297. Dx: Imperfect People Disorder

“The problem is this:  you live in a world of imperfect people. No one is smart enough or drives well enough or talks fast enough to suit you. And you are entitled to a reality that suits your needs. Heck, you’re what?  13 now. You are completely able to make adult decisions because of your superior IQ. Is that what you are telling me?”

“Yeah, my parents just don’t get it. They are slipping behind my abilities. I feel like they are skiing behind my speedboat and I have to pull them along, but really, they’re just slowing me down. My mom doesn’t understand, no, can’t understand quantum physics like I do. I’ve told her once what it’s about, broken symmetry and entropy and stuff. Her eyes glazed over and she kept having to say ‘What?’ It’s annoying!!”

“Mmmhmmm. It’s a form of rudeness and disrespect to your superior abilities, and yet you still need her to drop you off and pick you up from sports camps and school functions.”

“Yeah, and she’s always on her phone. I can’t stand that. Distracted drivers are now the number one cause of fatal car crashes.”

“Yeah, I saw that on Facebook. Now when you drive, how will you do it?”

“In-tell-I-gent-ly.  If you use your native intelligence to full potential, well, it’s not that hard. Driving requires less than one per cent of your available brain power.”

“But what about all the other drivers who are not as gifted as you?”

“That’s a problem. I think you ought to have a minimum IQ to get a driver’s license. Only smart people should be allowed to drive. It’s stupid to let stupid people drive on the same roads with lawyers, surgeons, judges, and CEO’s of cutting edge tech firms. If one of these leaders is killed by a moron, that’s a huge loss. If a moron head-ons another moron, no loss.”

“Because low IQ folks bring no value to society, right?”

“Absolutely. They are here to be ruled. If you can’t compete, you sit the bench or sweep the floor. Not everyone can be a starter. Those are facts.”

“So, it’s hard for you to be surrounded by imperfect people, huh?”

“You have no idea. I’m in the 99th percentile in achievement tests I take. I’m smarter than a lot of my teachers. It pisses them off,  so like, they’ll try to catch me not paying attention and ask me a question.  Wrong!  I can multitask. So their little traps backfire on them and they get pissed that I beat them at their own game. So then they change the storyline to manners and arrogance and disrespect crap. It’s unscientific and subjective. But it doesn’t matter. Same as my parents: They make the rules for now, but don’t expect me to respect stupid people.”

“So what do you think the per cents are for smart people like you?”

“Well, my measured IQ is over 135, I’m sure. But I think it’s a lot higher… so let’s say I’m in the top one per cent, maybe even higher.”

“Must be lonely up there.”

“Sure is. You can find a dumb person in a second. Finding an exceptionally smart friend is next to impossible.”

“So your friends are not your intellectual equals?”

“No, I mean I like them and all, but they are pretty dumb. They do stupid things and we laugh, but they don’t get the deeper issues of life either.”

“How about finding a girlfriend? If you struggle with your mother’s level of intelligence, and she is an accomplished professional by the way, how do you think dating or marriage is going to be?”

“Uh, she needs to be smart and good looking and ambitious. I mean, I’ll be making six or seven figures and living the cool life, so she’ll have to be okay with my choices. I don’t want a dumb chick who will make me look bad, ya know?”

“You are pretty sure of yourself.”

“It’s easy to be confident if you have the smarts and talent to back it up. Okay, so like in baseball, I’m on base a lot and score most of our team’s runs. In basketball I’m usually the leading scorer. So if I plan on being a neurosurgeon, why would it be any different?”

“I don’t know. I’m wondering how you’ll interact with dumb patients and nurses and other professionals who don’t measure up, though.”

“I think that they will be so glad for my expertise that they will spare me their pettiness. At least I hope they will. In any event I will be at the top of the food chain, so I can call the shots for the most part.”

“Yeah, like a polar bear or an eagle or a lion. The king of the jungle. You’ll be the king pin.”

“Someone has to be at the top. Talent and IQ rule. Cream rises, right?”

“Oh yeah, and milk just sits there. Not to mention skim milk.”

“So, do you have a diagnosis for me? My parents said something about a narcissistic personality? Is that even a diagnosis? Plus, my friends are dying to know.”

“Yes, it is. It encompasses a sort of fixed personality, a set of beliefs about oneself, that you are special even if there is no evidence. Narcissists lack empathy. They believe they are entitled to preferential treatment and should be treated deferentially. But that’s not you. No sir.”

“So do I have a diagnosis? I mean I don’t want to waste my time in therapy if I don’t have some incredible set of issues, ya know?”

“Oh, yes. I get it. And I’ve thought about your condition long and hard. Aside from being here to guide your parents and peers, I think your issue is that you are surrounded by imperfect people.”

“Absolutely. It sucks. Forrest Gump was a good movie but not in real life. I want smart people who think and act like I do.”

“Exactly. That’s why I’m diagnosing you with imperfect people disorder.”

 

 

 

 

 

288. Conspiracy Theories

 

CONSPIRACY noun (pl) -cies

1. a secret plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, esp with political motivation; plot

2. the act of making such plans in secret

3. piracy, especially with cons in front of it.

 

Like a good myth, a conspiracy theory can’t be proven or disproven. It just has to be tolerated until it loses steam. The Kennedy assassination; the ‘Paul is dead’ myth; the Jade Helm theory; ten Jubilees; Elvis is alive in a Walmart in Arkansas; etc. etc. etc. There appears to be no end to End Times Doomsday prophecies to scare the kids with.  Some folks just seem to relish saying, “We’re all gonna DIE!!!” While it’s true that we all die, it doesn’t have to be news delivered like an ‘I told you so’. Death is a fact not a news headline.

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…and now it’s the Channel 9 In Touch Report with Jim:

“I was so shocked that my 96 year old neighbor died in his sleep of natural causes.”

Reporter Jim, “Why is that, Mrs. Underthinker?”

“It just seems so unfair. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in this neighborhood. I don’t know what to tell the kids now.”

Reporter Jim, “Uh, okay. Back to you in the studio, Shelly. I’m Jim McIntyre reporting from the intersection of Ignorance and Bliss in Naïve County.”

Shelly, “Jim, what can you tell us about the recent Elvis sightings at the Walmart?”

Reporter Jim: ” Oh, Growaset, Shelly!!”

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Not just stupid folks believe this crap. Lazy thinkers or non-thinkers buy it by the metric ton also. For one reason or another the believers need the easy lie when the truth is hard and complicated. Here are two math problems. Which would you rather attack?

or this one  2 + 2 = ? (Hint:  it’s an even whole number bigger than three but smaller than five.)

Sure, why get a headache when someone else can find and pre-chew your facts for you like a mother robin? And then every night at 6 p.m. you can open your hungry mouth and your favorite newscaster can spit out the day’s catch into your gullet as a worm-flavored smoothie. Simple. Let’s not talk about proof or truth; the key question is this: is the smoothie palatable or does it need more honey?

Every year or two features an end of the world story. Let’s see, the Mayan calendar ended in 2012, therefore, (as if what follows is inescapably logical) the world must end in accordance with the Mayan calendar. [If they were so smart, why are they extinct?] How about the other incomplete calendars that have been discovered over the millennia?  For instance, the Falkland Islands repeating calendar that goes on as far as the number pi?  Or the Easter Island calendar of a race of super people who were raptured by space aliens around 1,000 A.D.? So, you never heard of these, did you?  Why? Because I just made them up. It’s easy to do and hard to disprove.  The Easter Island calendar, by the way,was carved on the back of one of those giant human figures and then pushed over to hide it for a thousand years. “Smiling Sammy”, as the English explorer Captain Cook later called the 18 ton male human figure, remained face up as if worshiping the sun when he was actually protecting the eternal calendar code on his back. How about that?

In a real Hollywood movie that never made it to the theatres or even to Blue Ray release, Nicholas Cage’s character, G. Oliver South, finds Smilin’ Sammy and brings him to his original erect state with the help of a Grove crane and a secret herbal recipe. Meanwhile, both KGB and CIA and INTERPOL and MOSSAD agents (which adds up to more than both) comb the island searching for Nick/G. Ollie South, because each of them has one fifth of the code needed to decode the calendar chiseled into Sammy’s backside and thus control the world as we know it (in movie trailer gravelo voce). As luck and bad script writing would have it, Nick/G. Ollie South, a mere archeologist from Kansas, finds and kills all these better trained agents of evil and destruction with a can opener; unites the five fragments, and re-energizes Smilin’ Sammy, who then break dances on the beach of Easter Island, turning the Pacific into a frothy flood of tidal beer waves that threaten humanity. Nick runs into the suds and exclaims, “Tastes like Heineken.”

 

As he walks out of the foam capped beer waves in what’s left of his archeological shorts, Nick/ Professor South wears a quizzical expression on his unshaven face, and then screws his eyebrows and nose into a question mark. The fate of the world depends on him solving this suddenly sudsy mystery.  The audience senses time racing by since there are only about twenty minutes left on the running time, according to the Chinese DVD knockoff label. Nick sucks up some more beer spray urgently. He slaps his corkscrewed face into flaccidity. “Think, thank, thunk. I can’t get drunk” he recites to no one there, not even a chair.  Inspiration and courage show up simultaneously like twin sparrow hawks.

With the five part calendar code in one hand he climbs up Smilin’ Sammy’s left leg. He shimmies past the stone man’s absent arms and arrives at the pumicey neck. Uttering an ancient Micronesian curse, he puts Sammy into a professional wrestler sleeper hold, dropping Sammy onto his back, face up again, resting in the same original culvert of cupidity. A new smile on his volcanic rock face. Unexpectedly the ocean returns to its salty state.

This conspiracy theory thing is not hard to do if you are practiced at the art of deception, or see Mick Jagger at the reception, a glass of wine in his hand. Standing in line with Mr. Jimmy, man did he look pretty ill.  Whoops. I was plagiarizing in a most vulgar manner there.  So, who was behind all this monolithic intrigue and manipulation? A secret international consortium of mega-breweries that run the U.N. and the Arab League and NATO. Nick has to find a way off the island so he can expose their skullduggery, but just as the University of Kansas helicopter starts to land, a poison dart hits Nick in his naked neck, killing him before he falls perfectly parallel to Smilin’ Sammy, the code buried beneath him. Silenced by a terminal sleeper hold.

 I get it now:  conspiracy theories are fun.