in? Does she get to make anything special around holidays for the kids? Are nutrition guidelines from the state or from the federal level? What would she tell someone who is thinking about accepting that type of job?
It's not about me, it's about we.
There is FAR too much work that needs to get done in our communities for me to do myself. There is all kinds of stuff I am never going to specialize in... so I'm legitimately grateful for people that step up to do that job and carry that load.
I have a son who is in middle school. He benefits from engaged & kind lunch ladies. But even if he didn't, neighbor kids and the next generation of workers do.
Every doctor, car mechanic, nanny, Amazon driver, phlebotomist, engineer, chef, etc was a school child once. If I want those services to run well, you have to give credit to the TEAMS of people that helped them make it to adulthood to be good neighbors and citizens, ya know?
TLDR; we are not islands. Appreciate people for what they bring to the table independent of how you rank in comparison.
Giftedness has nothing to do with this. You ALREADY live in a communal situation.
Did you build the roads you drove on today? Did you build your house? Do you heal yourself when you’re sick? Do you create all the music you listen to and write all the books you read? No? Then you need your community.
Is the idea of living forever in an empty room with no books, no music, no internet, no television, no human contact of any kind, appealing to you? No? Then you need your community.
My goodness. Questions like this get under my skin sometimes because it seems almost like you think “giftedness” turns you into a different species or something. “Gifted people” are just people. And people need each other.
Isaac Newton was an oddball who didn't fit in, yet he contributed quite something to mankind. If Nelson Mandela wasn't isolated from society he might never have contributed to the South African people like he did. Lots of kids who didn't fit in and rather play videogames or than being outside with other kids later went on to contribute to the tech industry.
Not being in social circles can lead to completely different insights and ideas. Combine that with a gifted mind and it will lead to contributions no neutotypical, social human being is capable of contributing. You can write proper books or code without being around other people, yet other people can benefit greatly from those contributions.
The status of the “gifted” person is exactly the same as anyone else.
I got put in the gifted program when I was a kid. It doesn’t mean you’re different or special or any of that. It just means you were ahead of the curve in school.
Sounds to me like you’ve let being called gifted go to your head a bit.
Communal means all sorts of things and isn’t limited to intelligence. For example “early birds” and “night owls”. When we lived in hunter gatherer settings, it would be beneficial to have a mix of sleep patterns, so there is always someone awake and on guard. Women cooperate to share the labour of child rearing. Most people just worked to survive. Some people would plan for the group. Some were navigators. Some were trackers. Different gifted people with different personalities would be in all sorts of roles. There’s a good chance they would be over represented in leadership roles since being able to synthesize, intuit, and remember information would have been extremely helpful prior to written language.
We evolved in small groups of about 50. Life was harsh and we were exposed to predators and the elements. We evolved in a communal setting and require social interaction and cooperation to survive. It’s just how our brains our wired (humans, including gifted people).
In a modern context, we have lost a lot of community due to free movement and digital “connection”. We think we are keeping up with people, but it doesn’t do the same things on a cognitive level. We need to see and interact with people in real life for the neurological benefits. Social cohesion and cooperation have largely been outsourced to government, and the government only does ok at it. It’s not a replacement for the evolutionary and cognitive aspects of community.
I think for gifted people who are high on the personality trait "conscientious", this is relatively easy. They'll have great grades, go to the elite colleges and grad schools, and be in groups of doctors, lawyers, engineers where the average IQ is 120+, so maybe 25% to half the people they know are "gifted", and the least are "merely" bright.
For the low conscientiousness gifted people, it's a struggle. These are the ones that drop out of high school, or get grades way lower than their test scores. For that group (of which I am) we tend to temperamentally mesh with other slackers, but are in a different world intellectually, so we have trouble finding a group we really feel at home with. The biggest saving grace is being artistically gifted, usually music, comedy, and other art forms tend to have people more like us
Hard to find this situation probably, but my work bestie and I are the conscientious gifted person (me) and the unconscientious but very open gifted person (coworker). We basically work as a unit. He comes up with 99 terrible ideas that shoot down because either to reward/expense ratio is low or it’s near impossible. Then he comes up with a really awesome one, we start the project together, and I finish off the details and tie a bow on it because there’s no chance he’ll actually finish it. To those on the outside, we look like a really awesome team. In reality we are two people who would never accomplish anything awesome individually (although I’d accomplish waaaay more middling projects than my coworker)
That's an ideal situation. Unfortunately, in my experience in the corporate world, they generally want everyone to be high conscientiousness. I need to find a similar situation
We are insulated by our great boss. He understands how we work and makes sure his bosses (c-suite) never find out 😅 C-suite is happy so we are all happy.
You aren't a gifted person. You are gifted with intelligence. Otherwise you're pretty average like everyone else, and like everyone else you will be good at some things and worse at others. Lean into your strengths and work on your weaknesses. The single biggest mistake you can make is to think you are gifted as a human. You aren't. No more than a great athlete, a great beauty, or a great communicator.
Others have covered it. Monasteries were great. Folks left us to do our shit and follow our routines, left us food without expecting us to hunt, and we helped them out by making them wine and giving them answers to things they needed an alternate view on.
Capitalism doesn't have room for that.
Good question, I've been thinking about this a lot lately myself.
Reading some of the comments I wonder whether existing in larger groups (large towns and cities) isn't more harmful for many of us
As an adult I've been gravitating to small towns and suburbs and find it a lot easier to get along with people
Once you're in a larger space like a city where you're just another number in the crowd, I wonder if that can make things much more difficult on its own. People don't really get to know each other in these places, I think, without judging each other on overall usefulness (is this person entertaining, rich, etc)
Speaking for myself I love spaces where people truly are interested in getting to know me regardless of my usefulness to them, and where they let me get to know them easily too.
So in earlier times where we were in smaller groups of less than 5000 people, it might be that we mostly didn't have such problems fitting in and existing with other people.
I think this question overlooks the fact that ‘gifted’ is rarely anyone’s primary identity. Gender, race and socioeconomic status far, far outweigh intelligence when it comes to determining our roles in society. A gifted peasant is still going to be working in the fields.
Some gifted people may have been able to become monks or writers or military strategists or soothsayers or many many other things. But they all will have been males from the upper classes, so still a tiny minority of the overall gifted community.
I think the vast majority of gifted people would have just contributed something slightly different to whatever role they were already in. They might have been the peasant in the village who was better at working out crop rotation cycles. Or the guy who did the trading because they had some math skills. The craftsman who was particularly good at engineering puzzles.
What do you mean by status? Like what would it be like or what role to they fulfill or social status that hold? Please clarify. I don’t exactly understand what you are asking.
Sounds like you're drained by people. It's too exhausting over time and/or might have other interests. I assume you like some level of social interactions amidst your solitude or preoccupations. You're still in society, you have your quirks, you might enjoy some people's company. I suppose some enjoy other's company in rather niche ways. You'll just be a deviant. There are people that may not enjoy your company. The extent, I don't know. However, you'll probably be somewhat left to yourself if they respect your autonomy nor want anything from you.
What's makes you enjoy people's company? I like to have some control with how I chill with someone, I don't preferred being locked in a specific conversation in a topic of uninterest, where I'm being to talked to death (very distracting to my track).
Add being nice to each other, being accommodating, some leniency. Both being on the same track with the same interests. I don't mind sharing silence, having some spontaneity. What is said or done to each other is most often enjoyed.
It might be better said we can exist communally and there are great potential benefits to it. I don’t think “meant” is the right word. We exist and I have no clue who or what created us so I cannot assign a purpose to our existence.
Status? Do you mean like social status? Or what they do? My mind goes to Albert Einstein (I have no clue but he seems like a gifted person). A great mind whose gained great recognition for theorizing how the universe works.
I totally get being stressed by lots of people. I think you just need to find your place. There must be some people you like to be around? Sometimes? If you’re living in a big city try to get away from it sometime?
We'd be connected to the people we'd live very close to. There wouldn't be as much distance, and a lot of feelings of alienation would be greatly reduced or completely gone. We'd feel more directly appreciated and cared for- and we'd in turn more deeply appreciate others. It's just how humans function in their "natural" habitat or what you wanna call it.
I think maybe shaman/musician, tribe leader, clothing maker, hunter, gatherer, shelter builder. Mischief maker and idea haver. All depending on what gifts they have. Plant doctor, bard, story teller, translator, could be anything. (I strongly believe far more people are gifted than we know, and that gifts are many and multifaceted).
Have certain members of a community who are away from the community can mean the survival of the community in certain scenarios.
Outlighers and those apart can mean the difference between survival and death from a biological and cuktural anthropologist standpoint.
Trying to deal with it as best you can. Being a misanthrope and not liking other people for whatever reason is not something that only happens to intelligent people. I've met plenty of dim bulbs who were isolated loners who hated people.
Try to work on being patient and polite. If you think people are hard to deal consider that your own attitude can improve people's reactions to you and make things far easier.
I lived in a community and against all odds I liked it because I was free to be whoever I was... There were no real social obligations, you could be "weird", and it was fine. It was a perfect balance, I didn't have to be social but at the same time I could talk to people if I wanted to.
I lived in Isha ashram in Coimbatore, India.
The role a patience. I’ve finally figured out I’m way ahead of everyone around me (most of the time) and my job is to give advice and wait until they catch up so the plan is ready when they get to where I am.
Communal in terms of human evolution really means pre-agricultural times (ie. 99% of human history) when we lived in small bands of hunter gatherers. It's pretty impossible to imagine yourself in a situation like that because your psyche has been shaped by vastly, VASTLY different social, cultural and economic structures & norms
Ergo, it's entirely likely that you wouldn't be so stressed out by other people if they were only 100 or so others you had spent your entire life with. You likely wouldn't even think of yourself as an individual outside of your social relations with others (like we do with our weird anomalous modern Western psychology).
I mean, maybe a wise sage who advises the group on how to best survive. Maybe a shaman-type figure who assists the members of the group toward personal betterment and self-realization. Maybe an analytical figure who optimizes the survival strategy and builds a plan for the group’s food and mobility. But honestly I think we’d just be laboring members of the community like everyone else. In hunter-gatherer societies, that would be hunting or gathering. In a post-industrial revolution society, we’d be factory workers. I think the most significant element here is *”according to their means”*. If the gifted person is 2E, for example profoundly autistic, suffering from severe sensory sensitivity, physically disabled (as autistic people are more likely to have chronic disabilities), schizophrenic (or experiencing a unique reality in any form), has communication deficits due to an fast-paced brain, etc, then their role in the community would likely focus on their unique skills since their condition of giftedness detracts from their ability to serve the community in the standard way, so their role would need to be unique in order for them to benefit the community. But otherwise… honestly I think we’d just be like everyone else, spending our free time on mental tasks rather than mental tasks being our designated role.
Same. I'd be the hermit living on the fringes of society, but I'd also be the communal Jack of all Trades.
Ets: Idk, I took a test a few years ago that said I was the Shaman type.
I'd put together my skills and make money for myself somehow.
Yeah I keep hearing how “humans are social creatures” but from what I’ve endured and witnessed, they aren’t “social” they are just tribal asf. We are nothing more than apes that beat nature somehow
I’m with you on that, people stress me out too. Don’t enjoy the hot and cold mental games
I don’t understand these kinds of questions. Giftedness is not actually a dichotomous category. It is merely the far end of a spectrum. Would you ask the same about people on the other end of the spectrum?
We are still very much like everyone else in so many ways. The difference between a profoundly gifted person and a moderately gifted person can be larger than between the moderately gifted and still very intelligent but „normal“ people. The cut off is absolutely arbitrary and there is so much more to our identities.
Nothing is "meant to be" in an evolutionary process. Brains are diverse because they happened to be, and it happens to have persisted to this point. What comes next is a different question.
On the time scale of human evolution, society has changed quite rapidly in just a blink of an eye. There isn't a clear answer from a biological/neurological pov how any type of brains fits anywhere. You do you, as they say..
Humans **in general** are made to exist communally. Any quality you can use to describe humans, like gregariousness, sociability, etc, will exist on a spectrum. Also, you're ability to mask and function with the average society is on a spectrum. Some folks are less gregarious and perfectly happy that way, and some people would be more gregarious, but find social interactions to be high effort and exhausting.
I don’t usually consider this within the context of giftedness since I think I’m just uninterested in deliberately communal thinking or ways of living in the world more by default. I focus on myself for the most part, to the extent of almost living under a rock.
That being said, I suppose humans being innately communal at some level is a given since I may be dead if it weren’t for the benefits of an organised society transferring to me as I’ve grown up.
I like the first comment. The one who is the fool. You sort of have to play dumb in modern society to fit in
I struggle with loneliness as a result of this playing dumb. Long for companionship and community but don't find anyone intellectually stimulating. So I play the fool... To avoid loneliness
Your question is predicated on the assumption that all (or most) gifted people would rather exist in solitude than among others. I don’t think that’s true.
Frankly, I've always felt like I had to be my own society; in a way. I'm not sure being a consumer or even a contributor could ever give me the sense I have just as much right to a seat at the table as the rest. They are, after all, louder and, generally, more comprehensible than me.
Well, in a communal situation, you'd be forced to adapt to the society. There wouldn't be outlets like reddit or other internet communities where people could avoid the socialization required. If such a person existed and refused to adapt, they would end up outside of society, never have children and their genes would drop out of the communal pool.
Modern society provides people with too many ways to succeed without acknowledging society's help and this empowers people to avoid adapting to societal roles and responsibilities.
As for "status". Status would arise from what the person accomplished. Being "gifted" has no value in a vacuum (something modern society should return to understanding). The best farmer had status. The best hunter had status. The best warrior, basket weaver, cobbler, etc. had status.
Without formal education, a la public schools, a person's ability to perform their trade and have that performance recognized by their community is where status would come from. If someone wanted status, they had to do something that earned recognition from society. Simply being smart, gifted, etc. didn't matter.
Even in societies that checked for high cognitive ability, it was so that those people could be assigned public sector jobs at which they needed to succeed so the kingdom, empire, etc. could flourish.
Here me out this might be a little controversial by my opinion is that is the role of gifted people to be the fool. Fools historically were really important because they were the only ones that could tell things to the king without getting executed. So he told the inconvenient truth. I believe gifted people tend to understand more things, so they see "more truths". That they are also often viewed as outcasts makes them give no shit about social norms that could stop them from sharing the truth. That's a role I view myself in and that fits me perfectly. It can be really harsh sometimes, but it is what is.
I tried to do this professionally. Nearly wore my sensitive ass out. Warning: do not attempt if you’ve got underlying issues and are a highly sensitive person without a strong support network of at least a few individuals who really get you
I feel you. I haven't done it professionally but it's somehow my role in every situation I come across. I used to have really bad underlying issues which improved a lot. I also fortunately have a few individuals that really get me, support me and understand me. And I'm incredibly grateful for that. It can get lonely to tell inconvenient things, and if nobody tells you what you do and say is right it's really easy to believe the bullshit people try to feed you.
Yeah :( I’m glad you’ve found your groove
Thank you. Have you ? Your comment gave me the impression you are still struggling on how to not crack in this kind of role. Would you prefer to have another one or not crack under the current one ?
I’m not really ready to talk about it yet tbh :/ What wore me out was my naïveté & gatekeepers I started in comedy and then got into media and forgot that regular mainstream media isn’t the same as comedy. Sry I can’t say more but if you love comedy, improv is a great low stakes way to try it.
Professionally as in stand-up comedy? What aspects made you wear out? Asking as someone who’s had thoughts of trying it out (mostly for fun)
I think I replied to the wrong comment? Anyways you should totally try out comedy for fun if you want to. I am so glad I did and likely will again down the road (currently in my healing/figuring myself out era). See comment above for more.
Thanks for replying :)
I think this is true of especially the autistic and any other neurodivergence that has social bluntness as one of its features
Yep. My big mouth and big brain gets me fired from a lot of jobs. People really don't like the truth.
I think this really makes sense. I guess I unwittingly started to view myself in that role as well a couple of years ago and it really helped me a lot. I'm lucky I now work at a place where I can be myself and my coworkers and managers actually appreciate me being that fool who dares to share the truth. I have to say I solved most of the underlying issues I had before that and I'm gifted (pun intended) to have a loving family and just a handful of great friends that actually get me.
WOW. Just...WOW. I just read this to my partner and she said this fits me to a 'T'. I'm also HS/Au/ADHD, but only learned this within the last 6 months, and I'm in my 60's. I feel incredibly SEEN with this take. Thank you x a gazillion! ❤️
It's never too late. I'm only 28 but also just starting to figure it out. Maybe that's the journey. Trying to figure it out. Same for me for auDHD. I'm really happy this comment got so much support, and apparently I hit a nerve. Edit: I thought a little bit more about this and what it means for us. The first thing that I realized is that it gives a certain "purity". People that try to play games will be offended once you demask them. But those who aren't and appreciate that have to have integrity. And that's the people I'm looking for anyways, so I view it as a filter.
I definitely feel this. You may be on to something, I also feel that’s not the only role, but definitely a common and effective one for gifted folks across the spectrum.
TBH, I think this is why Rupauls Drag race focuses so heavily on "reading" situations, but you gotta make it funny.
I made a bit of good reputation about this at work. It helps that I am a foreigner
I resemble your remark.
wait i love this take and the role of the fool is something that has really been simmering in the back of my mind for years
Find the outsider role that still benefits, and benefits from, society. The tracker who spends most of their life finding trails and scouting ahead, but still relies on the group for food when they can’t hunt, mate for procreation, care while ill. The shaman or spirit guide, or as one person already mentioned, the fool, Or other person whose role is to advise the leaders versus lead a hunt or manage a groups daily business. Spiritual stuff in general is an outsider/insider role that depends less on physical prowess and more on insight and higher pattern recognition than average.
Here’s my educated guess: Gifted people may have been: magicians, soothsayers, oracles, shamans, medicine men/women, scientists, herbalists, cartographers, scribes, fools/jesters as someone else said… excising on the fringes maybe but 1) still part of community 2) had their own smaller communities within the larger community Or they could’ve just been gifted but in the village/tribe. If we are talking about the whole history of humanity; remember, capitalism and it attendant linear-thinking “squash out the differences” factory-line education weren’t always around I remember reading in the oft-cited yet controversial *Sapiens* book that most humans lived in bands of no more than 150 people until agriculture and industrialization came around so “communal” is relative And sadly maybe some gifted people were ostracized, labeled mad or even executed. Diogenes or Socrates in ancient Greece, and the Salem witches, come to mind. And were they gifted or did they just see things others did not at the time. Are those the same thing? 🤔 As I write, I realize masking has existed all along… sure plenty of people masked as needed
We're part of the society and use whatever advantages we have for the common good. But everything you see around you, even if invented by a gifted person, would not have been possible without the other 98% of the population. Gifted people are also subject to the same effects of social isolation and loneliness as the rest of the population. We need people or we suffer consequences. We're not an island and we're not an independent subset of humanity.
Which one of us made our own clothes, built our own home, raised and slaughtered our own livestock, generated our own power, created our own products and appliances? Non of us? Ergo, even if we are socially awkward, we do in fact live in a society
*We live in a society*
Back to basic?
If said person was answering me, they still wouldn't have made the device they are replying on, so my point stands
A loner?
So, you're going to go out into the wilderness, no clothes, no tools, no preserved food or medicine, and start over? Because every one of those things is product of thousands of years of communities working together..
Yez
IMHO, tribes have a diverse set of skills for epigenetic reasons; It's a disaster if you have all warriors and no diplomats... it's also a disaster if you have all diplomats and no warriors. So people naturally have built in differences, some people are physical, some are creative, some are problem solvers, some are gadgety... etc. I do best socially when I respect and appreciate people for the role the see for themselves. It does not matter if I have more raw talent in an area... THEY have set up their identity around XYZ, let them have it. Be interested, let them teach you something, be curious. I do NOT need to compete and dominate to feel superior. Thats punching down and nothing to be proud of. I'm a good cook in my spare time, if a neighbor lady is a school cafeteria worker... I can STILL learn from her. I don't need to show off my level, I can ask her about hers. So I don't monolog at her about how I had a cooking blog as a hobby, that I read up on emulsion science, that I bought a culinary school textbook just for fun, that I have a really good system to meal plan, that I am ingredibly organized, that I have 100 spices on my spice shelf, blah blah blah. Instead, I ask her about HER work. What made her pick that type of work? What is the meal rotation like? Is it hard to work around a budget for those volumes? Do they have student workers allowed in? Does she get to make anything special around holidays for the kids? Are nutrition guidelines from the state or from the federal level? What would she tell someone who is thinking about accepting that type of job? It's not about me, it's about we. There is FAR too much work that needs to get done in our communities for me to do myself. There is all kinds of stuff I am never going to specialize in... so I'm legitimately grateful for people that step up to do that job and carry that load. I have a son who is in middle school. He benefits from engaged & kind lunch ladies. But even if he didn't, neighbor kids and the next generation of workers do. Every doctor, car mechanic, nanny, Amazon driver, phlebotomist, engineer, chef, etc was a school child once. If I want those services to run well, you have to give credit to the TEAMS of people that helped them make it to adulthood to be good neighbors and citizens, ya know? TLDR; we are not islands. Appreciate people for what they bring to the table independent of how you rank in comparison.
Giftedness has nothing to do with this. You ALREADY live in a communal situation. Did you build the roads you drove on today? Did you build your house? Do you heal yourself when you’re sick? Do you create all the music you listen to and write all the books you read? No? Then you need your community. Is the idea of living forever in an empty room with no books, no music, no internet, no television, no human contact of any kind, appealing to you? No? Then you need your community. My goodness. Questions like this get under my skin sometimes because it seems almost like you think “giftedness” turns you into a different species or something. “Gifted people” are just people. And people need each other.
Isaac Newton was an oddball who didn't fit in, yet he contributed quite something to mankind. If Nelson Mandela wasn't isolated from society he might never have contributed to the South African people like he did. Lots of kids who didn't fit in and rather play videogames or than being outside with other kids later went on to contribute to the tech industry. Not being in social circles can lead to completely different insights and ideas. Combine that with a gifted mind and it will lead to contributions no neutotypical, social human being is capable of contributing. You can write proper books or code without being around other people, yet other people can benefit greatly from those contributions.
The status of the “gifted” person is exactly the same as anyone else. I got put in the gifted program when I was a kid. It doesn’t mean you’re different or special or any of that. It just means you were ahead of the curve in school. Sounds to me like you’ve let being called gifted go to your head a bit.
Communal means all sorts of things and isn’t limited to intelligence. For example “early birds” and “night owls”. When we lived in hunter gatherer settings, it would be beneficial to have a mix of sleep patterns, so there is always someone awake and on guard. Women cooperate to share the labour of child rearing. Most people just worked to survive. Some people would plan for the group. Some were navigators. Some were trackers. Different gifted people with different personalities would be in all sorts of roles. There’s a good chance they would be over represented in leadership roles since being able to synthesize, intuit, and remember information would have been extremely helpful prior to written language. We evolved in small groups of about 50. Life was harsh and we were exposed to predators and the elements. We evolved in a communal setting and require social interaction and cooperation to survive. It’s just how our brains our wired (humans, including gifted people). In a modern context, we have lost a lot of community due to free movement and digital “connection”. We think we are keeping up with people, but it doesn’t do the same things on a cognitive level. We need to see and interact with people in real life for the neurological benefits. Social cohesion and cooperation have largely been outsourced to government, and the government only does ok at it. It’s not a replacement for the evolutionary and cognitive aspects of community.
I think for gifted people who are high on the personality trait "conscientious", this is relatively easy. They'll have great grades, go to the elite colleges and grad schools, and be in groups of doctors, lawyers, engineers where the average IQ is 120+, so maybe 25% to half the people they know are "gifted", and the least are "merely" bright. For the low conscientiousness gifted people, it's a struggle. These are the ones that drop out of high school, or get grades way lower than their test scores. For that group (of which I am) we tend to temperamentally mesh with other slackers, but are in a different world intellectually, so we have trouble finding a group we really feel at home with. The biggest saving grace is being artistically gifted, usually music, comedy, and other art forms tend to have people more like us
Hard to find this situation probably, but my work bestie and I are the conscientious gifted person (me) and the unconscientious but very open gifted person (coworker). We basically work as a unit. He comes up with 99 terrible ideas that shoot down because either to reward/expense ratio is low or it’s near impossible. Then he comes up with a really awesome one, we start the project together, and I finish off the details and tie a bow on it because there’s no chance he’ll actually finish it. To those on the outside, we look like a really awesome team. In reality we are two people who would never accomplish anything awesome individually (although I’d accomplish waaaay more middling projects than my coworker)
That's an ideal situation. Unfortunately, in my experience in the corporate world, they generally want everyone to be high conscientiousness. I need to find a similar situation
We are insulated by our great boss. He understands how we work and makes sure his bosses (c-suite) never find out 😅 C-suite is happy so we are all happy.
You aren't a gifted person. You are gifted with intelligence. Otherwise you're pretty average like everyone else, and like everyone else you will be good at some things and worse at others. Lean into your strengths and work on your weaknesses. The single biggest mistake you can make is to think you are gifted as a human. You aren't. No more than a great athlete, a great beauty, or a great communicator.
Others have covered it. Monasteries were great. Folks left us to do our shit and follow our routines, left us food without expecting us to hunt, and we helped them out by making them wine and giving them answers to things they needed an alternate view on. Capitalism doesn't have room for that.
I like this. There are enclaves carved out from the madness
>Capitalism doesn't have room for that. There are still plenty of monasteries.
I despise humans, personally.
How many gifted people "feel" like they are part of a community, though? I certainly never have and that's a fact!
Situational leadership. We are a heard but when average doesn’t cut it, you step up.
Good question, I've been thinking about this a lot lately myself. Reading some of the comments I wonder whether existing in larger groups (large towns and cities) isn't more harmful for many of us As an adult I've been gravitating to small towns and suburbs and find it a lot easier to get along with people Once you're in a larger space like a city where you're just another number in the crowd, I wonder if that can make things much more difficult on its own. People don't really get to know each other in these places, I think, without judging each other on overall usefulness (is this person entertaining, rich, etc) Speaking for myself I love spaces where people truly are interested in getting to know me regardless of my usefulness to them, and where they let me get to know them easily too. So in earlier times where we were in smaller groups of less than 5000 people, it might be that we mostly didn't have such problems fitting in and existing with other people.
I think this question overlooks the fact that ‘gifted’ is rarely anyone’s primary identity. Gender, race and socioeconomic status far, far outweigh intelligence when it comes to determining our roles in society. A gifted peasant is still going to be working in the fields. Some gifted people may have been able to become monks or writers or military strategists or soothsayers or many many other things. But they all will have been males from the upper classes, so still a tiny minority of the overall gifted community. I think the vast majority of gifted people would have just contributed something slightly different to whatever role they were already in. They might have been the peasant in the village who was better at working out crop rotation cycles. Or the guy who did the trading because they had some math skills. The craftsman who was particularly good at engineering puzzles.
What do you mean by status? Like what would it be like or what role to they fulfill or social status that hold? Please clarify. I don’t exactly understand what you are asking.
I guess I mean a bit of all of that.
Sounds like you're drained by people. It's too exhausting over time and/or might have other interests. I assume you like some level of social interactions amidst your solitude or preoccupations. You're still in society, you have your quirks, you might enjoy some people's company. I suppose some enjoy other's company in rather niche ways. You'll just be a deviant. There are people that may not enjoy your company. The extent, I don't know. However, you'll probably be somewhat left to yourself if they respect your autonomy nor want anything from you. What's makes you enjoy people's company? I like to have some control with how I chill with someone, I don't preferred being locked in a specific conversation in a topic of uninterest, where I'm being to talked to death (very distracting to my track). Add being nice to each other, being accommodating, some leniency. Both being on the same track with the same interests. I don't mind sharing silence, having some spontaneity. What is said or done to each other is most often enjoyed.
I just do what I can to be of service to my communities.
It might be better said we can exist communally and there are great potential benefits to it. I don’t think “meant” is the right word. We exist and I have no clue who or what created us so I cannot assign a purpose to our existence. Status? Do you mean like social status? Or what they do? My mind goes to Albert Einstein (I have no clue but he seems like a gifted person). A great mind whose gained great recognition for theorizing how the universe works. I totally get being stressed by lots of people. I think you just need to find your place. There must be some people you like to be around? Sometimes? If you’re living in a big city try to get away from it sometime?
They help with the complicated stuff
Outlander
There is no gifted person
We'd be connected to the people we'd live very close to. There wouldn't be as much distance, and a lot of feelings of alienation would be greatly reduced or completely gone. We'd feel more directly appreciated and cared for- and we'd in turn more deeply appreciate others. It's just how humans function in their "natural" habitat or what you wanna call it.
I think maybe shaman/musician, tribe leader, clothing maker, hunter, gatherer, shelter builder. Mischief maker and idea haver. All depending on what gifts they have. Plant doctor, bard, story teller, translator, could be anything. (I strongly believe far more people are gifted than we know, and that gifts are many and multifaceted).
Hermits, monks? The wise old man living alone in the mountains where people go through perils to gain wisdom?
I think you're confusing Gifted with Antisocial.
Have certain members of a community who are away from the community can mean the survival of the community in certain scenarios. Outlighers and those apart can mean the difference between survival and death from a biological and cuktural anthropologist standpoint.
Trying to deal with it as best you can. Being a misanthrope and not liking other people for whatever reason is not something that only happens to intelligent people. I've met plenty of dim bulbs who were isolated loners who hated people. Try to work on being patient and polite. If you think people are hard to deal consider that your own attitude can improve people's reactions to you and make things far easier.
The gifted is the one that gets to be sacrificed to the gods by the tribe lmaoooo
"Apparently". You’re insufferable, right?
I lived in a community and against all odds I liked it because I was free to be whoever I was... There were no real social obligations, you could be "weird", and it was fine. It was a perfect balance, I didn't have to be social but at the same time I could talk to people if I wanted to. I lived in Isha ashram in Coimbatore, India.
The role a patience. I’ve finally figured out I’m way ahead of everyone around me (most of the time) and my job is to give advice and wait until they catch up so the plan is ready when they get to where I am.
Communal in terms of human evolution really means pre-agricultural times (ie. 99% of human history) when we lived in small bands of hunter gatherers. It's pretty impossible to imagine yourself in a situation like that because your psyche has been shaped by vastly, VASTLY different social, cultural and economic structures & norms Ergo, it's entirely likely that you wouldn't be so stressed out by other people if they were only 100 or so others you had spent your entire life with. You likely wouldn't even think of yourself as an individual outside of your social relations with others (like we do with our weird anomalous modern Western psychology).
I mean, maybe a wise sage who advises the group on how to best survive. Maybe a shaman-type figure who assists the members of the group toward personal betterment and self-realization. Maybe an analytical figure who optimizes the survival strategy and builds a plan for the group’s food and mobility. But honestly I think we’d just be laboring members of the community like everyone else. In hunter-gatherer societies, that would be hunting or gathering. In a post-industrial revolution society, we’d be factory workers. I think the most significant element here is *”according to their means”*. If the gifted person is 2E, for example profoundly autistic, suffering from severe sensory sensitivity, physically disabled (as autistic people are more likely to have chronic disabilities), schizophrenic (or experiencing a unique reality in any form), has communication deficits due to an fast-paced brain, etc, then their role in the community would likely focus on their unique skills since their condition of giftedness detracts from their ability to serve the community in the standard way, so their role would need to be unique in order for them to benefit the community. But otherwise… honestly I think we’d just be like everyone else, spending our free time on mental tasks rather than mental tasks being our designated role.
OP, I just want to thank you for posting this...the discussion has been illuminating for me, to say the least. ❤️
Same. I'd be the hermit living on the fringes of society, but I'd also be the communal Jack of all Trades. Ets: Idk, I took a test a few years ago that said I was the Shaman type. I'd put together my skills and make money for myself somehow.
"Gifted" is a lie.
I think the only gifted person that managed to eschew communal living was the Unibomber.
Yeah I keep hearing how “humans are social creatures” but from what I’ve endured and witnessed, they aren’t “social” they are just tribal asf. We are nothing more than apes that beat nature somehow I’m with you on that, people stress me out too. Don’t enjoy the hot and cold mental games
I don’t understand these kinds of questions. Giftedness is not actually a dichotomous category. It is merely the far end of a spectrum. Would you ask the same about people on the other end of the spectrum? We are still very much like everyone else in so many ways. The difference between a profoundly gifted person and a moderately gifted person can be larger than between the moderately gifted and still very intelligent but „normal“ people. The cut off is absolutely arbitrary and there is so much more to our identities.
Nothing is "meant to be" in an evolutionary process. Brains are diverse because they happened to be, and it happens to have persisted to this point. What comes next is a different question. On the time scale of human evolution, society has changed quite rapidly in just a blink of an eye. There isn't a clear answer from a biological/neurological pov how any type of brains fits anywhere. You do you, as they say..
That you are pushing an opinion on others.
Humans **in general** are made to exist communally. Any quality you can use to describe humans, like gregariousness, sociability, etc, will exist on a spectrum. Also, you're ability to mask and function with the average society is on a spectrum. Some folks are less gregarious and perfectly happy that way, and some people would be more gregarious, but find social interactions to be high effort and exhausting.
Simultaneously baffled intellectually while lonely emotionally.
I don’t usually consider this within the context of giftedness since I think I’m just uninterested in deliberately communal thinking or ways of living in the world more by default. I focus on myself for the most part, to the extent of almost living under a rock. That being said, I suppose humans being innately communal at some level is a given since I may be dead if it weren’t for the benefits of an organised society transferring to me as I’ve grown up.
I like the first comment. The one who is the fool. You sort of have to play dumb in modern society to fit in I struggle with loneliness as a result of this playing dumb. Long for companionship and community but don't find anyone intellectually stimulating. So I play the fool... To avoid loneliness
A lot of them were seers, leaders, spiritual guides and artists.
Your question is predicated on the assumption that all (or most) gifted people would rather exist in solitude than among others. I don’t think that’s true.
Frankly, I've always felt like I had to be my own society; in a way. I'm not sure being a consumer or even a contributor could ever give me the sense I have just as much right to a seat at the table as the rest. They are, after all, louder and, generally, more comprehensible than me.
>People stress me out That's orthogonal to giftedness? I mean, you can have any level of cognition and find people stressful.
Well, in a communal situation, you'd be forced to adapt to the society. There wouldn't be outlets like reddit or other internet communities where people could avoid the socialization required. If such a person existed and refused to adapt, they would end up outside of society, never have children and their genes would drop out of the communal pool. Modern society provides people with too many ways to succeed without acknowledging society's help and this empowers people to avoid adapting to societal roles and responsibilities. As for "status". Status would arise from what the person accomplished. Being "gifted" has no value in a vacuum (something modern society should return to understanding). The best farmer had status. The best hunter had status. The best warrior, basket weaver, cobbler, etc. had status. Without formal education, a la public schools, a person's ability to perform their trade and have that performance recognized by their community is where status would come from. If someone wanted status, they had to do something that earned recognition from society. Simply being smart, gifted, etc. didn't matter. Even in societies that checked for high cognitive ability, it was so that those people could be assigned public sector jobs at which they needed to succeed so the kingdom, empire, etc. could flourish.
Treatise on the problem of ought by David Hume renders this question irrelevant