Gifted retards

Intelligence isn’t much without empathy. Being empathetic doesn’t necessarily mean being exceptionally smart, but intelligent people lacking empathy are, well, stupid.

It so happens that I’ve got access to the opinions and worldviews of many of the world’s most intelligent people, or at least considered as such. People who are hateful, racist, bigoted, self-centered, lacking empathy, seemed plain stupid to me. I couldn’t understand how on earth the smartest people on the planet could possibly attribute the world’s issues to the easy targets of those who are really to blame but want to divert our gaze from them. How on earth can the smartest people around be sexist, racist, supporting genocide even. Fortunately, they are only a very vocal minority. But they exist. An intelligent person is supposed to be able to see beyond that, behind that, above and beneath that, and realise the world’s most unfortunate aren’t the perpetrators. It was perplexing how people of great intelligence can be so dumb. But the common denominator seems to be lack of empathy.

Empathy “forces” you to see the world through the eyes of others, all kinds of others. Empathy makes you not see them as “the other”, but as part of a whole. It opens your mind to different “realities”. Through empathy you reach painful or uncomfortable conclusions about your beliefs, sometimes. Empathy broadens your perspective in a way the lack of it cannot. Self-centeredness gives tunnel vision. Towards what’s convenient. Not towards what’s real. Lack of empathy even disconnects someone from oneself, let alone the real world. One can only see what they perceive as their self-interest, which may not even be in their best interest, given that may require some hard inner work. The perceived self-interest only sees the most convenient, easiest on oneself, explanation. And all the intelligence in the world goes out the window. Maybe they’d excel in STEM or business. And that’s it. Anything beyond that, they are no better than the dumbest person you may know. And it’s worse than being like a machine. Machine, nowadays, displays greater empathy than the average person. Lack of empathy isn’t neutrality, though, it’s plain nastiness. Take empathy away, and the highest IQ is nothing but a stupid, mean person (occasionally with a “nice person” façade that, when push comes to shove, collapses) with an inclination for patterns and/ or numbers.. It’s depressing, really. So much potential wasted, because of lack of bravery. Bravery to embrace self reflection, respect, accountability, responsibility, acceptance – empathy.