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What’s it like to have an extremely high IQ?
Years ago, aged eighteen, I joined MENSA. I left after a year, having seen ample evidence to support the old description of MENSA as “The society for people impressed by their own intelligence”. In truth, the whole organisation was creepy. Anyway, when I applied they sent me an IQ test which you sent in to be scored. If you scored highly enough they asked you to attend a monitored exam. I scored 158 on the test at home and 159 when I went to London to be tested.
I have never encountered anything, either at school, university or at work that has been intellectually difficult for me. I got an English degree and a law degree and barely worked to get either. My memory has always served me well. I quickly see patterns that others don’t seem to notice (that’s your IQ test sewn up right there) and just find concepts come easier to me than to a lot of other people. I do get bored with most subjects quite quickly but, so far, so good.
The problem, for me, lies in the fact that I never developed any sense of urgency about anything. People will be impressed by how hard I worked on something when, in truth, I zipped through it in no time at all, paying it almost no attention. I learned to let people think I have worked hard because it serves me well. I’m essentially, and incurably, lazy. I should have achieved so much more and I am bright enough to know it. I’m fifty years old now, have been married twenty years and have three beautiful children, so my life is no train wreck, but I know I have shortchanged myself and my family. I constantly look at others with envy; never of their material success but of their professional achievements and work ethic. I could have done pretty much anything I wanted to do, but have ended up drifting into a sales career which pays well but gives me not one ounce of professional satisfaction or pride.
A high IQ is a great advantage but, in later life, it will torment you in ways the young cannot imagine. If you don’t learn to make best use of it, a high IQ will remind you on an almost hourly basis that you threw it all away. This is why so many underachieving people are unable to shut the fuck up about it – we become addicted in childhood to praise which dries up once more diligent, if less intelligent, peers start overtaking us. Those who are not socially intelligent enough to recognise how obnoxious it is will mention their intelligence whenever they get a chance, imagining that other people care. I suspect we’ll see a lot of that in this thread.
The world and its prizes belong, quite rightly, to hard working people, not intelligent ones.
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What’s it like to have a mentally handicapped sibling?
My brother was severely retarded and had Dubowitz syndrome. All his life he never got past being a two year old mentally, he couldn’t speak, could barely understand words, had terrible balance when he walked, cried horribly when he was bored (which was often – we either had to have Barney on constantly or I would to dance with him to loud music until I was exhausted). If we didn’t watch him, He would go to the bathroom, turn on the hot water water and put his hand underneath it (I used to wonder if there was a sentient person trapped in his brain and this was his only method of communicating). He pulled my hair in the morning because he’d wake up at 6am because he naturally woke up that early and I, being a kid, didn’t and my mom, exhausted from taking care of him all the time, didn’t either. He’d smear corn infused poop everywhere if he wasn’t changed right away (he always wore diapers) and when you’re a single mom of a brat (me) and a mentally handicapped kid and your job is already exhausting because you’re on your feet all day, you can’t come home and relax you have to take care of him, but there’s a point where you break and you can’t do it anymore and you sit in your chair, depressed and alone and overwhelmed, and there are not enough resources for these families.
He got into a group home before I went into fifth grade. That was after a many years long waiting list. The guilt my mom experienced for “abandoning” him… For not being able to care properly for her child.. It destroyed her. To this day. He died a week before his 21st birthday and I hadn’t seen him for 5 years before then.
I wouldn’t wish that existence on anyone. Not what my mother went through, not what he went through. There was no point to his life. I would never want that for any child I bore. I would never want that life for any other children I bore who would become their sibling.
You have to be STRONG to survive raising a child like that. Not everyone has that strength. Not everyone with that strength may last. It is hard. Harder than any one who hasn’t experienced it could know. And I don’t wish anyone to experience it if they don’t want to.
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What does it feel like to be Trans?
When I look in the mirror in the morning, before having shaved, it’s certainly a painful experience. But perhaps not in exactly the way you might imagine.
The immediate reaction I get from my reflection is a feeling of very strong disassociation, accompanied by a kind of shock, confusion, or mental jarring. (Actually, the shock is what I notice first).
I have the strong, gut-level sensation that whoever is behind the mirror is not me. This feels just as wrong and surreal as it would feel if someone played a trick on you, and replaced the bathroom mirror with a pane of glass with a pantomime behind it pretending to be you.
My reflection in the morning feels like a mirage, feels alien, unreal, and very very distant. It causes my eyes to unfocus and for me to take refuge in my thoughts rather than being in the here and now.
I experienced this all my life, even when I didn’t know I was trans.
Isn’t it funny how I can suffer so much, and so obviously, now, but once not have known I was trans? Well, this was made possible by the fact that I didn’t know why I was disassociated from my reflection in the mirror. I think I just felt I was ugly, or that I hated myself (a good explanation when I did, in fact, hate myself).
Or, the feeling was just so normal, seeing as I had had it all my life, that I didn’t think anything special about it; it was just what I always experienced. I think I imagined that perhaps everyone else experienced that, while simultaneously I feared to explain it to anyone in case I was a freak.
My defense was just to disassociate as much as possible from my image and sense of self, which led me to be rather scruffy and socially awkward. The latter thing was because I couldn’t really take the mental view of “watching myself” as I spoke. This meant I was almost always very unaware of the effect of what I was saying or doing. (Only since I began to live as a woman has this lack of self-awareness begun to really resolve itself).
I would also take refuge in my thoughts when I was a child even more than I do now. I remember almost every day experiencing a sense of comfort and release when I was lost in my thoughts, somehow managing to imagine I didn’t exist. When something brought me back to reality, I would come down from my dreamland with a jarring bump, and it would feel so horrible to remember my existence and identity.
And really I wasn’t much aware of this being about my gender, or I don’t think so*. I just didn’t like to be me.
*I am pretty sure that at some point when I was very young I was aware of wanting to be a girl, but later suppressed that knowledge. I have only disjointed and vague memories to go by, though.
Nowadays I am much more at peace with myself, though it’s interesting that the only times I’ve ever spontaneously said “I love myself” have been after taking hormones.
When I started my gender transition by very radically jumping into full-time life as a woman, I first experienced a sort of daze, for about a week. I had broken through so many internal barriers at once, it was as if a train had hit me.
After that I found myself becoming a lot more grounded. I could finally get closer to reality and my sense of self, as those things no longer felt so intolerable for me.
Nowadays, after almost 3 months of hormones, my face is becoming more feminine. I’m harassed less on the street. Sometimes people’s eyes pop out a bit when I mention I’m trans.
And, once I’ve shaved and covered up my beard shadow with makeup, I can have what for me is still an odd experience: I can look at myself.
I mean, I can look at myself for longish periods of time, without my eyes unfocusing, and without the feeling that existence is somehow intolerable.
By the way, I don’t mean I think of suicide; my experience all my life has been that the thought of existing was intolerable, and that I wanted to imagine I had no existence, no sense of self. Seeing myself in the mirror or remembering my sense of self caused me an intense mental jarring, a feeling of wrongness.
Now that that is gone, or at least going, it is kind of a strange feeling. Existence doesn’t weigh so heavy on me. The thought “I am me” doesn’t feel so horrible, so unthinkable.
The old feelings come and go. Sometimes I still feel resistance to my sense of self, for instance when I haven’t looked in the mirror and my old self image returns by force of habit. But sometimes I feel surprised to notice that I haven’t felt like this for a while, and that it actually feels OK to be me.
– Sophia Gubb
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How does the book Foundations of Geopolitics, by Alexander Dugin coincide with Vladimir Putin’s political agenda?
The book declares that “the battle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians” has not ended and Russia remains “the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution.” The Eurasian Empire will be constructed “on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.”
Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia’s gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.
The book states that “the maximum task [of the future] is the ‘Finlandization’ of all of Europe”.
In Europe:
Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term a “Moscow-Berlin axis”.
France should be encouraged to form a “Franco-German bloc” with Germany. Both countries have a “firm anti-Atlanticist tradition”.
United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.
Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be “donated to Murmansk Oblast”.
Estonia should be given to Germany’s sphere of influence.
Latvia and Lithuania should be given a “special status” in the Eurasian-Russian sphere.
Poland should be granted a “special status” in the Eurasian sphere.
Romania, Macedonia, “Serbian Bosnia” and Greece – “orthodox collectivist East” – will unite with the “Moscow the Third Rome” and reject the “rational-individualistic West”.
Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because ““Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics”. Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.
In the Middle East and Central Asia:
The book stresses the “continental Russian-Islamic alliance” which lies “at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy”. The alliance is based on the “traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization”. Iran is a key ally. The book uses the term “Moscow-Tehran axis”.
Armenia has a special role and will serve as a “strategic base” and it is necessary to create “the [subsidiary] axis Moscow-Erevan-Teheran”. Armenians “are an Aryan people … [like] the Iranians and the Kurds”.
Azerbaijan could be “split up” or given to Iran.
Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and “United Ossetia” (which includes Georgia’s South Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia’s independent policies are unacceptable.
Russia needs to create “geopolitical shocks” within Turkey. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.
The book regards the Caucasus as a Russian territory, including “the eastern and northern shores of the Caspian (the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan)” and Central Asia (mentioning Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghistan and Tajikistan).
In Asia:
China, which represents a danger to Russia, “must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled”. Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet-Xinjiang-Mongolia-Manchuria as a security belt. Russia should offer China help “in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia” as geopolitical compensatation.
Russia should manipulate Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan and provoking anti-Americanism.
Mongolia should be absorbed into Eurasia-Russia.
The book emphasizes that Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere: “the main ‘scapegoat’ will be precisely the U.S.”
In the United States:
Russia should use its special forces within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism. For instance, **provoke “Afro-American racists”. Russia should “introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.”
The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America.
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