Freud himself, so it has been said, is the only man who has been able to impress his own neurosis on the world, and remould humanity in his own image.
(This has become a rather long, evolving entry.)
The true hierarchy is class. Unfortunately, it does not exist anymore as it did in the past. Lately, we have even experienced what Paul Fussell called prole drift.
The hierarchy of alphas, betas etc. is not applicable to past societies,
especially those in which good breeding was common and expected. “Alpha
behavior” would have been seen as very rude. It is actually hard to imagine
that in the past, at least during more or less civilized ages, say, the
times of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant or Goethe, such a system
would have been taken seriously, not to speak of imagining one of the greats
to seriously come up with it.
It is telling that it only came up in our decadent and vulgar age.
More importantly, geniuses, of course, cannot be ranked in this rather pseudo-scientific system – as scientific as psychoanalysis. Jack London’s White Fang is hardly applicable to Goethe’s Weimar or any other era of high culture.
In Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire, Hans Jürgen Eysenck writes:
Freud himself, so it has been said, is the only man who has been able to impress his own neurosis on the world, and remould humanity in his own image.
Saying “Nietzsche was a gamma” is ridiculous. Nietzsche, whatever one may
think of him, was brilliant, a genius. I rather see this ranking system as
a form of revenge by the mediocre against those who are excellent, geniuses
in particular; who are then denigrated, despite their incredible gifts.
Especially since it is not bound to intelligence or education: anybody can
almost be anything. An uneducated, unintelligent man can be an “alpha”,
whereas someone of good breeding, who is intelligent and well-educated is
classified as “gamma” (Nietzsche, for example).
As I understand it, this is even part of how this supposed “hierarchy” works –
I just wonder why anyone should take it seriously then.
I do not understand why it now dominates the discourse. These greek label
terms are thrown around all the time as if they meant something, forgetting
that many outside do not even have a clue what they mean.
It seems cultish, annoying and hardly comparable to the high quality work of
real rightists and reactionaries – I am speaking of Moeller Bruck,
Spengler, Georg Quabbe, Wilhelm Stapel, Edgar Julius
Jung; and more importantly Donoso Cortés, de Maistre or
de Bonald, let alone Goméz Dávila.
It is claimed that the hierarchy describes how men rank or see other men, but it is perfectly clear that most who make use of it are using it to rank how men are seen by women (which has a lot to do with looks, not attitude). Even in the first case, class has been the real ranking system in the past that divided men. An “alpha peasant” is ludicrous. You think Louis XIV would have cared? Being an alpha among homeless people – where is that relevant? If there are indeed alphas among homeless people, why attach value to this label? A tough guy with “alpha” characteristics and nine years of high school working at MacDonald’s on the one side – and on the other side someone like Nietzsche, academically successful. The latter will be seen as gamma or beta if among the former and his clique, though a Nietzsche is higher status-wise from a general point of view compared to the former. Though it is hard to believe they would even meet. Why would they have anything to do with each other?
And how did this dynamic play out among, say, Goethe and Schiller? Nietzsche and Burckhardt?
Which brings us back to the problem that 1) a man who derives his self-worth from outside himself, especially from how women, who, as is known, are not even smarter on average than men, perceive him, seems rather fragile and not at all masculine; and 2) if one is ugly or has a grotesque face, no amount of “alpha attitude” will make up for that. No matter how often it is pointed out that the hierarchy applies not just to how good some men are with women, it is pretty clear that this is the meat of it.
The harsh truth applies again: genetics is destiny. A good looking man will always have a more positive effect on everyone around him; he will be treated better. He can get away with doing and saying things an ugly man cannot. (See also what Clayton Atreus wrote about it.)
Those who deny this are just as delusional about reality as the leftists who still believe that intelligence is not hereditary, that everybody can achieve anything academically. Who believe programs like Head Start are a good idea.
Head Start actually shows how important the truth genetics is destiny is. No amount of environmental influence, no amount of learning will turn someone with below average or even just average intelligence into someone capable of getting a PhD; just as no amount of training and self-improvement will magically transform someone from being ugly to becoming a model, or even good looking. Genetics is destiny.
Please deal with the facts. The sooner, the better, because then we are able to do something about it. This is the whole reason I am making this point. We need eugenics. We need to prevent people from being born who suffer all their lives due to their genetic traits, people like me, for example.
Even Vox Day agrees in his Darkstream 340: Life is more than suffering (around 33:05). His reasoning is pretty dubious, though. It does not matter if one is talking about a “one in a hundred” or a “one in two” chance (in terms of being genetically predisposed to psychotic mental illnesses): if you are mentally ill, you have no business in having children. If you do, you should be killed. You are rolling dice. Full stop.
(I wrote the above—that they be killed—most likely in a bad mood. I would
say that, while I am a Christian and believe we have free will and are
responsible for our actions, I also think that men and women shouldn’t be
blamed too harshly, since via the sexual revolution the whole western world
has been brainwashed. I did not live a very virtuous life either before I
became a Christian—and even now I struggle—, so if I weren’t such a sick
ugly loser (i.e., a completely different person), I might have had a
“girlfriend” as well. After all, even Kierkegaard got lured into it.
Therefore, so that I do not appear as a hypocrite, I would like to clarify
that my position is that I prefer marriage being respected again and
seeing healthy families—including healthy churches and monasteries—instead
of the sad state of affairs we have now. After all, people aren’t
even more fulfilled with their lives; the sexual revolution most likely
increased depression and resulted in more people feeling miserable.
Still, even Vox Day thinks that caution might be wise in case of mental
illness. In the end, the Christian wishes for everyone to be saved, and
therefore, while men who beat their chests and call men “gammas” and losers
do upset me, I need to work on not letting this stuff ruin my life.
After all, I share Kierkegaard’s position: I know I’m sick, and I know
most won’t understand my sickness, but I don’t wish them ill: I’d rather
see a happy or fulfilled family than men and women being depressed, lonely
or suffering in unhealthy relationships. Ideally though, we’d all become
monks and nuns.
Those who support these developments, however, should get punished in
some way.
I agree with St. Porphyrios, who, in Wounded by Love,
even rebukes some parents who went to Church, confession, took Holy Communion
and yet they did not live in the love of Christ, regardless of their Church
attendance. Instead they quarreled, and their children suffered for it.
In other words—and as hard as it often is to achieve—the key is
humbleness.
Gómez Dávila summed it up perfectly:
Solitude teaches us to be more intellectually honest, but it induces us to be less intellectually courteous.
God does not ask for our “cooperation,” but for our humility.
Leaders, dishonest men – superficial traits usually attributed to the
ranks on the hierarchy can be found in many men.
At this point, it is clear that its goal is to denigrate individuals,
since calling someone “gamma” or “beta” is obviously meant as an insult –
a “loser”. (Especially sexually, which is not compatible with Christianity.)
Even academically, from a status and class point of view, Nietzsche was
anything but a loser: he was only 24 years old when he became a professor,
the youngest in Germany at that time. Nietzsche was also described by most
as very genteel, completely the opposite of how he comes across in his
writings.
It therefore does not matter at all if it predicts certain behaviours – the
motivation is clear: to denigrate others and feel superior to them. How
many women one attracts really is the proxy for success here, which is
highly dubious.
And from a Christian perspective, it does not makes sense at all to take the ranking seriously. It is like thanking God for being born male or European – see Luke 18:10-14.
I would also conclude that many of the traits are genetic anyway, and can hardly be changed or overcome.
An interesting case is Christopher Langan. His comment makes me question the validity of this hierarchy even more. From his post Comments on Nazi Germany:
Nazi Germany was an evil reaction to another preexisting kind of evil. Unfortunately, while Nazi Germany has disappeared, the coherent evil that inspired it has not, and this is a large part of our current problem.
Right. As far as Germany is concerned, everyone is forever knocking the so-called “nazi stud farms” of the 1930’s and 40’s. But before one can even dream of doing this in any meaningful way, one must consider the alternatives available in the present reproductively degenerate environment … and we’re not just talking about genocidally replacing indigenous Europeans with maladaptive foreigners. (As I say, the situation here is nearly as bad. As one of the premier bouncers in New York, if not the best-known of all, I was nothing if not accessible to women. That I didn’t get any reproductive play on Eastern LI, where rich and pampered women abound, and that I simultaneously watched these decadent party girls having out-of-wedlock children by a succession of dunces, creeps, and minority players, is really quite informative when you come right down to it.) Truly, the Caucasian genome is in freefall.
Additionally, even if one would call a Pascal or a Nietzsche a gamma or omega, who cares? They will still be relevant as long as our world exists, just as Plato is still relevant. They will be with us when the alphas and their progeny are long dead and gone. It’s also rather asinine to lump them together with average joes using the label “gamma”. They were great men – geniuses.
Also, many psychopaths can be said to being good at the “social game”. I hardly see how that can be revered.
And in the end, it boils down to suicide being the only philosophical problem. If you understand this, then you have to choose between believing in God or being an atheist and acting on it.
I wrote this because I followed some blogs due to immigration becoming a real annoyance. Then this hierarchy stuff came up and was taken so seriously as if it was some kind of Gospel truth. And this is where I became sceptical: you cannot praise the vulgar “alpha” behavior and at the same time be a Christian. You have to choose. And even as an atheist, I would not have to praise it either, I could choose to value intellectual excellence more than sexual prowess or money-making ability.
A rather long entry, but in short: you cannot save the West without putting a halt to such sexually decadent behavior, for which both men and women are to blame.
Bruce Charlton is correct on this one: the sexual revolution has to be reversed, it is one of the reasons the West is dying. And it would die easily if Europeans took their faith seriously again. The objections above still apply, especially regarding class.
Another point is that apparently, the beta often has the former girlfriend of the alpha. Now, how is this Christian at all? I am not sure if it’s claimed anywhere that the hierarchy is applicable to any society at any time, but it certainly is not. (I made this point above already.)
Given that it was a great risk for Kierkegaard’s fiancee Regine Olsen to visit him alone in his flat—if known, it would have been a scandal—, one can imagine how people during Christian times would have reacted to having a “girlfriend”. And Denmark’s Christianity was already in its death throes at that time.
Then it’s claimed that no one cares how smart you are, no one cares
about your intelligence—while constantly touting one’s own—but
apparently, we should care about the “alpha” studs who have
so many women? Why? Why is it okay to brag about this, and not about
how smart and educated someone is? Imagine someone with two or three
PhDs or an IQ of >180 and constantly bragging about it. In both
cases it’s pride. Also,
Andrew Wardle
did not even have a penis and had around 100 women. It is extremely
obnoxious behavior.
(Another observation is that the so-called incels are
denigrated as being sex-obsessed, while the alphas are praised
for exactly that behavior. Now is this world crap? It indeed is.)
Women are simply another crutch for most men, just like drugs or work. Many would most likely kill themselves without them.
As Pascal already knew:
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Another problem: Europe lacks the school system of the US. Europeans neither play football, nor do they have cheerleaders. Also, there are no lockers and even the tables usually seen in American schools are not available in Europe. There are too many cultural differences and variables for the hierarchy stuff to be universally applicable.
An interesting bit from the above article regarding Andrew Wardle (emphasis mine):
“[…] While most people definitely wouldn’t consider his promiscuity a commendable feat, there is something quite astounding about it. Apparently, the 40-year-old man does not have a penis.”
Another “fun fact”: Casanova was thin-skinned and easily lost his temper, in the end, he had became a wreck. But he was “alpha”, of course …
Why do I have to live in this sick and gross culture? What have I done? Why do I deserve, as a man of taste, such harsh punishment? After all, you degenerate clowns apparently feel swell.
Another case worth pointing out: take Klaus Kinski, too! What a hot-headed, vulgar individual! And he is a “winner” in your ridiculous boilerplate hierarchy “philosophy”. Far from being “aloof”, he would explode for the silliest reasons. And he wallowed in filth with an eighteen year old Italian model when he was sixty years old (apart from all the other women he had.)
How gross and sick this world has become. No wonder that the few men of taste, or those more attuned to reality and human nature, like Andy Nowicki, are getting ignored, shunned, downright mocked.
I hope you guys have to account for the mental torture you inflicted upon me and others some day. I would like to see you getting hanged, or at least locked away into a penitentiary, forced to dig peat until you drop dead.
Every people get the culture they deserve — ours being a mor-ass of vulgarity and decadence.
To imagine these guys sitting there, “thinking” and writing about how to “game” “chicks”, as if this is a topic worth pondering, or to act is if they deal with serious intellectual matters even. Absolutely ridiculous. This would have passed any obscenity laws?
No, of course not. No serious thinker would have written such trite, crass, tacky trash. The only exceptions are anti-sex philosophies like those of Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, Gómez Dávila and so on.
I may have made this remark somewhere already, in any case: while it is possible to boast about one’s looks, status, money and take pride in it, it does not make much sense. No one chooses his genetics or upbringing, his class or intelligence and dozens of other characteristics which will determine your life.
Only if we all started with the same upbringing and genetics could one lecture one about not having “done enough” with “one’s gifts”, as the queasy expression often used by unthinking automatons goes. If I’m not even six feet tall, then wanting to join the NBA does not seem like a good idea. Or why even consider to study electrical engineering or physics if you lack the IQ or it simply is not your cup of tea? Which is heritable, too. And so on.
Imagine someone cut Brigitte Bardot’s or Ava Gardner’s
nose off! There goes your beauty and what is attached to it. Or
think of an acid attack.
What man lusts after in this world often enough is just shallow and
superficial. The reason Latin and Greek are no longer taught—let
alone Christianity—is the fact that they did understand it, and you would be expected to
read Roman and Greek thinkers who displayed contempt for what is
put on a pedestal in our modern clown world, this circus society.
As Don Colacho knew:
“Man does not admire anything sincerely except what is undeserved.
Talent, lineage, beauty.”
And even if you married, they would continue to berate you and put you down because your wife is not as attractive, or your children are “losers” and so on. No matter what you do, these creeps won’t stop from patronizing you with their shallow worldview. Either—or: either I marry or I don’t marry. I’ll regret both, to paraphrase Kierkegaard.
Girls and boys did not even attend the same schools for a long time, up until the 1970s in some countries—which was a lot better, too. So your “hierarchy” that apparently isn’t one—why, then, is “gamma” used as an insult, like fat or short?—fails again.
In a blog post by Vox Day from 2013, he responded to a Christian woman who complained that around the blogosphere, men are boasting about their sexual escapades but shun women who live in fornication. This double standard would not be Christian—correct, I add—and she asked why he, Vox Day, was writing so much about “game”, almost defending such behaviour.
Now, Vox Day’s response was absolutely horrible. First off, we already know why he wrote and still writes so much about this: he really thinks that this filth he “improved” upon is worth anything. This hierarchy has its roots in the animal kingdom. This alone is debased and vulgar enough.
However, Vox Day wrote that while it’s true that from a Christian standpoint, both men and women are to be virgins before marriage, men having a lot of sexual encounters is somehow seen as “high status” or appealing by women, whereas the opposite is not true. And for her-the Christian woman writing—it would be the same: she may reject it on an intellectual level, but she’d feel the same about a man living a sexually promiscuous life.
Even if it’s true that such men are seen as “studs”, this has more to do with our deranged age. I doubt, too, that all women-and men!—think highly of those who are unfaithful; they are psychopaths. So why should I not kill them instead? Especially if they did it to my daughter, sister, mother …? No reason I shouldn’t.
More interestingly, though, is the question: would Holy Mary see it like this too? I guess from a Protestant standpoint, she’s just an ordinary woman, whereas Catholics revere her to a degree that may indeed seem a bit much at times, even being free from original sin. Still, it would only strengthen my anti-sex philosophy, for we see it as something unclean, unworthy of praise.
That I think sex is a result of the Fall should be clear by now. It certainly is, and I’d kill myself instantly if God allowed it and leave you sex-obsessed imbeciles behind. You may have the decades still ahead of me; I’d give them to you and your family if you wanted, I don’t need them. I reject this existence and only live because of my fear of Hell, just as Hamlet did. Otherwise, nothing would stop me from calling it quits and ending this laughable existence on my own terms. Isn’t it God Who forces us to live …!
This world is so sick and disgusting, it boggles the mind that God created and somehow even cares about it! As Nicolás Gómez Dávila wrote:
What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe that we matter to Him.
The Catholic author Josef Pieper (1904-1997) wrote that when he worked as a visiting professor in the US, female students told him that they were all living sexually promiscuous lives. They said that it was simply too much trouble to say no! That’s it. This was the reason for their behaviour. Your phantasies of being “alpha” or whatever notwithstanding.
Regarding the claim that men who live promiscuous lives are more attractive to women—which Vox Day, as a Christian, even defended—I have nothing more to add than to point out that such a lifestyle was never possible prior to the revolt of the shameless. No father with an ounce of decency would have married his daughter to such a scoundrel in the past. Your hierarchy is nothing but a symptom of our deranged sex-obsessed age.
At the risk of engaging in kitchen psychology myself, it’s not hard
to see that most of you guys do have severe ego issues. This may
explain why those who simply criticize the “hierarchy” without
putting anyone down are often met with insults. This happened to
Andy Nowicki, too, who then got attacked by Vox Day’s sycophants
(as he called them; this he said in an episode of a so-called MGTOW chat).
It’s as if the sex-obsessed have little self worth, therefore they
need to puff themselves up with rather superficial outward
appearances like IQ scores, diplomas or … women.
Others already noted how self-serving Vox Day’s “sigma” category is. What is topping it all is his description of it though: the sigma being someone who does not play the so-called “social game“ (it is all just games for those alphas) but wins at it anyway.
I do not write books but get them printed anyway, ending up at the top with the Dantes, Shakespeares, Goethes, of course …
Without their pride and self-love, many would have to commit suicide, I guess. Or, to quote Don Colacho:
We spend a life trying to understand what a stranger understands at a glance: that we are just as insignificant as the rest.
We live because we do not view ourselves with the same eyes with which everybody else views us.
By calling someone “gamma,” one is not doing much more than calling them “nerd” or simply “loser.” It’s highly subjective anyway. Not much different from psychiatrists labelling people with all kinds of “illnesses.” Cases exist where healthy people were locked up and diagnosed with a mental illness that they did not have.
Since Vox Day accepts that psychology is the softest science, I fail to see why anyone ought to take this seriously. I write this because a comment of mine was “answered” by someone by simply calling me a “gamma.” Which just shows that they cannot engage in dialogue, are unable to answer with something more substantial than mere insults.
From what I understand, the categories are prone to change anyway. A famous example Vox Day uses is the high school quarterback who may likely only be a “delta” in college. Clearly, the uncultured thugs from the US are used as an example, so why would others who reject this kind of pop culture care? The fluidity of it makes this all the more subjective and hard to take seriously. I remember back on his blogspot blog, Vox Day’s sycophants discussed very earnestly what type Richard Stallman is, and maybe among female programmers he is sigma or alpha or whatever … some high IQ stuff for sure!
As Nils M. Holm wrote in his book Bridging the Gap:
In the 2010’s I have written a few essays about high IQ, high sensitivity, etc. Ever since people have asked me to write more about the topic, but this is a touchy subject — even a political one — and I am reluctant to get involved in this kind of discussion. I have started many essays and even books on this matter, but never managed to finish one, because they would be highly controversial, and I lack the ambition to propagate controversial matters in public. I sometimes discuss them in private, but even there only with people who care more about research than beliefs or personal agendas. Any discussion must lead to a goal, or it is a waste of time.
(Emphasis mine.)
And it truly is! Don Colacho thought so as well:
Engaging in dialogue with those who do not share our postulates is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time.
The sincere dialogue ends in a quarrel.
When dialogue is the last resort, the situation is already hopeless.
Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God, another who believes he is a god.
As others noted, this seems more like a return of the high school bullies. This time online … by grown-up men …!
Since their gamma label is so subjective, one should simply ignore it. Further, they know that Vox Day is rather “nerdy”, he even said his brothers were socially more successful.
In response to the many sell-outs who value superficial fame over true greatness, I remember Vox Day writing that if he really wrote a book or created a movie that would warrant a prize of some sort, he’d then retreat, buy a monastery and collect – something I actually find very attractive myself. Though for most women, this is simply boring. Which is my point: Vox Day is on the “geeky” side of men, not that tall – 176 centimeters – and therefore has to have some other advantage over the Cary Grants of the world, who aren’t that numerous anyway.
I wrote this because most people in these spheres should actually know that high IQ people are suffering more than the average person, they often don’t fit in and even Vox Day once wrote he’d rather live in a cave, subsisting on nuts and berries than work with averagely intelligent people. (Someone commented this in rather funny way by writing “never go full Kaczynski”.)
He even repeated this, answering a comment by writing (paraphrased) “what if the alternative to ‘breaking something down’—a company in this case—, namely living in one’s car, earting thuna out of cans and downloading books from gutenberg.org seems more attractive?”
Indeed. High IQ, being academically gifted or simply more “bookish” than the average person is usually seen as boring. The wife of von Neumann once said of him: “Johnny is so boring!”
And so it is.
I guess one criteria for calling someone a gamma is being critical of existence, not liking one’s life or so. This is why I suspect that Kierkegaard would be seen as one—after all, the “mastermind” of the hierarchy already called Nietzsche a gamma!—, even though Aquinas fits this label better. Not that I care, they were both geniuses and out of the league of those bloggers.
Even men of God would be “gamma”, given that Job and Jeremiah cursed their birth. Moses complained about the role that God forced upon him. Even Paul wanted to depart and be with Christ already, which is far better.
Reading some of those blogs, they seem like guys sitting on a bench putting others down for certain behaviours from afar. This does not seem “alpha”, nor do such men, I guess, write blogs, but are busy living their awesome life. Not that I find their lives interesting, I favor the life of scholars like Jacob Burckhardt. Who also never married and remained a bachelor until death.
Their condescending attitude is not helpful in any way, especially since some of what they see as negative “gamma traits” may even be genetic. Yet, they often are quick to give advice on how to “improve”, which, especially over the internet, is ludicrous. Not to mention that they often even put down married men because their wives aren’t “10s”!
It’s as repulsive as someone who brags about his high IQ and puts others down for not being as gifted, being too slow and so on. Who would want to spend time with such a nasty person?
From a Christian perspective, all this talk is rather worldly anyway. I know there is no use in arguing this, since they will continue with it. Though the advice given to the supposed “gamma males” is not much different from advice given to depressed people. To quote Nils M. Holm again (via Hacker News):
There is a lot of advice regarding depression and a lot of things people say may be helpful to many others.
There is, however, also the chance that someone’s life really is FUBAR and no amount of exercise, therapy, drugs, and whatnot will change anything. And then everybody says that the one who is suffering “does not want any help”, “is not suffering enough to accept help”, “is happy with his suffering”, etc.
Well, pardon my language, but that’s such a giant pile of bullshit! All that’s happening there is that the one giving advice is helpless and not willing to admit it. And that’s especially true of psychologists and other “professionals”.
Source: have lost three people who committed suicide and in two cases I would say that there really was no other way. We, as a species, totally suck at helping.
And, yes, there probably would have been ways to help above people, but it would have taken time and dedication and who is willing to invest that? It’s so much easier to try a quick fix and when it does not work, blame it on the sufferer. Unfortunately I was young back then and did not understand that…
I tend to agree, and do not know how anything in life could take away the feeling of being out of place, as Andy Nowicki feels himself (cf. Ravages of the “Rough Beast”.) Becoming a Christian did change me, but not in this regard.
Some more commenters (via Hacker News):
madaxe_again:
Tell me about it. I was one of those “precocious” children – I consistently tested years ahead of my peers, did state exams several years early, went to university several years younger than my peers.
Pressure. So much damn pressure. “Madaxe, don’t you think it’s disappointing that you didn’t come first in _all_ of your exams? Blankety blank is a stupid boy. He shouldn’t have beaten you in blank. Are you stupid too?”
I never cared about achievement – just about knowing more, understanding _why_ everything was as it was, how everything works – I ended up studying physics, because “because atoms’ didn’t cut it. All my parents and my schools cared about was achievement. Stop asking questions, study the material we gave you. “But it’s wrong.” “We know. Doesn’t matter. Learn it anyway.”
The bit at the end of TFA about emotional intelligence vs academic intelligence is very true – my parents and the boarding schools which raised me put emphasis only on academic achievement. The fact that I was setting fire to things and torturing other kids apparently wasn’t too important, and just warranted more beatings, and more pressure.
As an adult, I have the emotional intelligence of a cucumber and am conflict avoidant in the extreme. Whatever benefit having a superior intellect might have granted me I am hell-bent upon squandering, as I learned long ago to be ashamed of and resent my intelligence. People _hate_ you if you are academically gifted. It’s much easier to pretend to be a dullard.
nikdaheratik
:It’s not exactly intelligence, people, especially children, dislike and distrust anyone who is different. At the same time, there were a number of people I remember in school who were very smart (1% or higher) who made friends and got along really well for the most part. Usually, they found a club or something and just kept the same set of friends through high school.
It’s people who are intelligent but have a troubled home life, or are also different in other ways that end up having a very lonely time compared to more average students.
[…]
From what I’ve read, and some of my own experience, it seems like some of the genetic markers for high IQ are also shared with other mental illness, particularly depression and bipolar disorder. A few papers have even theorized that one of the triggers for these illnesses is when some of the markers for high IQ are switched on, but others are not. The bullying doesn’t help, but it isn’t the only cause for the downward spiral and may not be unique to the US.
Quote by Nils M. Holm from another thread:
Because in some cases it’s none of the above; it’s just not fitting in, and getting “treated” for being different is often the beginning of a long and sad history of self-blame and isolation.
Quote from pierre_d528 in the same thread:
I know at least one of these people (IQ 155).
Here is the fundamental problem she has: lower IQ people will deny the obvious even in front of their eyes.
The combined delusion of all these people literally build our world that for her appears like a cheap stupid fairy tale (specially IQ 110-120 people that try to trick lower IQ people for money (advertisement etc)).
She is surgeon and only deals with children: it keeps a lot of the low IQ people at bay. When she is not fixing children, she is riding horses. Much else is just fake to protect her from low IQ people.
These 2 poor souls physically segregated themselves from low IQ people, she did the same… to a less extreme level (accepted to pretend/lie when needed).
If she had seen a big warning sign saying “high IQ hurts”, she would probably have had found help and more people to soften the terrible loneliness she experiences.
(The “two poor souls” he wrote about are those Holm mentioned in his article “Where Do The Failed 0.1% Go?”.)
Either way, an attractive man like Cary Grant will automatically be the center of attention in most cases. Therefore, no one cares about some average guy trying hard to be a “stoic alpha” when handsome Cary Grant is cooly chatting with all the highly attractive, giggling gals.
Yawn.
I remember reading a comment by a woman who was over forty years old and without children. She wrote that in her twenties, she was living with a man with whom she did not want to have any, and in her thirties, the man she lived with then was not sure if he wanted any children.
Which shows that all this talk about “genetic” superiority and so on is nonsense. Living promiscuously does not mean that one has better genes, since many women do not even want to have children with such men.
Further, the smartest nations according to mean IQ, like South Korea, have the least children.
In conclusion: nations that are the most capable today have the fewest children; “hooking” up with someone does not mean they want to have children with them, as the woman paraphrased above said herself.
In the West, especially western Europe, the tax payer funds children of immigrants. This is why they have so many. Most immigrants in the West are incapable, they usually aren’t doctors, engineers or master craftsmen et cetera.
Says Gómez Dávila:
Men can be divided into those who make their life complicated to gain their soul and those who waste their soul to make their life easier.
In the end, there is no area of the soul sex would not succeed in corrupting.
A decent man is one who makes demands upon himself that the circumstances do not make upon him.
Prayer, war, tillage are manful occupations.
The people with whom we speak every day and our favorite authors cannot belong to the same zoological species.
People more easily allow us to despise their serious occupations than their diversions.
The common man lives among phantasms; only the recluse moves among realities.
What we discover as we age is not the vanity of everything, but of almost everything.
In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish.
The fool is cured by “reason,” “progress,” alcohol, work.Progress in the end comes down to stealing from man what ennobles him, in order to sell to him at a cheap price what degrades him.
Whoever abandons himself to his instincts degrades his face as obviously as he degrades his soul.
Let us be careful not to call accepting what degrades us without any resistance “accepting life.”
That which impersonalizes degrades.
Reading the newspaper degrades whomever it does not make into a brute.
The modern world demands that we approve what it should not even dare ask us to tolerate.
Sins that appear “splendid” from afar are from close up nothing more than small sordid episodes.
When the modern consciousness suspends its economic routines, it only oscillates between political anguish and sexual obsession.
The key event of this century is the demographic explosion of idiotic ideas.
Wisdom, in this century, consists above all in knowing how to put up with vulgarity without becoming upset.
The curve of man’s knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets.
By believing that the wax figures fabricated by psychology are alive, man has been gradually losing his knowledge of man.
Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.
The modern world obliges us to refute foolish ideas, instead of silencing the fools.
Systematic reductions to single terms (pleasure and pain, self-interest, economics, sex, etc.) fabricate likenesses of intelligibility that seduce the ignorant.
In order to exploit man in peace, it is most convenient to reduce him first to sociological abstractions.
Prophets, philosophers, politicians, all fail in the end.
But there is nothing more absurd than to write their history as a chain of defeats.
Every great man is a victory.Modern man’s misfortune lies not in having to live a mediocre life, but in believing that he could live a life that is not mediocre.
An outlandish idea becomes ridiculous when several people share it.
Either one walks with everybody, or one walks alone.
One should never walk in a group.Vulgarity consists, essentially, in being on first name terms with Plato or Goethe.
The self-important man’s lack of importance is sufficient revenge for us.
Modern stupidities are more irritating than ancient stupidities because their proselytes seek to justify them in the name of reason.
Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.
The rapid evolution of a society destroys its customs.
And imposes on the individual, in place of the silent education of traditions, the reins and the whip of laws.The defeated reactionary always retains the option of entertaining himself with the victor’s simplistic ideas.
The only man who saves himself from intellectual vulgarity is the man who ignores what it is fashionable to know.