"Ridicule is the treat paid to the genius by mediocrity"
- Oscar Wilde.
It is commonly believed that exceptionally intelligent people or the people whom we consider geniuses have eccentricities. And just like all other things this subject of the treatment of people who are unconventional also has a pattern. The pattern most often than not results in chaos in the lives of these 'gifted' people and only a handful have been able to claim a sort of 'normalcy' in their later lives
The pattern is often like this: If the subject in question is a child prodigy, it's always seen that in the beginning, the child is praised to the skies and his achievements slashed across all the front pages of newspapers. And due to the child's natural ability, he/she progresses way faster than a conventional child in our society. Few realize the emotional trauma which the child undergoes during this stage. The child will not only have to deal with all the unwanted attention but also the ridicule and antagonism of his fellow mates in college who're a good ten years or so older than him. This sort of treatment often results in behavior which has been termed eccentricities primarily because society doesn't know why the behavior occurs since, it doesn't fit the conventional ones they've been exposed to. This very 'gifted child' is later called a freak because our so called society fails to understand why the genius in this person behaves the way he /she does. [Interested readers may look up William James Sidis' page on wiki] The same pattern with a little variation is what follows in case of people who deviate from the trodden path of the masses.
The question now is why this happens? To understand this we must go to the roots i.e what is a society. A society is a framework or a construct which has been agreed upon by individuals sharing common behavioral patterns for them to co-exist harmoniously and lead to their betterment as a whole by fixing certain laws to which all belonging to this framework must adhere to.[the definition is mine] . Now in comes a person defying all the conventional laws and is a living proof to the society that there is a possibility that these behavioral patterns which were till then considered normal might just be a generality describing the behavior of people who are less gifted. If the society agrees to this, then it'll mean that it's existence is nothing but a bunch of mediocre people who have a reached a consensus. Now just how many of us would like calling ourselves mediocre? Though, on the surface we might agree that this so called genius is exceptional, but inwardly we hate him/her for being what he/she is. Their very attribute like their extraordinary intellect becomes their grave enemy. At this juncture, chaos begins.
When a person is denied the right to express something which is natural to him/her it leads to a forcible suppression of these qualities for the fear of non-acceptance by the society. This in turn might manifest itself as behaviors for which the word eccentricity has already been coined( This is quite clever on the part of the society since it's managed to give the word eccentricity a negative feeling). One must understand though, that it is not this uncommon behavior which leads to the downfall of such geniuses but the failure on the part of the society to accept them as their own. And when a person feels that he has nowhere to go where he feels at home, he' s shattered.
Time and again this has happened and a lot of contributions that these people might have made have never seen the light. It is quite unfortunate that being just like everybody else[of course with a few extra qualities which is OK as long as they are 'normal '] is considered a sign of individuality. Till the time comes when such people find acceptance, the world's a sa dplace for these geniuses to exist in...
Till next time,
Sayonara.
