Does genius require social isolation?

Socialising and relationships seem to matter more to people than just about anything else (excluding money perhaps?). While it might make life more enjoyable, I suspect is not very conductive to intellectual development. It makes people too distracted, and makes their lives too hectic and complicated. I doubt many of the great minds in history (inventors, composers, scientists, writers, etc.) were too preoccupied with socialising.

 

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preoccupation with socializing does what it says. it binds you to the society, and along with that can come peer pressue to accept the consensual accpetance of semantic reality

for example--THE drug of choice, and what i accepted and pushed by our culture is alcohol (ciggies are more and more being demonized). So you have the formally acceptable form of drinking and socialzing. in more extreme forms you get rituals of young men being spurred onto hold their head back and their 'friends' pour all manner of alcohol down their throats. This is supposeld y a'manly' rite of passage. what is SOCIALLY ignoraed however is tha alcohol is basically--the shit that gets you offf--is a colourless liquid, AND it is poisonous. So what these so-called frinds are doing is pouring litres of posion into their 'friend's' physical system, and then are truly surprised if he later dies of alcoholic poisoning

Then there is the girls. Now we have --pushed by mass media--girls livin is large like the boys. where i live this is a huge problem. on weekends we have groups of yung women, and not so young women falling into roads, mooning, flashin tits, collapsing in their puks, etc all pissed out of their minds. The club owners exploit all this by giving free drinks before such and such a time, and to seduce them into their clubs, and the drinks ARe alcolholic but are also saturated with fruity flavourse. recipe for fukin DIASTER, more and more people are getting chirrosis of the liver. a condition only found out about when its too late.....

that is the IDEa of socialization, yand young people ge suked into it through the pressure to be seen to fit in and be 'sociable'........

 

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But what is the point of being a "genius"? Humans are social creatures, and regardless of your intellect, is there any point in being one? You say living socially may make living more enjoyable, so why not do it? I don't necessarily mean go out and get shitfaced (I can't legally drink, so I generally don't), but I mean if you don't worry about anything resembling an afterlife in the religious sense, why not do what you want and what feels good?

Geniuses die too. If you enjoy being a socially inept genius (inept genious--I like that), then do it. You certainly won't know everything, as social interaction is a form of intellect, along with the traditional sciences. Genius is a very egotistical word anyway. If you dedicate your life to worldly knowledge, then you obviously have a purpose; it is either to help the world, or help your ego.

But alas, I find myself to be very asocial anyway. I know many people, yet I greatly prefer to be all alone doing what I please, rather than conforming to leave my comfort zone. I'm a total genius.

 

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I remember reading an article which said that autistic children can achieve high intellectual development precisely because of their ability to lock out the outside world and concentrate on their thought. Well, different conditions need to be present also and I think it applies only to certain degrees of autism.

Today, for some reason, people think that individuals who don't interact with others as much are lonely. They forget that alone is not the same as lonely and that desired isolation brings happiness.

 

Exactly - as someone who is (technically, by the almost useless by now IQ tests) a genius; being drunk with friends or hotties (to a certain point - because then the drunkeness starts to work against you), is equally as satisfying as working on biology.

 

Many of the great minds in history worked hard and played hard.
It's not socializing that is the fault when you surround yourself with thong wearing motherfuckers that listen to R/B.
When Jean Sibelius and Mika Waltari drank, ate and wrote for 2 weeks straight in a five star restaurant leaving behind a 20k bill, it was socializing at it's best. You think Mozart did not enjoy Vienna's social circles?
Not to mention the absinth ridden beculiarities sitting in wine cellars.

The 'problem' arrises when TV and cellphones dictate your life for you. When you follow every little rebel-beat that moistens you up. And when you find yourself lost and vacous, you make some observations about the insinuating bastards who surround you, but do nothing- for it is friday night and your hands are shaking. This is the decay of modern society, not exactly the breading ground for geniuses. And even if some arrise, they just go and turn their eyes on financial matters and/or party tricks.
People turn to inane bullshit and mind numbing pussyhunt's rather than do anything even remotely innovative. And when the MTV party is on 24/7 you dont stop untill you're 65, then you think 'holy fuck, what have i done'.

Shit, it's the quality of the parties you attend to that prescribe your persona and intelligence.

If you're sniffing glue with Bobby and Drake, you are most likely not a genius.

Im off to drain my blood so i can mix multiple eightballs in it.. you know, hardcore wicca evening coming up.

 

I think this was a worthy topic for discussion. Just from personal experience, I always usually preferred being alone because although having an active social life is fun, I never cared about it enough to want to make it a consistent part of my life. For a long time I lived a sort of lifestyle where I was ALWAYS alone. Now it's nearly the complete opposite - I'm surrounded with a social life at almost every living moment. It is extremely distracting for me to focus on anything that I would focus on otherwise; like spiritual and intellectual cultivation. Instead, I am spending time with friends, in school, or at work, and that is mostly the substance of my life in this moment of time. It distracts and suppresses the spirit, at least for me; and as pleasurable (and empty) as it is, I hope to rearrange my life where this is not so.

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Genius IMO does not require social isolation. In some cases, I would guess it might cause social isolation. For example, a person that thinks in a highly logical level may feel very isolated amidst a group that think and act on a common level. In a way it is an intellectual thing. Mainly it is a a communication thing. Logical people have to understand that the way they communicate is vastly different from the way common thinkers communicate.

Imagine the difficulty in talking to people about a subject in a logical manner while your friend is speaking of the same subject based on a common world view. A point that you could logically consider irrelevant might be of huge importance to your friend.


Another point is this. You can cultivate your genius and be socialble at the same time. It just depends on who you are being sociable with. It can benifit you or take away from you. I myself spend time with close friends that benifit my intellectual cultivation in no way whatsoever. But I am able to talk to them, and have fun with them regardless.
I do however tend to keep at bay from those that are seriously obsessed with having no regard for logic, and choosing to live their lives steeped in false bliss.

 

To a point, yes. Our lives FEEL longer when we're younger because our brains go through an amazing learning curve that tails off after adulthood, neurons and electrons firing constantly until then. However, Life becomes repetitive, repetivity promotes the mundane, which in turn is the worst enemy of genius.

Example - I've often wondered what the apex of female beauty would look like. I have thousands of Mpegs of women, all amazingly beautiful and I consider myself quite a connoisseur of feminine pulchritude, but for a long time, I've wondered what the ultimate face would look like, this year more so than before. Try as I might, no image ever came to my mind, until recently.

I fell ill a few weeks ago, tried to sleep and did so in short bursts, a very rare pattern for me. In a fevered dream, she arrived. It wasn't even a sexual dream, just a group of friends at a dinner party, and BAM! There she sat, the beauty gene in it's most flawless externalisation. I remained transfixed, exactly as I would if this had been real, unable to eat or talk, just stared at her until the dream ended. If I could remember her face, and was able to graphically reproduce and publish her image, it would transfix the (male) world making every beautiful woman hideous in comparison.

Now, I can't paint/draw. Nor am I a guy who remembers MOST of his dreams. The percentage of people who fall into both categories must be extremely low indeed. Throw in the tiny percentage of people who have seen the perfect x in a dream, and you understand why paintings such as Mona Lisa, or the works of Dali are so rare.

That image was made possible by the fever breaking the cycle of my life and introducing a new level of consciousness. Whether by fever, by isolation from the mundane/ignorant, by drugs etc, the daily cycle of 'sameness' must be broken for true genius to thrive. What we understand as genius is only random circumstances of regularity being broken among random individuals and allowing whatever seed of inspiration the individual has been given to grow.


Jaybee

 

I think you raise a valid point. Socializing on any degree is very distracting. I know when I confine myself I do much better with my studies. I don't know that there have been scientific studies done to bring evidence to the case, but it would be interesting to research.

 

It depends on the type of socializing that one goes to. If you enjoy computers then any type of gathering where computers are being discussed or anything dealing with them would be a social place to go and fit right in. Many other events that people tend to enjoy like reading where one can attend a bookstore book preview or poetry reading there would be another gathering of similar people. The point is we all need to get out and about every so often no matter who we are no matter what others say about staying inside away from others.

Going out doesn't mean that you must talk to people but that would be a good idea since your already there wherever it may be. Just have to find a place that you like to visit and go.

 

Geez, the question was, "Does genius require social isolation?", not, "What things do grownups do apart from work?".

Jaybee.

 

No.

The geniuses I've met love being around other people -even if they don't appear to enjoy it- but don't like interacting directly. Unless that means causing confusion.

 

That explains Goethe's womanizing.

Jaybee from His Cast:

You haven't gotten laid in a long, long time, have you?

--
I like it.
Useless nerds spending Saturday night arguing about whether socializing is okay.

 

haha, you're on of us now, Xev!

 

Only thousands?

 

Why do people place strong emphasis on sexual activity?
A person may sleep with others often or a person may not.
You act as if that says someting more about somebody than what it is says.
Meaningless invalidation or flaming for fun. Who knows.

Let's all go out and party every Friday night and weekend. Anything other than frivilous activity tends to be seen as not having a life.

 

I must say this turned out to be one of the most disappointingly unintelligent discussions I've ever been in. Is anyone here even old enough to drive?

 

my 2 Sri Lanka Rupee (about 2 cents)
there is a balance to be found in everything. virtue is the mean between 2 extremes. for example, bravery is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. there is nothing better for me than to advance mankind, but it does not mean that I should be a shut-in.

 

It started off well enough, but then I jinxed it. It's always been the curse of my life to be surrounded by the illiterati. Simpletons follow me around everywhere, even HERE, like unwanted puppies.

I consider 8 days to be an eternity, so yeah, I am quite definitely up for it. Interesting how YOU replied on a Saturday night, btw.

33,362 to be exact. One word...filesharing.


Jaybee