Coded violet.

Monday 3 September 2001

Lily and thistles

Pic of the day: A lily among thorns.

Terrible things to waste

Some wise man (or perhaps he was just lucky) said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I am inclined to agree intensely with that. But there remains the question of what exactly is "waste" and what is not. And once again, it turns out that while few agree on the principle, many agree on what is reality.

As the years have marched by, I have met a few highly intelligent people. And, God willing, I'm going to meet a couple of them this week. For tomorrow I leave for the west coast of Norway again to meet my earthly father and brothers. I do not know why they asked me to come back; they rarely even mail me in a normal year, nor I them, unless there is some great tragedy befallen someone. But I have the time and money to go there this fall, so I will.

My best friend, the SuperWoman, is about to have her final exams now. Naturally she is on my mind too. Yes, there is a connection here.

***

I'm pretty bright myself. From high school onward, when I attended school almost every day, I was among the two or three best in every class (except in sports). The other top contenders were typically driven career people, whose life was focused on studying day and night in order to become a doctor or veterinarian or dentist. (These careers require particularly good grades here in Norway, because the universities only take in a few students each year. Lately, it has become more common to study abroad. But our world was smaller back then.)

I got along well enough with the study maniacs, but nothing more. We were rarely friends in any meaningful way - we did not have a lot in common. I guess I kind of pitied them for their narrow focus. In retrospect, I suppose they pitied me for my lack of ambition. Certainly SuperWoman does. Oh, those finals ... that's the medicine study. She'll start working at a hospital this fall.

"I'm certainly not going to be a farmer's wife somewhere in rural Norway" said SuperWoman on one occasion. I can't remember the occasion, but I remember that even then it seemed to come out of the blue. But it's not hard to guess what gave rise to the comment. I have known one other person with the same almost inhuman level of intelligence. That was my mother, a farmer's wife in rural Norway. In all honesty, my brothers are probably also more intelligent than me, though not to such an extreme degree, I think.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. But who wastes it more: The one who invests it all in a career, or the one who uses it at home?

***

After Super's family left Smiths Friends, they started to think in the same way as other people. And they asked me: "Why are you doing dull work at an office? Why are you not a researcher or something?" I'd say that is pretty much a coincidence. My parents were dirt poor, and could not have paid for a college education for me if they wanted. Nor did I want to ask them. I would have to borrow a lot of money to take any further education. And frankly, I did not believe I would live so many years in this world. I expected to leave it much sooner.

So it's not really a conscious choice for me to avoid higher education and an academic career. Not in the same way as I have chosen to live without a TV or a car, for instance. It kind of just happened. I needed to get a job, and I got a job. I've kind of slid onward from there. But it's OK to have an easy job. I would have liked one that was even less theoretical, so I could have my mind entirely free to think about life, the universe, and how to conquer the world with an army of magically enhanced trolls.

I think I was born to be a philosopher. My father is like that too, even though he doesn't write much. From my mother I inherited a kind of anti-dyslexia: While I can certainly make a typing error, I can pick up the use of almost any word from context and add it to my active vocabulary. Including in foreign languages, such as English. So, writing strange thoughts is in my genetic code. It is what I was born to do, in the same way that some were born to drink themselves to death. It would take a conscious daily fight (and probably a loving spouse) to stay away from it.

If I had not been allergic to several substances on a farm, I would probably have tried to become a farmer somehow. That's in my blood too. We've been farmers since the dawn of time, it seems. But whether I am a farmer, or an academic, or just some helpful computer guy at the office, I would never invest my whole mind in it. I need to have some of it free to ponder the meaning of life and death, and why freedom is better than slavery and free trade better than foreign aid. I need to understand my world.

The unexamined life ... is a terrible thing to waste.


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