Cold Shower 23: What is this thing called "superiority"?

Cold Shower What is this thing called “superiority”?
Volume I, Article XXIII

This is a column by Dr. James R. Fisher, Jr., industrial psychologist and former corporate executive for Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe Ltd. For the past 30 years he has been working and consulting in North & South America, Europe and South Africa. Author of seven books and more than 300 articles on what he calls cultural capital – risk taking, self-reliance, social cohesion, work habits and relation to power – for a changing work force in a changing workplace, he writes about interests of the modern worker. Dr. Fisher started out as a laborer in a chemical plant, worked his way through college, and ended in the boardrooms of multinational corporations. These columns are designed to provoke discussion.

Question:

Dr. Fisher, I’m not sure I have a problem. My son is nine and seems gifted. He’s been tested and scored in the 99.9 percentile on the verbal section and in the 97.0 percentile for performance (application criteria). His I.Q. of 145 is considered “very superior” in intelligence. The poor kid doesn’t have a motor skill to his name, can’t even read his own writing. Teachers, counselors and psychologists enjoy him, but find he has no leadership ability and has no tolerance for his peers and is socially excluded. Recently, he called a computer salesman who sold him the wrong modem an idiot. He’s going to group therapy with other boys his age where they talk about friendship. Most of the kids in the group are there because they’re physical bullies compared to my son’s intellectual snobbery. Do I have a problem? If so, what in God’s name should I be doing?

Your candor is appreciated. Your love and caring are an immense positive. Be careful of experts! It is dangerous to say one has no leadership ability and no tolerance for his peers. Both expressions are subjective and relative. It seems your son is going through a difficult patch. His essence (genetic inheritance) is way ahead of his personality (learned behavior). Essence is the “owned self.” It cannot be lost, changed, or injured in the normal sense. Personality is the “acquired self.” Personality can be altered or changed by circumstances and easily injured or even lost. Essence is the basis of our physical and mental make-up. Personality is learned behavior through social programming and conditioning, either by conscious teaching or by unconscious imitation. Imitation is important in building personality but often at the expense of essence.

We live in a culture obsessed with personality, not essence, where prepackaged ideas are the fodder of an urban dominated society. The mantra of advertising is the stinging refrain, “one size made to fit all.” Albert Einstein was a poor student, didn’t mix well with his peers, and didn’t even have access to a laboratory when he formulated his revolutionary theories about time, space, light, mass and energy, theories formulated in a Swiss patent office where he was a low level employee.

The key to balance, and a nine year old is unlikely to find it easily, is to like what is good for you and dislike what is bad. This profiles the healthy personality where essence dominates personality. What is bad today once might have been good. Hollywood once glamorized cigarette smoking. Millions learned to like cigarettes. Movies still choreograph tense emotional situations by having someone lighting up. Now that cigarette smoking is connected to emphysema and other diseases, it is considered bad, finding many struggling to quit, a case of personality dominating essence.

Essence and personality need to grow together; neither must outgrow the other. By outgrow is meant to mature so quickly that proper assimilation is impossible, while by dominate is meant to control or govern behavior so that assimilation is possible.

Curiously, where we see essence outgrowing personality is often among the uneducated. Cleverness or cunning fails to be balanced by social conditioning, and therefore a “we/they” polarity, and victim mentality can fester to the point of bypassing conventional means to redress perceived wrongs by using terror or sabotage. And just as curiously, cases where personality outgrows essence are often found among people of affluence or the so-called cultured. Such people often see themselves as clearly better than others, and therefore have little motivation to take risks, endure pain, face reality, or attempt to understand the less advantaged. Their essence, consequently, is never developed fully. This is frequently displayed in those who inherit great wealth or are born to royalty.

What does this all mean to your son? He lives in an imitative society where comparing and competing are considered virtuous behavior. In this imitative climate tact is often more important than talent, conforming more acceptable than confronting, making an impression more career enhancing than making a difference.

Your son’s essence, at the moment, is outgrowing his personality. His intelligence is wielded as a weapon instead of a tool. He seems inclined to punish people with his essence rather than to help others find theirs. Social skills are demeaned, or ignored.

That said, I would ask you to be resolute, to steer him towards his lights by putting him in touch with others who have mastered the balance I have outlined. They may be other young people or professionals who have experienced the downside to this imbalance before they found the benefits to the upside of balance. I would further suggest you steer him clear of therapists who talk in psychobabble about leadership and tolerance. Remember, he is nine years old and is just stepping into life and requires guidance.

No one is superior to any other person. No one. We all need each other. We are all connected with different attributes. There are many kinds of intelligence. You have mentioned your son’s intellectual intelligence while describing his lagging emotional, social and animal (motor) intelligence. There is also instinctual intelligence where a sense of survival resides. He must experience the consequences of his actions and realize genius is of little value or comfort if it is not used in the service of others.

At age nine, physical prowess wins love, awe, and affection among peers; intellectual prowess creates fear and enmity amongst these same peers and is threatening to their self-esteem. This will change as intellectual prowess wins friends and influence those who once were devotees of physical prowess. Meanwhile, show you are in charge; be firm, fair, direct, consistent and honest with him as you have been with me. Listen to him, help him work through his social goofs, love him, and don’t judge or evaluate him.

Copyright (1996) Look for Dr. Fisher’s new book in 2005, WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE?