Why does society exclude and marginalise creative intelligence?

[total-recoil]

One night last week, while reading up texts online, I came across the following article which I think may possibly be of interest to some of you. Especially anyone here who may not have done very well in the classroom or even parents whose children were judged to be slow at school.
I need to stress this is not my article but happen to agree with its contents 100 per cent:

"The ideal Head Girl is an all-rounder: performs extremely well in all school subjects and has a very high Grade Point Average. She is excellent at sports, Captaining all the major teams. She is also pretty, popular, sociable and well-behaved.
The Head Girl will probably be a big success in life, in whatever terms being a big success happens to be framed (she will gravitate towards such aspects of life) - so she might in some times and places make a Good Marriage and do a great job of raising a family; in another time and place she might go to a top-notch college and get a top-notch job - and pursue a glamorous and infertile lifestyle of 'serial monogamy'; with desirable mates.
But the Head Girl is not, cannot be, a creative genius.Modern society is run by Head Girls, of both sexes, hence there is no place for the creative genius.
Modern Colleges aim at recruiting Head Girls, so do universities, so does science, so do the arts, so does the mass media, so does the legal profession, so does medicine, so does the military...And in doing so, they filter-out and exclude creative genius.
The genius is pretty much everything the Head Girl is not. He is lop-sided in his abilities - truly excellent at some things or maybe just one thing, he is either hopeless or bored by many others. He won't work hard for long periods at things he does not want to do. He will not gravitate to the prestige areas of life, or cannot or will not do the networking necessary to get-on.The Head Girl can never be a creative genius because she does what other people want by the standards they most value. She will worker harder and at a higher standard in doing whatever it is that social pressure tells her to do - and she will do this by whatever social standards prevail, only more thoroughly.
Meanwhile the creative genius will do what he does because he must.
The Head Girl will not ever want to alienate potentially powerful allies.
Meanwhile the creative genius is indifferent or hostile to the opinions of others so long as he knows he is right.
The Head Girl is great to have around, everybody thinks she is wonderful.
Meanwhile the creative genius is at best a person who divides opinion, strongly, in both directions - at worst often a signed-up member of the awkward squad.The more selective the social system, the more it will tend to privilege the Head Girl and eliminate the creative genius.
Committees, peer review processes, voting - anything which requires interpersonal agreement and consensus - will favour the Head Girl and exclude the creative genius.
(Not least because committees are staffed by Head Girls, of both sexes, who naturally favour their own kind.)We live in a Head Girl's world - which is also a world where creative genius is marginalized and disempowered to the point of near-complete invisibility."

 

[total-recoil]

I think the above just hit me like a bolt of lightning when I came across it. I know this is spot on through personal experience and due to the fact I met a lot of academic, high achievers over the years as well as gifted individuals. My best friend, for example, was gifted with very high intelligence and outstanding musical ability. He's no longer alive now which is a real pity as I found out later on he'd been diagnosed with aspergers as well as Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). As I recall he was outstanding in pure mathematics and also spent hours practising lead guitar (he also gave private classes to guitar students but totally lacked the ability to slow stuff down for them so they would continue). Another friend I came across seems to have schizophrenia to the point it's really tough going engaging him in any normal conversation. Yet, having taken some time to know him, I discovered he graduated from some elite electrical engineering/physics institutes years ago but his mental health issues caused him to more or less drop out from mainstream society later on. So, to this day, he walks around with a briefcase full of technical books and wears outlandish clothes.
I have also met a good deal of very high achieving academics. They are all very good and sometimes a bit quirky but I often detected a certain inflexibility in their desire to cling to accepted norms and could become prickled if asked awkward questions. There was this concept of a "right answer" that fitted.
Anyway, not sure how many people agree with this but I do know my own feeling is society definitely promotes more the superficial conformist but rejects the unorthodox, creative misfit. In fact, the tragedy is that a great deal of highly gifted or intelligent children are dismissed as substandard, low I.Q., unpopular day dreamers with possible rejection by fellow classmates and a resulting unhappy childhood. A certain percentage of such children either go on to suffer ongoing psychological trauma (lack of self esteem, confidence) or in rarer cases even wind up with anti-social tendencies.

 

[tw3]

As one with a very high IQ, I found early in life that most people are intimidated. They feel as if their intellects won't be respected so they avoid the association. The "head girl (and boy)" types make them feel comfortable.

Teachers treated me differently after they saw my IQ test results, some better, some worse. In 9th grade English I was cruising along with B's and C's until the teacher found out my "potential," after which my grades for the same quality of work became D's and F's. By the end of the term she had me failing and recommended I repeat 9th grade. (All other courses had passing grades). The standards for me were raised because of my IQ, so I should repeat the grade??? In the end the teacher gave in to rationality so I left 9th grade.

As an Aspie I had enough trouble understanding life. After this episode I retreated further into myself. I made no friends. I hated school.
Because of my IQ, in spite of my 76 average in high school, I was accepted into an honors physics and math college program. This did not last very long because by then I was really not motivated.

To make this long story short, I got married to an NT who motivated me to get a degree in accounting and then pass the CPA exam (paper and pencil version). We (she) raised five children and we came to The Lord 34 years ago,
A few years ago (4-5) I became intrigued with Christian apologetics which led me into the study of philosophy which led me back to science. I've become the voracious student I should have been for years. I've been permitted to teach some lower level courses and I love it.
I still have Aspie moments while interacting with staff and students, but now they accept me as an absent minded professor.

I'm just sharing this so you know you're not alone.

 

[total-recoil]

I guess I should point out I don't believe creative intelligence or giftedness must always go hand in hand with the autism spectrum. I mean, John Lennon was incredibly gifted but I'd imagine he was pretty neurotypical, maybe with a dash of autism due to his eccentricity and violent temper outbursts.
As for the I.Q. test I've always been highly skeptical of it as an overall measure. The problem is one of the most fundamental ingredients of giftedness is persistance at a fanatical level and the I.Q. test simply leaves that out. I mean, there were definitely people who were far better at maths than Einstein which is why Einstein needed such people to help him sort out some of the maths problems he might encounter. The difference was Einstein was hugely driven.
I.Q. also leaves out stuff such as vision. You have to cling to the possibility an idea will work in the first place.
Anyway, I do think there is truth in this Top Girl analysis. Everybody just assumes the most intelligent people are successful and popular. One girl I'm really in awe of is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova who may now be one of the most unpopular women in Russia. I read many of her articles that concerned the alliance in Russia between the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin's United Russia Party. The fact she staged a protest in an Orthodox Church in order to highlight repression of minorities and democracy in her country, in my opinion, marks her out as exceptional (despite the fact the average Russian would scoff at that). Yet while Nadezhda goes on hunger strike in a labour camp for daring to challenge the authorites, you can see people are gradually beginning to wake up to the situation she warned of years ago. Hence calls now coming to boycott the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
You could say that's what I mean when society alienates those who dare to follow their own outlook and ideas. Had Tolokonnikova simply sucked up to her teachers at Moscow University and toed the line she may now have had a top paid job as a philosophy teacher instead of being in a labour camp.
"Because of my IQ, in spite of my 76 average in high school, I was accepted into an honors physics and math college program. This did not last very long because by then I was really not motivated."
Well, in some ways I also look back at uni life as more hype than substance. I never really liked being expected to follow a system that everybody should follow and another major gripe was the courses were too fast to really go into depth.

 

[tree]

"When creative people propose their ideas,
others often view them as counterproductive,
bad or even foolish. Creative ideas are often
rejected and the person who proposed them
is viewed with suspicion and perhaps disdain
and derision.

Creative ideas are, by definition both novel and
valuable, so why are they rejected?"


http://www.openwindows.se/ow2/doc/Claus_M/Creative_Intelligence-CMC[1].pdf