Monday 12 December 2005

Pic of the day: "Impressionable young women should not watch nonsense." Too much nonsense could make you mad. Or a genius. Or a mad genius. (The anime Shuffle may or may not count as nonsense in itself...)

I, genius

In the latest issue of Illustrert Vitenskap, the Norwegian popular science magazine, there is a long article about genius and madness. Scientists have found that people who are creative geniuses, and their relatives, are more likely to suffer from certain mental illnesses. Mentioned in particular were manic-depressive disorder ("bipolar" in American) and schizophrenia.

This isn't the first time I have seen this connection mentioned, although the earlier mentions have been news flashes rather than full-blown articles, and in English magazines (which tend to be a little ahead of Scandinavian ones on most research... after all, even Norwegian universities tend to publish in English). But even then, it ought not to be news. I've known for quite a while that this must be so. Then again I am a genius.

At least in the European usage, genius has two different meanings. One is a person with IQ above 120. The other is someone who makes a unique intellectual contribution, whether it be a piece of art or a scientific theory. Obviously the two meanings are not the same. You can have a high IQ but not think new and unique thoughts. The article explains this in great detail. They introduce a concept of "latent inhibition", or content filtering. Most people have a high degree of such filtering. Once they have marked something as irrelevant, they ignore it from then on. If it ever becomes relevant later or in a different context, they are unlikely to know until told so.

In contrast, the genius and the madman both have low filtering. They notice a lot of things that just fly by most people once they've seen them once or twice. In the genius, this wealth of detail is drawn into the creative process. In the madman, the surplus content overwhelms the mind and it bursts at the seams.

Years ago when I first acquainted myself with C.G. Jung's analytical psychology in same detail, I noticed and agreed with his assessment: The collective subconscious is filled with mythical content, and in some people there is a stronger pressure from the subconscious and it forces the content to bubble up into the conscious, in dreams or daydreams or even hallucinations if the pressure is too strong. The weak mind is destroyed by this, while the strong mind is enriched. Jung saw it as his calling to help people process such inflows of mythical content and let them absorb it into their conscious self, by sharing with them the knowledge he had about the nature and structure of the subconscious, and by accompanying them on the journey and giving them courage. This way, people who would otherwise have gone mad, instead grew stronger. But some people were beyond such help, as their brains simply were not able to keep up with the onslaught.

Later research, decades later, has shown that the typical schizophrenic brain is reduced in brain mass, with larger fluid-filled rooms than normal. One theory says that flu during pregnancy can cause this. (I guess it is a step up from the "cold mothers" theory that prevailed when I was young.) In any case, it is most likely why they are unable to handle their inner life. Their healthy relatives are more likely to become creative. There are probably lots of people with reduced brains who never go mad, just dumb, and who plod along. Plodding along will get you far in a society designed for that. These people live their small lives and die peacefully, and never get their small brains dissected by eager scientists while students watch and fidget.

***

I am almost certainly still a genius by the more technical definition. When I was younger, I tended to clock in at an IQ of around 140. I am certainly a bit lower now: Not only because my mental faculties are fading with age, but also because the bar is raised. The average IQ measured by a constant test will rise by around 3 points per decade. Since the average is by definition 100, the demands are simply raised, occasionally by issuing new tests. I look at some of the most recent tests, and the abstract geometric shapes don't really make any sense to me. I am rather verbal and analytical by nature, with some musical and intuitive skill. SpatiaI is my weakness, I score worse than a girl, to the point where I've been suspecting actual brain damage sometime in early childhood. (I also favor my right hand to an exceptional degree, which is consistent with a right-hemisphere lesion.) Luckily this is pretty isolated. I get lost easily in new surroundings (including computer garnes, to the exasperation of my team mates) and I dance like a robot with faltering batteries, but cIassic "intellectual" skills are still operating near peak capacity.

I am not so much proud of my intelligence, just as I am not really ashamed of being a disastrous dancer and navigator. From experience I know that this is how I was born, or at least shaped very early in life. If I had excelled at an area where I was weak by nature, that might be a cause for pride. As it is, I observe it in a rather detached way, thankfulness pretty much the only emotion. I know that even though my artistic side is crushed by some arrangement in my brain, I still have a fuller deck to play with than the average human.

But I haven't really become a genius in the second meaning of the word. I do think new and original thoughts, but they tend to be inconsequential. Not just because some of them are about computer games, which fade really fast into the graveyards of history. But even when I think great thoughts about life, the universe and everything, they aren't so great that nobody have thought them before.

Of course, most people not being geniuses, they simply don't want to think about life, the universe and everything. Except when they are drunk. (The article did mention that alcohol, among other things, reduce the "latent inhibition". Sadly it also reduces the inhibition against violence and trying to have sex with random strangers, so there is usually not all that much time for philosophy. And in any case, it is all filtered out when they wake up the next day.)

***

In any case, I do have exactly this tendency to notice unrelated things and try to relate them. I can easily see how this causes people to go all New Age and stuff. If the flow of unrelated things grows much stronger, or (as is more common) the mind is much weaker, then you start seeing connections that aren't there. So do I from time to time. But worse, you stop seeing that they aren't there, or maybe not, and become convinced that the face in the wood really is Jesus and the recurring dreams really are sent by aliens. At this point you stop being all that useful, I think. It is in the borderland of sanity that work must be done. Deep behind enemy lines you will more likely get captured, and no one can follow you there anyway.

I've talked about "consensus reality" sometimes, a concept which I admit I borrow from a role playing game. But I think this is a useful concept. There is a real world which most of us agree on. Then there are people who live in their own world which doesn't mesh well with that of others. They believe the government is after them, but the government does not believe so. They believe they can tell the future, but others don't even believe their version of the past. (Not only mental patients, you may say the same about communists, the Iranian president and Jehovah's Witnesses.)

I feel that I live on the edge of consensus reality, the reality that our civilization agrees on. I have experienced things that go beyond those boundaries, but I also have the brainpower to not chase those experiences and throw myself out in the sea of chaos that surrounds our reality. Instead I stand on the shore, fishing, fishing for new ideas, to feed the front row of the masses so they can extend our reality by a few inches before I die. Or perhaps shortly afterwards. Those who live will see.