"What makes a genius?" (documentary)

[guest_of_logic]

This documentary just aired on SBS TV in Australia: http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/progr ... kesagenius.

[Blair]

And you just watched it.

Gotta love causailty.

[Robert]

Heard about this documentary on the Point of Inquiry podcast recently, "The Nature of Existence".
http://thenatureofexistence.com/

Yawn.

[Kelly Jones]

Some quotes from "The Use and Abuse of History for Life" (one of Nietzsche's):

The scholarly habit lives on without it and orbits in an egotistical and self-satisfied manner around its own centre. Then we get a glimpse of the wretched drama of a blind mania for collecting, a restless compiling together of everything that ever existed. The man envelops himself in a mouldy smell. With the antiquarian style, he manages to corrupt a significant talent, a noble need, into an insatiable new lust, a desire for everything really old. Often he sinks so deep that he is finally satisfied with that nourishment and takes pleasure in gobbling up for himself the dust of biographical quisquilien [rubbish].


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If we want to transfer into the area of culture the customs of popular agreement and the popular majority and, as it were, to require the artist to stand in his own defense before the forum of the artistically inert types, then we can take an oath in advance that he will be condemned, not in spite of but just because his judges have solemnly proclaimed the canon of monumental culture...


.


So they are knowledgeable about culture because they generally like to get rid of culture. They behave as if they were doctors, while basically they are only concerned with mixing poisons. Thus, they develop their languages and their taste, in order to explain in their discriminating way why they so persistently disapprove of all offerings of more nourishing cultural food. For they do not want greatness to arise. Their method is to say: "See greatness is already there!"


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Only the man whose breast is oppressed by a present need and who wants to cast off his load at any price has a need for critical history, that is, history which sits in judgment and passes judgment. From the thoughtless transplanting of plants stem many ills: the critical man without need, the antiquarian without reverence, and the student of greatness without the ability for greatness are the sort who are receptive to weeds estranged from their natural mother earth and therefore degenerate growths.


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For what means does nature still have at its disposal to deal with the super-abundance forcing itself outward? Only one means, to take it as lightly as possible in order to shove it aside again quickly and dispose of it. From that arises a habit of not taking real things seriously any more. From that arises the "weak personality," as a result of which reality and existence make only an insignificant impression. Finally people become constantly more venial and more comfortable and widen the disturbing gulf between content and form until they are insensitive to the barbarism, so long as the memory is always newly stimulated, so long as constantly new things worthy of knowledge flow by, which can be neatly packaged in the compartments of memory.


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No one is allowed to venture on fulfilling the law of philosophy on his own. No one lives philosophically, with that simple manly truth, which acted forcefully on a man in ancient times, wherever he was, and which thus drove him to behave as Stoic if he had once promised to be true to the Stoa. All modern philosophy is political and police-like, restricted to the appearance of learning through the ruling powers, churches, academies, customs, and human cowardice. It sticks around with sighs of "If only" or with the knowledge "There was once." Philosophy is wrong to be at the heart of historical education, if it wants to be more than an inner repressed knowledge without effect.


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Let the most astonishing thing occur; the crowd of historical neutrals is always in place ready to assess the author from a great distance. Momentarily the echo resounds, but always as "Criticism."


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....people chat for a while about something new, and then about something else new, and in between do what they always do. The historical education of our critics no longer permits an influence on our real understanding, namely, an influence on life and action. On the blackest writing they impress immediately their blotting paper, to the most delightful drawing they apply their thick brush strokes, which are to be considered corrections. And then everything is over once again. However, their critical pens never cease flying, for they have lost power over them and are led by them rather than leading them. In this excess of their critical ejaculations, in the lack of control over themselves, in what the Romans call impotentia [impotence], the weakness of the modern personality reveals itself.


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As judges you must stand higher than what is being assessed, whereas, you have only come later. The guests who come last to the table should in all fairness receive the last places. And you wish to have the first places? Then at least do something of the highest and best order. Perhaps people will then really make a place for you, even if you come at the end.


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Anyone who has not experienced life on a greater and higher level than everyone else will not know how to interpret the greatness and loftiness of the past.


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The time will come in which people wisely refrain from all constructions of the world process or even of human history, a time in which people in general no longer consider the masses but once again think about individuals who construct a sort of bridge over the chaotic storm of becoming. These people do not set out some sort of process, but live timelessly and contemporaneously, thanks to history which permits such a combination. They live like the republic of geniuses, about which Schopenhauer once explained that one giant shouts out to another across the barren intervals of time, and undisturbed by the wanton and noisy midgets who creep around them, the giants continue their lofty spiritual conversation. The task of history is to be a mediator between them and thus to provide an opportunity and the energies for the development of greatness. No, the goal of humanity cannot finally be anywhere but in its greatest examples.

[uncledote]

Good selection of quotes / aphorisms, Kelly.

Here is a short essay on the aphorism by Don Paterson, a Scottish Poet and Jazz Musician.

____________________________________________________

The aphorism is a brief waste of time
(2004)

The aphorism has fallen so badly out of favour that even the word itself now
seems to present people with difficulties. After a reading the other week, a
girl told me how much she was "looking forward to my euphemisms". A
colleague of mine persistently referred to them as "amorphisms", which I had
taken as some kind of witty comment on their pointlessness, until I realised he
was just saying it wrong.

Like many writers, I pass my time in a state of guilt-ridden paralysis. I emerge
from most days with nothing to show for my efforts but 40 e-mails, a dead leg
and an empty box of Solpadeine. Sometimes the only vestige of self-worth you
can take to bed with you is the fact that you have held strong and managed not
to watch Trisha again. The aphorism, though, became a way of rescuing
something from the day. This hardly sounds like much of a reason for you to
read them, I know. But an aphorism is the result of a sudden momentary
conviction, and I have a lot of those. The truth of that conviction is neither here
nor there; nor is the fact that you might disagree with it five minutes later. Its
being wholly, blindingly certain of itself is pretty much its only virtue.

Most definitions of "aphorism" usually refer to a) their brevity and b) their being
a "statement of a truth". Actually, b) is rubbish and long overdue for revision. If
you sit down and read a lot of aphorisms, after your nose stops bleeding you will
also see how you were first struck by precisely their lack of truthfulness. For all
their variety, they make essentially the same gesture: they posit something odd,
even outrageous, something that you hadn't thought of before, and seek to prove
it in the same breath. Anything that has you nodding immediately in agreement
– whether it's a newspaper leader, a sermon, an interview – hasn't accomplished
much more than reconfirming or deepening a prejudice. Aphorisms are
supposed to do the opposite. They're supposed to make you go "No! Actually,
hang on … Yes." More often, your response will be simply "No! Never!" – but at
least now you can re-embrace your old, lazy and uninterrogated opinion as a
properly tested conviction.

Alas, the tone the aphorism has to adopt to provoke this reaction is enormously
irritating: one of absolute self-certainty. The aphorism talks to you as if you were
an idiot. This also makes them all sound rather generic, like the ravings of some
wee disenfranchised god, bellowing away in the abyss to no one in particular.
For that reason, you can recognise an aphorist by his obsessions, but not his style:
compared with the poet or the novelist, the voices of aphorists, from Heraclitus
to Paul Valéry, are disturbingly interchangeable. (They are also all men. Hannah
Arendt and Simone Weil apart –who were less aphorists than just highly
quotable writers – women have found no real use for them, which is about the
most troubling indictment you can serve on anything.)

This tone of self-importance is a huge embarrassment in the Anglophone
tradition, which only really permits the all-knowing routine when it's God
speaking. Beyond the covers of the Good Book, that imperious and wholly
impersonal tone only really occurs in the language of legislature, or that most
unfortunate of genres, "wisdom literature". So the aphorism tends to remind
people of either God, law lords, or – horrors – Jonathan Livingston Seagull. No
form is more stylistically hamstrung from the outset. Its underdog quality has
always appealed to me.

As a result of that embarrassment, though, the British have produced far more
wits than aphorists. Yes, we have Halifax, Hazlitt and Cyril Connolly, but not too
many others. Chesterton ("Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the
gradations of their decay") is the best, the most acute and funny, but his
aphorisms generally occurred in the course of his essays. We're deeply
uncomfortable with the unilateral assertion of what is the case, because it sounds
so close to blasphemy. Hence Pseud's Corner – a fine, even necessary institution,
but you're just as likely to end up there for the crime of certainty as outrageous
affectation. The Brits are much happier in the grubby, transgressive shadows of
the footnote, where so much of our best writing is done. Aphorisms being
grumpy affairs, you'd think such culturally ingrained self-hatred would make
the English ideal aphorists, but I guess you can be overqualified for the task. The
form, though, has always flourished on the continent, where the High Horse has
had a longer and nobler tradition. The Germans and the Austrians have
produced some wonderful aphorists, among them Lichtenberg, Schopenhauer,
Goethe, Nietzsche and Karl Kraus. But the French have always been the best.
Their language makes a fetish of its own elegance, and nowhere is elegance at
more of a premium than in the aphorism, where – because time is tight - so much
more has to be suggested than stated. Pascal, the daddy of them; La Bruyère –
still a wonderful, useful lexicon of human prejudice; then La Rochefoucauld,
Chamfort, Vauvenargues, Joubert… all the way up to the otherworldly musings
of Paul Valéry, René Char, the weird rabbinical proverbs of Edmond Jabes, and
my second-favourite, Jean Cocteau.

But the greatest aphorist of the 20th century was EM Cioran. His perennial
failure to be acclaimed as a sublime genius on a par with Joyce, Rilke or Borges is
a perfect mystery to everyone who has taken the trouble to read him properly.
His problem was that he worked in two of the least prestigious forms of the 20th
century – the aphorism and the philosophical essay, and so usually escapes
surveys of either literature or philosophy. Emil Cioran, who died in Paris in 1995,
was a Romanian who wrote in French and, perhaps alone among European
writers, refined his native Buddhist scepticism to a kind of terrible insomniac
enlightenment. To read him openly is to be a little reprogrammed, since he
continually turns a European tongue on mysteries it has no right, by tradition, to
approach in the first place, and somehow contrives their ghostly appearance.
"Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately it is within no
one's reach."

Misread, though, Cioran makes Beckett look like PG Wodehouse. Several young
men who failed to get the joke ended up leaping from tall buildings, taking his
advocacy of suicide as a good career move quite literally. While Cioran's French
was impeccable, his humour was unmistakably Balkan in its blackness, and thus
lost on anyone raised on a diet of Camus, Sartre and other existentialist chuckle-
bunnies. The weak should really be protected from Cioran. But what he does is
shock the reader into a brief moment of complete wakefulness, to the strange fact
of their being here.

The one undeniable advantage the aphorism has is its brevity. Whatever else you
might have against an aphorism, you can't seriously hold that it's wasted your
time, unlike that last rubbish novel you gave up on two-thirds through. So as
you'd expect, the aphorism regains a little popularity whenever time is short and
precious: no one ever sewed Thackeray into the lining of their greatcoat as they
marched off to the trenches, though he’d have taken bullet well. It was Marcus
Aurelius or Pascal. Hardly surprising that in these insecure times the twitchy
comfort of the vade mecum is back in fashion again, albeit in the form of your
mobile phone, and that steady source of comforting inanity, the text-message.
Given this – and the fact that data-overload and multi-tasking have reduced our
powers of sustained concentration to that of a lovesick guppy, the aphorism
might be ripe for a comeback.

Reading is a marvellous way to spend your time; but in terms of what will have
real consequences for our future time, our thought and conduct, we tend to be
limited to what we can remember we've read. More than anything, the aphorism
tries desperately hard to be memorable. (Of course, this is the aim of all writing,
but usually we make some attempt to conceal the desperation. Another reason
why aphorisms, when they fall, fall very hard indeed.) But perhaps they also
reflect our conviction that all the most important things we need to say must find
a way of inhabiting the single breath, the instant, if they're to shock awake our
real, breathing, present moment; because if we don't stay alive to that - we're
dead to everything.



Don Paterson

[Kelly Jones]

I'd have written the same thing, having read such attempts (of those he mentions) to be wise.

An aphorism encapsulates the man. Most aphorisms are not written by authors, but by dolts and dabblers.

No wonder he was embarrassed by aphorisms, regarding no aphorism to be a statement of truth.

An aphorism is the crystallised conclusion of reason, with the passion of the adventurer.

A genius understands emptiness in an instant; but to communicate, he has to use a series of instants, so he explains aphoristically.


.

[mensa-maniac]

I'd have written the same thing, having read such attempts (of those he mentions) to be wise.

An aphorism encapsulates the man. Most aphorisms are not written by authors, but by dolts and dabblers.

No wonder he was embarrassed by aphorisms, regarding no aphorism to be a statement of truth.

An aphorism is the crystallised conclusion of reason, with the passion of the adventurer.

A genius understands emptiness in an instant; but to communicate, he has to use a series of instants, so he explains aphoristically.


.

Mensa asks: What are the chief characteristics of genius?

[mensa-maniac]

"What makes a genius?"(documentary)

Here are three definitions of genius

1) Genius makes molehills out of mountains
2) Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles
3) When despair abounds genius finds inspiration

The chief characteristic of Genius is knowing perfection!

[mensa-maniac]

"What makes a genius?"(documentary)

Here are three definitions of genius

1) Genius makes molehills out of mountains
2) Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles
3) When despair abounds genius finds inspiration

The chief characteristic of Genius is knowing perfection!

Genius is genius thought that makes molehills out of mountains, the mediocre-minded makes mountains out of molehills!

[Animus]

"What makes a genius?"(documentary)

Here are three definitions of genius

1) Genius makes molehills out of mountains
2) Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles
3) When despair abounds genius finds inspiration

The chief characteristic of Genius is knowing perfection!

Genius is genius thought that makes molehills out of mountains, the mediocre-minded makes mountains out of molehills!

Whereever that Genius is dumping the dirt is going to be another mountain. And if that Genius spreads the dirt all over the earth, flattening the earth out so that the highest obstruction is a mole-hill, it won't be long before the ecosystems of the world are fucked. Lots of animals thrive in high-altitude climates, and others required the protection from natural elements (e.g. wind) that is provided by a verticle rock face.

[mensa-maniac]

"What makes a genius?"(documentary)

Here are three definitions of genius

1) Genius makes molehills out of mountains
2) Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles
3) When despair abounds genius finds inspiration

The chief characteristic of Genius is knowing perfection!

Genius is genius thought that makes molehills out of mountains, the mediocre-minded makes mountains out of molehills!

Whereever that Genius is dumping the dirt is going to be another mountain. And if that Genius spreads the dirt all over the earth, flattening the earth out so that the highest obstruction is a mole-hill, it won't be long before the ecosystems of the world are fucked. Lots of animals thrive in high-altitude climates, and others required the protection from natural elements (e.g. wind) that is provided by a verticle rock face.

Mensa says: Genius has no dirt, dirt is what speweth out of the mouth of the ignorant individual, and if genius did carry dirt, than the genius uses the dirt to plant a seed!

[Animus]

Genius is genius thought that makes molehills out of mountains, the mediocre-minded makes mountains out of molehills!

Whereever that Genius is dumping the dirt is going to be another mountain. And if that Genius spreads the dirt all over the earth, flattening the earth out so that the highest obstruction is a mole-hill, it won't be long before the ecosystems of the world are fucked. Lots of animals thrive in high-altitude climates, and others required the protection from natural elements (e.g. wind) that is provided by a verticle rock face.[/quote]

Mensa says: Genius has no dirt, dirt is what speweth out of the mouth of the ignorant individual, and if genius did carry dirt, than the genius uses the dirt to plant a seed![/quote]

Dirt is what you post most of the time. One of the general themes here is an acceptance of non-dual thinking, but every one of your posts has a bias toward optimism and positive thinking. You haven't escaped the clutches of duality, but have become a victim of postmodernity and nothing more. For you to speak of ignorance as such is humorous to say the least. The slightest criticism of you and you get upset, if you don't overlook them completely. I've been criticizing your ideas for years and you also seem to think I agree with you. On your post about positive thinking, I put a million holes in your ideas, but you responded to me with the same horseshit you began with, you completely over-looked my criticism. That is typical of one who fears disapproval, and who desires to be correct. You just can't seem to see the utter shallowness of your views as a result.

"Mensa: Do you know how ridiculous this paragraph sounds to me Animus? I can agree with the first sentence, but, my words simply mean don't dwell on negative thoughts, many people dwell on bad thoughts and it drives them to committing crime, sometimes it's best not to address a bad scene, but to let it go instead. So it's best to change your mind to a better thought."

Why? I don't have to change my mind. Negative thoughts don't send me into a spiral of downward self-depression. Negativity just is, I spend as much time focusing on the negative as I do the positive. I don't need to ignore the negative or try to make it into a positive. I can easily dwell on negativity without becoming depressed. Like I said:

"When I examine two objects and I compare those objects; let us say a pen and a pencil. I look at those objects in a fashion which gives little affective weight to them. I merely look upon them as similar yet differing objects formed for a common use. I can weigh the pros and cons of the pen against those of the pencil. Then choose either one based on their effectiveness for the task which I need them for. Its possible I might "prefer" (generally speaking) pens over pencils or some nonsense, but for the sake of this discussion I merely wish to point out that we look upon some objects without fear of the cons (negatives) or need to cling to the pros (positives)."

Your "strategies" all shift toward one end of the turbulent flux that is reality. And to cope you devise means of 'ignoring' the reast of reality. So, who is the 'ignor-ant'?

[Animus]

Your response to the above statement on pros and cons, pens and pencils and the "design perspective":

"Mensa says: However we look at ourselves, most of us don't see what others see, some us do see what others see!"

My post has nothing to do with what others see, or what you don't see, it has to do with what you do see and how you manage it. Your response seems to be completely unrelated to my statements.

"Mensa says: That sounds more like being afraid of one's own feelings, but to identify opportunity in the cons might have a negative impact on you. Never be fearful of the cons, they are inferior to the pros. Never give to much thought to the cons, they are obstacles that get in your way. Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles."

How so? I said they have "no affective weight" which means they simply do not evoke emotions. How then am I afraid of that which I no longer experience? How is identifying the opportunity of cons going to have a negative impact on me when the cons themselves don't?

Again, you seem to be ignoring much of what I say to preach to me your shallow dogma which bears more resemblence to postmodernism than actual truth.

[mensa-maniac]

Your response to the above statement on pros and cons, pens and pencils and the "design perspective":

"Mensa says: However we look at ourselves, most of us don't see what others see, some us do see what others see!"

My post has nothing to do with what others see, or what you don't see, it has to do with what you do see and how you manage it. Your response seems to be completely unrelated to my statements.

"Mensa says: That sounds more like being afraid of one's own feelings, but to identify opportunity in the cons might have a negative impact on you. Never be fearful of the cons, they are inferior to the pros. Never give to much thought to the cons, they are obstacles that get in your way. Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles."

How so? I said they have "no affective weight" which means they simply do not evoke emotions. How then am I afraid of that which I no longer experience? How is identifying the opportunity of cons going to have a negative impact on me when the cons themselves don't?

Again, you seem to be ignoring much of what I say to preach to me your shallow dogma which bears more resemblence to postmodernism than actual truth.

Mensa says: Ok, I apologize I suppose, I'd rather keep peace than go off on silly frivolous tantrums. I guess I wasn't reading what you were saying, it is better that I read each paragraph and then comment. I think you're right Animus I do preach, I dictate like a teacher, but I disagree that my words are shallow.

I didn't go to university, but I did go to college. I realize I don't have alot of knowledge, maybe it would be wise if I left this place.

[Animus]

Your response to the above statement on pros and cons, pens and pencils and the "design perspective":

"Mensa says: However we look at ourselves, most of us don't see what others see, some us do see what others see!"

My post has nothing to do with what others see, or what you don't see, it has to do with what you do see and how you manage it. Your response seems to be completely unrelated to my statements.

"Mensa says: That sounds more like being afraid of one's own feelings, but to identify opportunity in the cons might have a negative impact on you. Never be fearful of the cons, they are inferior to the pros. Never give to much thought to the cons, they are obstacles that get in your way. Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles."

How so? I said they have "no affective weight" which means they simply do not evoke emotions. How then am I afraid of that which I no longer experience? How is identifying the opportunity of cons going to have a negative impact on me when the cons themselves don't?

Again, you seem to be ignoring much of what I say to preach to me your shallow dogma which bears more resemblence to postmodernism than actual truth.

Mensa says: Ok, I apologize I suppose, I'd rather keep peace than go off on silly frivolous tantrums. I guess I wasn't reading what you were saying, it is better that I read each paragraph and then comment. I think you're right Animus I do preach, I dictate like a teacher, but I disagree that my words are shallow.

I didn't go to university, but I did go to college. I realize I don't have alot of knowledge, maybe it would be wise if I left this place.

That may be incredibly unwise. The critical point is that you don't over or under value yourself in relation to your actual aptitude. The desire to leave the forum may be grounded in shame or embarrassment or some other emotion stemming from too much self-concern. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so aggressive in making my point. I'm really bad at this because of the tendency to fall back on shame and such. View me as no better than you although I might influence you toward a realization. I am interested in what is true, so the same applies to me. I really try to see the value in positive-thinking, but it often is just a method of self-delusion. Self-honesty is better than having a positive slant on the self.

[mensa-maniac]

Your response to the above statement on pros and cons, pens and pencils and the "design perspective":

"Mensa says: However we look at ourselves, most of us don't see what others see, some us do see what others see!"

My post has nothing to do with what others see, or what you don't see, it has to do with what you do see and how you manage it. Your response seems to be completely unrelated to my statements.

"Mensa says: That sounds more like being afraid of one's own feelings, but to identify opportunity in the cons might have a negative impact on you. Never be fearful of the cons, they are inferior to the pros. Never give to much thought to the cons, they are obstacles that get in your way. Genius sees opportunity where others see obstacles."

How so? I said they have "no affective weight" which means they simply do not evoke emotions. How then am I afraid of that which I no longer experience? How is identifying the opportunity of cons going to have a negative impact on me when the cons themselves don't?

Again, you seem to be ignoring much of what I say to preach to me your shallow dogma which bears more resemblence to postmodernism than actual truth.

Mensa says: Ok, I apologize I suppose, I'd rather keep peace than go off on silly frivolous tantrums. I guess I wasn't reading what you were saying, it is better that I read each paragraph and then comment. I think you're right Animus I do preach, I dictate like a teacher, but I disagree that my words are shallow.

I didn't go to university, but I did go to college. I realize I don't have alot of knowledge, maybe it would be wise if I left this place.

That may be incredibly unwise. The critical point is that you don't over or under value yourself in relation to your actual aptitude. The desire to leave the forum may be grounded in shame or embarrassment or some other emotion stemming from too much self-concern. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so aggressive in making my point. I'm really bad at this because of the tendency to fall back on shame and such. View me as no better than you although I might influence you toward a realization. I am interested in what is true, so the same applies to me. I really try to see the value in positive-thinking, but it often is just a method of self-delusion. Self-honesty is better than having a positive slant on the self.

Mensa says: What realization might you influence me toward Animus, and I'll tell you if I already perceive that realization?

Mensa says: You say that self-honesty is better than having a positive slant on the self. Now, let me offer my reply to your statement. Self-honesty is a self-recognition, recognizing yourself is the first awareness of your realization, but accepting the realization of yourself is self-honesty. That acceptance of your self-realization is positive thinking in itself. Can you see this Animus?

I am not a positive person by trying to be positive Animus, I am positive by nature. I don't have to try to be positive I already am!


Mensa says: I don't really have the desire to leave the forum, but, some educated people feel they are smarter than I am, only because they know I'm not university educated and they are, which in turn gives them the belief they're are smarter. They are only more knowledgable in subjects than I am, but that doesn't make a person smarter, it only makes them more knowledgable in those subjects. Being smart differs from being knowledgable, to be smart is like intelligence, the ability to channel your knowledge. So being smart and knowledgable are two different things, to possess both is fortunate and powerful.

I read everything you wrote Animus, but the truth is, I didn't comment after each paragraph, what I did do is comment on the whole content as I perceived it. I perceive alot Animus and I clearly see you are knowledgable, more so than I am maybe, but do you have the intelligence to do something with your knowledge Animus? Please don't be insulted by that question, but it's pertinent. I'll use myself as an example. I didn't learn my education in school, I learned it through autodidact--self-taught. I couldn't contruct a simple sentence properly, I didn't know punctuation, nor what a paragraph was. I went from being illiterate to paid professional writer, why, because I used my intelligence to obtain education! Then, I took that education and made it work for me instead of against me. And I'm taking my intelligence right to the top where my Lord and Heavenly Father wants me to be--a best seller!

[Animus]

Donna, it still sounds to me like you are focusing a lot on your own worth. Positive v Negative are value judgements. Aren't they just indicators? If there was one realization to share with you it would be that values are important, but valuing-value in a secondary way can be an unecessary neurosis. What I mean is, supposing I worked myself out to be a complete asshole, that would be my perceived value. But then what I might do is value this value in another secondary way, which causes me to hate myself, because it is me who is of low value, I am valuing the weight of my value in this case. And that is basically the convoluting pathway the ego generally takes. I really don't care if I am smarter than you. I'm not interested in being smarter than anyone. If that's what it was all about I wouldn't waste my time trying to explain anything. I realize that if you and I understood and accepted the same truths, there would be no position from which to degrade you, in the very act of sharing with you I would be destroying my own goals.

Depends on what you mean by "do you have the intelligence to do something with your knowledge Animus?"

I don't have the "intelligence" to do anything for egotistical gratification. If I wrote a book or something it is not going to be for fun or money or sex or power or prestige or identity. I have no intentions of formal education but I have tossed the idea around as perhaps a good move. Not because I want letters after my name but because others want letters after my name or they won't talk.

I was working on a bit of an autobiography maybe I'll share it with you if you are interested. I basically started off as post-traumatic sociopath who was kicked out of school by the ninth grade and just about shuffled off to one of many institutions. I was told that I had superior problem solving skills but other than that I was inept and would probably wind up a criminal of no use to society.

Since then I have studied autodidactically like yourself a range of subjects; Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience, Anatomy, Physics and Religion. And many sub-topics and minor schools within these major categories. At 19 I opened my own computer business after being certified in CompTIA A+ and studying Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE). During that time I became a member of multiple charitable organizations throughout my region and even made a concerted appeal to the federal Canadian government in the Charles Lynch press gallery on Parliament Hill with myself representing "youth opinion." After two years my business failed and I took up a job as a customer support technician. Since then I haven't made much attempt toward a career. I don't really care about it to be honest. I'm more interested in exploring the mind. And please bear in mind that the only reason I am telling you this right now is because you asked.

"And I'm taking my intelligence right to the top where my Lord and Heavenly Father wants me to be--a best seller!"

How is that wiser than what anyone else is doing? Everyone wants to be a best-seller. See I'm trying to figure out how to communicate ideas that help people and if I'm not a best-seller than that's okay. If God wanted me to be a best-seller, he'll make me one, I don't need to attach myself to such ideas.