Came across this on reddit.
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“In my opinion this is why our smartest individual often suffer from crippling addictions.
The difference between “smart” and “dumb” is usually just focus with a sprinkling of aptitude. “smart” people focus more on their tasks for longer, but i dont think thats always a choice. Often “smart” people are frankly obsessed with whatever it is they are doing, to an unhealthy degree, and not by choice. Some minds just always need that level of stimulus, and for them i think the only way to ever actually rest in a lot of ways is to numb with substances. In other words, not drinking because you love drinking but because its the only way to get your mind to stop.
There are very few “great geniuses” throughout history that were “normal” folks, and while we may appreciate their accomplishments and all I’m sure living the life that they lived to produce those accomplishments was a burden we may not be able to understand.”
5 comments
Nah, as wonderful as it would be to cling to that breadcrumb of superiority, I know I’m a fucking dumbass. A truly intelligent person would be able to defeat depression (by either life or death) without wasting time in this idiotic stagnation I’ve been stuck in most of my adult life. In fact I would point out that I was “smarter” (got way better grades) back when I was happy. Once depression set in, my grades dropped like a rock, my problem solving skills went to zero, learning skills laughable, and my overall common sense is shit. “Smart” people don’t spend half the day harming themselves and the other half researching how to do something as simple as dying–which prisoners can figure out with a pair of shoelaces. If I were to be included in a case study, the conclusion would be that depressed people are the dumbest shits on 2 legs.
First of all, this isn’t saying that EVERY SINGLE depressed person is smart, nor that dumb ppl can’t also be depressed. OP is saying there tends to be a correlation between ppl who are “smart” (with his definition of “smart” as having “obsessive thoughts”) and depression.
Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway, Mozart, Charles Darwin, Nicola Tesla, and the big daddy of psychoanalysis himself, Sigmund Freud- to name a few- all had depression. So you’re saying all these ppl are “dumb”?
Just bc you are, in your own words “a dumb shit” and you suffer from depression doesn’t everyone who suffers from depression is dumb. There are loads of highly intelligent people also suffering from depression. Depression isn’t a “dumb people thing.”
And this is a very brief listing of the MULTITUDES of mathematicians, scientists, physicists, philosophers, writers, artists, etc that have depression.
No. I never implied anything about anyone other than myself. You seem to have taken my last sentence, obviously said in jest, as my core thesis.
All I said is that *I MYSELF* consider myself a dumb shit because I can’t figure out how to defeat depression. Whether that applies to you or anyone else on the planet is your own business.
What I do strongly object to is the author’s smug attempt to paint himself as superior to others based in the wacky correlation that obsessive thoughts are an indication of intelligence, therefore all obsessed thinkers are depressed and smarter and superior. He needs to get over himself. If, like me, he made the observation about himself only then fine whatever. But by trying to paint it in absolutes he’s actually exposing his lack of intelligence.
You named a bunch of depressed geniusis, fine but I can counter with an equal number of happy geniuses (Einstein, Da Vinci, Dali) and we’d be here all fucking day going nowhere. My point is, to each his own.
heh, I like that. I’ve been told I’m smart…. for whatever that’s worth. I wouldn’t say it to anyone, because being told it hasn’t exactly done me any good…. just that I feel like I should accomplish more.
Other people that I think are smart are more often just obsessed…. anyway I guess I’m saying you might be onto something. I know I wish I could turn my brain off sometimes, thankfully my medications allow for me to shut roughly 12 hours a day out of mind…. more than that is difficult, even with all the help in the world available.
I’ve struggled with addiction … alcohol was my poison of choice.
But I’m dumb as bricks, so… I can’t really say anything about the link between a high IQ and harboring addictions.