Ideas and Identity

Ideas and Identity     

Have you ever seen a group of smart people together? Often it seems that there is a general lack of comfort. I think this has to do with their sense of identity being violated. They are used to being the smartest person in the room and this position has become a part of who they are. So when someone comes across as being even smarter than them or knowing more about what they consider to be THEIR subject of expertise, they seem off-put. I wonder if this has any carry-over to less desirable traits. Before proceeding, allow me to state that this is speculation, and I have no desire to accuse anyone of being lazy or weak-willed. Now then. For example, having insomnia is, as I understand it, a pretty big pain in the neck. But how many times have your insomniac friends brought it up to you? Quite a lot? This isn’t really surprising, since it is something that they probably deal with on a regular basis and is therefore often in the forefront of their mind, but I think it’s common that difficulties like these aren’t treated strictly as problems. They also take on a personal significance. It is part of who they are, and the idea of being freed from it, while sounding relieving, sounds a bit unnerving. If you think of yourself in part as someone who doesn’t sleep well, then it would be like there is a hole if that part of you were removed. Again, I could be completely missing the mark here. But maybe this can apply even further down the rabbit hole, even down to things like morality and belief. I’ve met no shortage of people who, on a fundamental level, make little sense to me. I just can’t grasp how they can live life based on the premise that they use, or how they can be satisfied by theoretical eloquence, even if in reality the functionality of their lifestyle doesn’t measure up at all. But ideas and beliefs become personal on some level. Sure, people might know that they have an outlook or way of applying said outlook that is flawed, but it is still theirs. They would rather have an arguably flawed idea to call their own than to just accept someone else’s. There is something deeply satisfying about crafting something to call your own, and in a cultural as individual-focused as ours, what the other guy has going just doesn’t matter all that much.