Clever is as clever does

[gurdonark]

I like that story about the Chinese Communist leader who, upon being asked what he thought of the French Revolution, replied "It's too early to tell yet". One advantage of the passing years--hardly a compensation for a slowed metabolism or hyper-sensitivity to caffeine, but some recompense generally--is the opportunity to see how people turn out. Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" has that wonderful scene in which all his childhood classmates describe their futures. In real life, too, one frequently learns what happens to people in high school, college and at the workplace. Sometimes what one learns is not the surprise that life should be, somehow.

People take different positions on the issue of how much other people can change. Some folks think nobody really changes after about age five or so. Others, including myself, think that people can and do change a fair bit of the time. Still, the "no change" folks might have a good argument, based on how the folks I know's lives turned out.

The poor fellow who played basketball well, liked to be "cool", drove a muscle-ish car, and neglected his education turned out pretty much according to the formbook. He married a very cute local girl, settled down near his hometown, and worked in retail until the cute but vapid girl he married ran off with the Baptist music director. I think one of the neglected realities of life is what a gothic life is lived by Baptist music directors at churches all over the south. When I was seventeen, I might have guessed the cool fellow's future; it's hard to be cool after thirty. At seventeen, he might have thought himself a clever fellow, but clever is as clever does.

It's sometimes a matter of goals. The character played by Albert Brooks in "Broadcast News", being beaten by his classmates for snide things he said as high school valedictorian during his graduation speech, shouts at his oppressors "You'll never make more than $ 19,000 dollars a year in your life!". The toughs halt a moment, reflect, and then one of them says "19,000. Pretty good". Then they resume their oppression.

The nice woman who was too bored in high school because she was meant for better things of course turns out to be the woman who runs off with a soldier she doesn't love to just to escape the small town. She learned, as people generally do, that large towns lived in with people you don't love, particularly on enlisted pay, are not that much more thrilling than small towns. She'd been far too clever for our small town. Her cleverness had made her too clever by half.

The procession of cleverness marched onward through my younger days,
like those folks in Masters' Spoon River Anthology, where everybody in the graveyard has some meaningful story to tell. The fellow who loved studying science and studying alcohol accepts a second rate degree in the former so that he can pursue the latter with a vengeance; you see, he's always been clever enough to drink with abandon and "get away with it". The woman so clever she could both succeed in school and date football players of course married a macho football player, who apparently promptly beat her. The fellow too clever to sit still for college now cleverly works retail while the world passes him by. The woman, one of many actually, so clever that she thought she was more elite than her coworkers now sits at home in mid-career, too clever to work with anyone else. The fellow so clever that he thought he could sell anything without trying, mysteriously stopped selling things when he stopped trying.

By contrast, people who thought they were not clever seem to come out differently and somehow "better". The woman who thought she was a simpleton in school studied assiduously, got her degree and took a nice job. She also thought she was really too plain to attract anyone cute, so she focused on finding someone nice and married a kind fellow. The man who thought he should work hard at the jobs he could obtain with his limited education and save his money rather than spend it now has been promoted to a job educated people usually hold and has a huge savings and no debt. The woman who never dreamed of escaping the small town got her degree from an ordinary university, married a worthy fellow she met in school, and now happily teaches school in the town she never really left.

I've built this construct carefully, and of course there are clever people who succeed (in the case of one moronically clever lawyer I know, maddeningly, as a rebuke of sort to Justice), as well as earnest, non-clever, hardworking people who get mired in failure.
But so often the attributes we feel are our crowning clevernesses
are our tragic flaws. I've also found that people who think they have to work hard at their dreams have a better run than people who imagine their talents should automatically permit them to achieve their goals.

I've always aligned myself with the clever, but lately I wonder if I should be re-aligning with the non-clever, good souls. They may not be the exotic spices I sometimes aspire to be, but they are, after all, the salt of the earth.

Comments

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Gee, I think you're more illumined in your idea than the post was. But whatever the post meant, I think that I do believe that "existing talentedly" is not enough, and one paradox is that less talented people who think they can achieve things largely "because they don't know any better" sometimes do more than people who "know" they are good, but feel misunderstood. The less talented person sees a rejection slip as a basis for working harder to get accepted, or follow a self-publishing path, or what have you.
A "talented" person bewails the manifold shortcomings of humanity.

I'm blathering now, but blathering is an essential part of my writing style. I guess I believe that creative people should go back to basics, be goal-oriented, accept the
evils of the need to self-market, accept the importance of simple contentment once in a while. The other way does not lead to greater artistry. I just think it leads to frustration. But I'm not an "artist", in any sense of the word, so I'm just positing thoughts on an artificial construct.



I am all for people trying to "free themselves". Surely that's part of creativity. But if creativity becomes just another prison, then we're out of the realm of art, and into the realm of the Twilight Zone, or psychology, or something.

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

I think what it really comes down to is My Swing Theory (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=marstokyo&itemid=28236)--in the case of the highly creative or inventive person--continual lack of encouragement brings on a chronic condition of depression-- depression feeds on itself--the person is hypersensitive because of it, hurts worse upon rejection, recovers less easily--and so things spiral downward... making it harder and harder to push oneself to PROMOTE, to blow the horn, shake the pompoms--whatever someone in our non-creative society needs to do to find OPPORTUNITY.

On the other side--the less talented, find more success (their ideas are less original, less threatening to other mediocre talent that makes up the world) and so they are praised, and rewarded, and their success begets more success.

that's how I see it.... and my entire life has been a very tough battle with a very real depression. I give myself credit though`-- a lot actually-- because I fight hard, and I do everything within my power to get better and turn it around.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I believe that you do have a very real depression. Your "swing theory" is appealing to me, because I see so many creative people who suffer from depression. At the same time, a lot of people I would consider gifted who did get the recognition they deserved--Mark Twain comes to mind--also suffer from depression.

I think it's a bit easy to suggest that success only comes to
second-raters because society as a whole is so second-rate, altho in popular culture, I can think of hundreds, if not thousands, of examples which support your argument.

But I believe, based only on the limited inference which quite assiduous reading of your journal gives me, that you suffer from a very real depression which would be just as real even if all the externals in your life were aligned as in an ideal world they ought to be. The negatives arising from that depression might be somewhat ameliorated by more creative recognition, but I think the core issues are medical, not something a loving art fan base could give you.

I always think how glad I am that, frustrating as doctors can be, you do seek medical resolutions to your medical issues. You and I have both known, I'm sure, dozens of people too "artistic" and "complex" to hunt this relief.
As paleolithic as current meds wisdom is, I have just known too many people who have been helped by meds--and too many
people who believe they are suffering from creative angst when in fact they are suffering from chemical imbalance.

The research on artistry v. bipolar, artistry v. schizophrenia, etc. of which I'm aware makes this a more complex notion than any of my comments here have/can address. But I think that while the idea of a downward spiral based on the paradox of true creativity v. non-appreciation and depression has some merit to it, I do think that there's chemical aspects of these things which make that too simple an explanation. That doesn't mean it's wrong, exactly, just one part of the elusive elephant we all try to describe with blindfolds on.

Ultimately, for the kind of encouragement you'll really need, you'll have to look to yourself and a handful of
people you respect, no matter how much acclaim or lack thereof you have in life. I don't think that your immense progress of late with your theaters is because you've
"gotten" some new audience. I think it's because you know you're doing your true work. That's a gift few people have.
Sadly, you have to share that gift with genuine, clinical depression. I have no magic words of comfort for that.
But I do believe that the effort to write a grant app., to keep making theaters, and, yes, perhaps to even sell things someday, is worth making, even in an uncaring and difficult world. Imagine if you felt impelled to make those theaters, but didn't, because you were too resigned to do so. What a
less rich world this would be.

I think your real depression is something a bit outside the construct of my post. But I also think that external effort, even in light of depression, is still a good, and maybe a very good, thing.

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh. Now you've done it--you had to bring up the whole genius/mental illness thing. I'm not sure of what research you're speaking, but I am aware of one such "study" by Kay Redfield Jamison. I hate that piece of crap, um, conjecture! She linked genius and manic depression. I am not sure what her motives were, except that she herself is manic depressive (and therefore a genius?!). All of her subjects were dead! Anyway, I'm an uniformed hot-head about this. I suppose I'd be interested in reading through the studies you allude to...if they're not by that woman!

You caution against over-simplification, but my major beef with this post, and some of the comments, is that you seem to be advocating over-simplification. Life is complex, people are complex. There are no prescriptive rules (oh god, now I'm quoting cataloging doctrine...)--do x and succeed; do y and fail. What are the standards by which we're to measure? Do we even know what "success" is? Ugh. I find this so frustrating for myself. I know I'm being incoherent. It's just that this is something I've been trying to figure out for a long time.

backpedaling from the bobcat icon

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Sorry to offend you. I do not believe that the Jamison research was the first nor the last study in this field.
I looked at some articles collected under the hyperlink at the bottom of the page for "creativity" at www.lorenbennet.org, but this was just a quick found-through-google bit to try to get Jamison in reference. My understanding is that the creativity/depression link is still an open research issue. I also believe that my own knowledge of this field fills roughly a thimbleful. I have never let ignorance prevent me from posting posts, though.
They are often oversimplified, and sometimes oversimplified on purpose to raise an issue. Sadly, for me, the oversimplification also always represents some facet of my views on something.

In both the post and the comments, I posit the simple notion that focusing on what matters and focusing on achievement
are important, and that sometimes we psyche ourselves, for want of a better term, from accomplishing those tasks.
I am the first to admit (I thought in my reply to marstokyo I was admitting that my view was not sophisticated enough, and that real medical conditions may impact both creativity and accomplishment. Instead, I apparently gave rise to a post so ambiguous that you drew what I perceive as nearly the opposite inference from that which I intended to make.

Life is complex. People are complex. I do not believe that necessarily means that there are no proscriptive rules.
Take strychnine, one dies. Quit one's job, one receives no paycheck. But the ways to survive are very complex,
granted, and that may essentially mean that any "simple" rule is by definition wrong.

But it's a paralysis, isn't it? A no escape sort of thing.
If nothing "works", then we never achieve anything. If everyone is so vastly different, then we learn nothing from anything. I'm using hyperbole, for emphasis. But I do believe that there's a forest among the trees, and we don't always have to be lost in the trees. I was trying to tell Mars that I think that people who are depressed can't fit in the Horatio Algerish notions I put forward, because depression is its own challenge. But I do advocate trying to simplify one's life. I don't think it's possible, really. But it's a struggle worth undertaking.

Again, though, I accept that this may be offensive, and my intention was not to offend.

creativity, intelligence and depression

[lonestarslp.livejournal.com]

One of the hallmarks of depression is a sense that one (or the world) has not lived up to one's expectations. I think that when one is intelligent or creative, one's expectations are high. Therefore when you don't live up to them (as no one can all the time), you are more likely to feel depressed. Also, people who are creative often have a very different take on the world that is difficult to share with others and can contribute to a sense of isolation. This isolation can also lead to depression. Finally, works of art based on self-satisfaction are usually not very interesting. Who wants to read "they lived happily for many years" at the beginning of a novel?

Although I can't prove it scientifically, I think there are many environmental reasons why creativity and depression can go together.

Re: creativity, intelligence and depression

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your insights. You make some really good points. I think you line out some environmental factors at play here very succintly.

reigning in the bobcat

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I'm not offended! Just full of rage, in general. Not directed at you! It's just a sore point with me for some reason. And like I said, it's totally uninformed, except that I was forced to read Jamison's memoir in college. And I resented it for some unknown reason. I'm utterly reactionary and judgemental. Oops. I was hoping to keep that forever concealed from all the lj peeps. Damn. I'm a total contradiction. I long for things to be clear and precise. When they aren't I fall to pieces. And rally around the cause of complexity. Does this have anything to do with your original post?

Please don't think I'm the least bit angry/offended/dismayed! I'm not. Just venting--not at you, with you!

Re: reigning in the bobcat

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

"I'm a total contradiction. I long for things to be clear and precise. When they aren't I fall to pieces. And rally around the cause of complexity".

That could be your user bio. That, plus some real writing talent, is what makes your journal such a pleasure to read.

Liberal in politics and ideas, conservative in fundamental outlook and approach. And you're not even from Minnesota!
Misplaced at birth!

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

But I believe, based only on the limited inference which quite assiduous reading of your journal gives me, that you suffer from a very real depression which would be just as real even if all the externals in your life were aligned as in an ideal world they ought to be. The negatives arising from that depression might be somewhat ameliorated by more creative recognition, but I think the core issues are medical, not something a loving art fan base could give you.

You're right, I'm miserable either way. I like to recall an interview with Paul Simon (who also suffered a lot of neglect and abuse from his father as a child)-- he, with all the accolades and trophies, considers himself to be a hopeless failure. Even through all the *success*--he can't stop seeing himself as he was told he was in childhood. Powerful scars--some are just hard to heal.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

yes, that's right.

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

i am most fascinated how you seem to be attracted to this subject of "depression"

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

For some reason, for all my life, many of my friends suffer from depression. Maybe this is because many of everyone's friends suffer from depression, but I think I draw a few more than the norm. I have not isolated why this might be, or what it means.
But it does interest me.

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

from my personal experience those who are creative and passionate and drawn or driven to manifest this energy through transforming or creating their own world are often viewed as depressive, manic, bi-polar, moody, histrionic, emotional, etc. etc. etc.

i am fortunate to have myself and friends in this case who make marvelous art and have lived through the pathologizing and other's needs to medicated them for their own discomfort. i have had good mentors in this realm and have learned where to share my darkest moments so that others are not "frightened"

i had a therapist once describe me to someone else as "most people are comfortable with this range of emotion (holds hands about 2 feet apart), lynn however is perfectly comfortable with this range (holds hands about 6 feet apart)"

[voodoukween.livejournal.com]

a marvelous posting

from a fellow fighter