The last time I talked to K, we had a very frank talk about things we didn’t say in the gen pop. Nothing nasty or gross, but things that we knew most people would not understand. I have told this story many times, but I’ll tell it again to make my point.
A few decades ago, I was really into buying things on eBay. I was also very into Alan Rickman. I bought a bunch of paraphernalia and media that featured him, and one of the items was a videotape (yes, it was that long ago) of him in a Broadway production. The description said that it was not pirated, which made me think it was a theater-approved videotape. When I received it, it was a personally-recorded video of the performance. I immediately contacted the seller and said that it was pirated. She wrote back saying it was a genuine copy because her husband had videotaped it.
Nowadays, I would have just notified eBay and pointed out that this was against their policies. Back then, I naively thought I could explain to her why she was wrong. We went back and forth a few times before she contacted eBay to complain about me. When I explained the situation, they immediately refunded my money. The seller gave me a negative rating so I did the same in return.
I mentioned it to my therapist because it really bothered me. I told her (my therapist) how I was frustrated because I could not find the right way to explain to the seller and was taken by surprise when I got the notification that she had reported me. My therapist said to me (paraphrasing), “Minna. You talk on a level six whereas others talk on a level two or three. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of need. You’re at the self-actualization level whereas they are worrying about physiological needs or safety.”
She also said to me at a separate time but on a related point, using the Senate as an example in relation to IQ. She said that the average IQ was 100. In the Senate, that means that half of them are over 100 and half are under. Her point was that I was in the top 5% or so, which meant that I was ‘above’ most people in the gen pop. That’s when she mentioned the second conclusion of the Dunning-Kruger study–that people who are much better at something than other people drastically underestimate how much better they are.
I shared both these observations with my brother, and he was hit by it as was I. Because, you see, both of us are way more intelligent than most people. He’s in Mensa (though he quit because as he said to me, “We didn’t have anything in common other than being smart.”) and I could be if I wanted (which I don’t). My brother is the smartest person I know, and when we talk with each other, we can gab a mile a minute. It’s almost scary from the outside how easily we switch from subject to subject, too.
Why am I saying this? Because I recently realized that nearly all my good friends are roughly at that level, so I get caught off-guard when talking with people who aren’t. And I still get caught up in trying to explain what I’m thinking past the point of reasonableness. Oh, I didn’t finish what my therapist said to me the first time in explaining where my thinking was versus everyone else’s. She said that the other person wasn’t being stubborn or deliberately misunderstanding me–they literally could not understand what I was saying. That seemed unfathomable to me because it was pretty basic, I thought. Videotaping a performance without permission is illegal. So is pirating something. I was making a connection, but the seller could not make that jump with me.
It didn’t mean she wasn’t wrong because she was, but had I understood that she wasn’t being obtuse or that I wasn’t explaining it well, I would have let it go much sooner. Here’s the thing, though. I’m used to me being the problem or being told (implicitly or explicitly) that I’m just…wrong. My parents were great at making me feel like I was a weirdo with nothing in common with being human. Add to that undiagnosed neurodiversity, and I went around very conscious about my weirdness all the goddamn time. So any time a miscommunication happened, I immediately thought it was my fault.
Now, I realize it’s not my fault, per se, just the fact that I cannot communicate with people the way I would prefer.
Side note: people are very prickly about this, by the way. Any hint that someone may be more intelligent than/aware of them in any way, and the OUTRAGE. I don’t get it because if someone were to say, “I’m a pro basketball player” for instance, most people won’t get offended by that* or think the person was bragging. When it comes to brains or empathy, though, people take great offense at someone declaring they’re smarter or empathetic, no matter how carefully the person states it.
I get it to a certain extent. Physical prowess is much more concrete and easier to measure. Sticking with my basketball example, you can measure how good a basketball player is in discrete units. Percentage of freethrows, shots in generals, blocks, etc. How fast they run is also measurable. It’s a self-contained sport that has concrete categories. I mean, yeah, there are intangibles such as drive and spirit, but most of that is backed up by actual stats.
When it comes to intelligence, however (both ‘brains’ and empathy), it’s much more amorphous. I mean, there are people who are clearly more intelligent than most like Stephen Hawking, but it’s hard to quantify the intelligence or empathy of people who are not as intelligent as he is. Especially with empathy.
Side note: it’s interesting to me how people are so angry about ’empaths’. Saying they don’t exist and that it’s just self-aggrandized nonsense. Now, I think that it’s true as with any other self-proclaimed label that if someone says they are an empath over and over again, they probably aren’t (or are the worst version of it). Like nice guys who keep saying how nice they are. And it’s just as unfair to say that they represent people with actual empathetic abilities as it is to deride vegans because of the few hardcore ones who bang on about it endlessly.
Anyway. I have noticed that no matter how carefully people say they are empathetic, they get a ton of pushback on how empaths are not a thing, blah blah blah. It’s really disproportionate, but it’s a reason I don’t mention my high level of empathy. And I would never call myself an empath. I just don’t get the disdain for the concept. We accept that some people are better at something physical, so why not something mental or emotional?
That’s all for now. More later.
*There are exceptions to this, of course. Especially when it comes to men and female athletes, but that’s not relevant to this post. For the purpose of the point I’m trying to make, I’m assuming that all other things are equal.