A rant on the topic of the insufferable genius

[asakiyume]

I posted a version of this as a comment on a Goodreads review, but it's more appropriate for an LJ post.

I really hate the notion that talent and genius excuse a person from appalling behavior. The trade-off that people seem to accept and be fascinated by goes like this: "On the one hand, the character is selfish, self-centered, heartless, demanding, you name it. On the other: they're a genius! Such art! [or: such science! or: such insights!]"

Stuff worth doing--art, science, whatever--takes time and concentration, and any time a person is putting into that is time not spent doing other stuff, so sure: a person dedicated to [fill in] is going to be less available for whatever the folks surrounding them want them to be available for, and this can seem selfish, and people can argue back and forth about where to draw the line. But even a person who's giving themselves pretty much 100 percent to whatever-it-is can still be kindly and considerate when they're interacting with people..... or they can be assholes.

But this goes for people who *aren't* 100 percent dedicated to [fill in]--just ordinary people living ordinary lives, trying to balance out all the demands they face. It's the same struggle, just less extreme. But we take the notion of dedication to [whatever], add in the fairy dust of "genius," and then, voilà, people [or at least, characters] are given a kind of carte blanche.

When you ramp it up to "genius," then you get to add in the notion that their contributions to overall society (their discovery of a cure for a horrible ailment, or their creation of a heartbreaking work of staggering beauty, etc.) are worth--or not worth! the novel or biography will be happy to delve into this--their flaws in other aspects of life.

Maybe it's that kindness, patience--all the things that the Sherlock Holmeses of the world are excused from engaging in--are undervalued. You can be a genius in mathematics or painting or philosophy or physics, but we don't talk much about geniuses in kindness. Those people get to be portrayed as lovable losers--"He spends all his time chatting affably with neighbors but can't finish the Big Project at work."

... The problem with expanding this rant is that I start seeing nuances and exceptions and arguments with my own position.

... Short-form summary: Life is full of conflicting demands, and there's interest in how people manage it, or fail to manage it. But the valorization of the selfish genius--I'm sick of it.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I met a guy whose family had done this to him. He was their sparkling genius son, and he didn't ever have to help with anything, because he was their brilliant boy, and human interaction and chores were above him. I met him when he was 20 and I was 18, and we were in a program for physics undergrads to do research. The thirteen of us did a cooking coop, and not only did this guy not have any idea how to make spaghetti with directions on the side of the box, he considered it appropriate for him to try to whine and manipulate the rest of us into doing all the cooking for him for an entire summer.

And one of the really pathetic things about this was that by the standards of the research group, he was not actually all that brilliant. He was probably in the bottom half of the group in terms of abilities and skills even in the lab. So for his family he was the inconsiderate genius, but interactions and chores were beneath him...but for us, he was the schmuck who needed someone (coughmecough) to stand over him to teach him to make a salad. Occasionally the designated brilliant kid in a family, a school, whatever, really is brilliant enough that people will always cut them slack. But it's not the way to bet.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah; it's really a very necessary part of parenting to get a person ready to pull their weight around others. I feel sorry for that kid, annoying as he must have been.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

He actually wrote to me later and thanked me for standing over him and making him learn to do extremely basic kitchen stuff, which surprised the heck out of me.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That seems to suggest that he had good social instincts that were honed all wrong by his upbringing.