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The truth is that studies show the geniuses are more well adjusted than other people. I mean, think about it... the smarter you are, the easier certain aspects of life are. While this doesn't mean any fool can't go crazy, it does mean that the numbers say that they do in smaller numbers than on-geniuses...
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Many geniuses exhibit strange behavior. Could be that they think so fast, or think in such a different way that they can not help it. Many, very intelligent, and very techinical individuals (that I have observed over they years) seem to have some kind of strange social abnormality of one sort or another. Doesn't really matter to me, so long as I try to understand where they are coming from. It seems, in many cases, that some of these hyper intelligent individuals has socail aversions. Some of this may even come from the fact that society, in general, seems to look down upon and make fun of exceptionally smart individuals. This might be part of the reason for socially abnormal behavior. Perhaps, if society were accepting of these individuals, from a very early age, we could have "more" geniuses with fewer abnormalities. :-)
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Some of the smartest people I know are way out there....there does seem to be a correlation.
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But what is genius; what is madness? How would the two be defined really? And how do we know that how each of us defines those terms are exactly the way any other person would define them? I guess that I think that both terms refer to 'thinking and considering the totally unexpected'.
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Most of the geniuses throughout history have also been a bit mad (or eccentric if you prefer). Even today, most of the people I know who I would consider extremely intelligent and talented are a bit crazy.
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In the sense that those who are not genius easily confuse the two, then yes. However, that is just the impressionability of the masses. Generally human beings fear what we don't understand. Those of us of average intelligence feel equally threatened by genius and maddness. Being of only average intelligence we confuse them because they "feel" the same to us. Don't you just love the insanity of humanity?
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Genius and madness both involve the unexpected. Easily confused and easily combined, these two.
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Genius implies thinking in a way that noone else does. To get there means pushing boundaries in your thought process. The question is, can you push only some boundaries or when you push one, do you push them all? I find it hard to see how you can maintain that sort of control. Brains are not nicely structured boxes where everything has a single place of existence - there's no "music centre" of the brain or "art centre" and they certainly aren't separated from emotion or memory centres. Everything is intertwined with all sorts of dependancies. And often if one area is broken others pick up the slack. Madness is being unable to control behaviour or thought processes that are physically and/or emotionally detrimental. Again, it's all about boundaries. People who are mad have broken boundaries in thought and/or behaviour. So no, I don't think it's possible to separate your brain into unbounded and bounded sections and therefore it seems unlikely that you can be a genius without suffering some sort of madness.
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I think madness is the phase after genius. i think at some point you are no longer genius that you do become mad.
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I don't know for sure, but I find that I wrote pretty darned good poetry when I was in the throws of turmoil. Now that I'm all better, I can't write!
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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." We're happy, Ryann (my wife) is healthy, I'm back to work and Ben is trying to adjust. All in all, it's good, but I think we could all use a complete blood transfusion, massage and a day or two in a hot tub.
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I look at people with Aspergers and people who are geniuses but also somewhat unhinged, and I see a connection. Full disclosure: I test as a "genius" and I've got anxiety issues out the a*s. I'm thinking the more you've got going on up there, the more sensitive the brain, and thus the imbalances and things that tend to make people seem a little off.
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I don't think there's really any marked correlation between genius and madness. We just tend to pay more attention when someone labled "genius" displays insanity than we do when your average Joe Nextdoor does. Geniuses may tend to have unconventional ideas, and/or behave is slightly unconventional ways, but this doesn't make them certifiably mad.
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The old metaphor is that genius and insanity are opposite sides of the same coin.
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