The Great Matt Baldoni was kind enough to guest write as I head across the finish line on "The Curse of the High IQ." Mr. Baldoni is a genius, and I don't mean that in a musical sense. I mean that in a literal sense, and conveys his experiences and thoughts growing up with a high IQ, experiences that will hopefully prove useful for your own lives.
The Handicap of a High IQ by Matt Baldoni
I didn't know my IQ was high until I paid to get it tested three different ways as an adult in my 30s. I had actually underestimated what the numbers would be by a long shot. It doesn't change much in my life now that I know, but it's a nice confidence booster. I sure as hell don't advertise it that much, but it's sorta like finding out you have a huge penis. You can't really tell anybody about it during a business meeting, but it sure helps you feel like a winner, which helps you out in the rest of life. I carefully chose three different standardized tests (The Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale, The Cognitive Assessment System, and Stanford-Binet), took them separately, and waited for results. Depending on who you ask, my numbers fell between 127 and 140. With a mean 100 and standard deviation 15, that puts me in the top few percent. Now, many say that these tests mean NOTHING, and while they don't mean everything, they mean something. Especially for children. Children who measure high on the intelligence quotient scale tend to favor the arts. That turned out to be true for me. High IQ kids also tend to shy away from sports and be more socially active within their comfortable circles. They also tend to develop cognitive ability faster, which makes them good at things like math. These kids also tend to develop self discipline and responsibility at an early age. All this turned out to be true for me. However, it soon became a handicap to have high intelligence in MANY different ways. Here are a few of them, starting with the two things I did to myself the most:
Self-destruction
People with a High IQ are more likely to exhibit self-destructive behavior, including addictive behavior. TRU DAT. When I entered my teenage years as a student and budding professional musician, it wasn't long before drugs and alcohol became a daily ritual. Those daily habits lasted for many years, and were destructive. Science shows us that many drug addicts/alcoholics tend to have high IQ's, which they think allows so many of them to be “functioning addicts”. Other people kill themselves with that shit, but we can function somehow, even while our physiological insides are getting eaten away.
Lying and Manipulation
People with a High IQ are more likely to lie and manipulate. We're also more likely to be sociopathic. I'm no clinical sociopath, or else the two licensed therapists I've seen would have diagnosed me as such. But I did speak with these two professionals about the fact that I have lied a lot. Mostly to get what I wanted or needed. Getting money, getting laid, manipulating a situation to my advantage, throwing someone else under the bus with a lie, lying to get revenge, I did them all.
People with a high IQ are more likely to have vengeful tendencies too, by the way. From teenage years to the bulk of my 20s, lying to women was almost a requirement. I sure did get laid a lot, though.
So...those are the two most self-destructive behaviors I put in to practice that science also says are more likely to be exhibited by subjects with my IQ numbers. Now let's look at how it played out in some other situations:
Immediate Family
One look at my family will tell you that most of them are bumbling idiots. My dad's no doubt the smartest of his entire household, but my mother's a wingnut and a lot of the rest of em couldn't spell some of the words in this essay or do long division if you held a gun to their head. They also reproduce like rabbits, which is a characteristic of lower IQ numbers. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that one, people with High IQ's are less likely to pass on their genes. Shocker. Being smart in my family meant that you were a “know-it-all” or a “smartass” or trying to prove something to everyone else. They always had great animosity to people smarter than them. Now that I've had time to think on it, it handicapped me in a few different ways with the large group of Italian Americans who raised me. They're loving people and they cared for me a great deal, but I did feel like an outsider. To this day, on the rare occasion I visit for a holiday glut-fest dinner, we don't have a whole lot to talk about or relate to. I should also mention my brother in all this. He's a real-life exception to the rule. He was a star athlete who was actually diagnosed as ADHD as a child. Usually great athletes don't exhibit High IQ numbers, but somehow, at age 20, upon graduating from the firefighters' academy in California, he not only scored in the top 5 for written testing, but also in the top 5 for physical agility. He continues to be one of the strongest and smartest firefighters in his world, and has excelled through the ranks with greater speed than anyone he came up with. He's set to be one of the youngest Fire Department Captains in the history of the state this year. According to the science, my brother is an anomaly.
Education
Hindsight is 20/20, and I look back on my K-17 education as a total joke. The absolute worst in leftist brainwashing, from kindergarten through dropping out of grad music school. Grad school was when I finally came to full realization what a bill of goods I had been sold, and I left hastily. I'm embarrassed it took me that long, but again, good science shows us that some with High IQ numbers are more likely to believe bullshit when they're young. I guess that's me too. Being a child of California public schools and the California State University system through the late 80s, 90s, and early 2000s was a recipe for disaster. Although the economy in California was robust for most of that, the system was failing fast and getting more and more and MORE government subsidy all along the way the years I was there. You had to be a blank slate with these teachers (90% of which were women, of course). There were no exceptions allowed. Some weird tests were given to me early on, something called the “gifted program”, and a few others. But for me, getting singled out like that was a recipe to get bullied and get the shit beat out of you at the bus stop, so I turned them down. It was my choice after all. By the time I got to a high-end private university for grad school, I saw that most of my colleagues were not intelligent at all, just simply rich. They had the dough to be there, and they were buying a useless degree in jazz guitar. So I got out. I still, to this day, feel so utterly embarrassed for buying into all of it and spending so much time on music education after public school, when I could have just been working. Thankfully, I don't have any debt from it anymore. I do not recommend it to any young musician with potential, especially ones that I see are very intelligent.
Religion
Okay, more good science, kids! There is a negative correlation between involvement in organized religion and IQ numbers. Dumb people go to church, basically. Smart people don't. I couldn't throw away Catholicism fast enough as a teenager, and what a bag-o-bricks THAT was to set down. I've lived an entire adulthood free of that guilt, and it's been a major component to my success. You can read more about why atheists in particular have High IQ's. It's no accident that large groups of people just hand over their money and their time to gigantic machine-like religions and churchianities. The bell curve of intelligence makes no mistakes. People of average or below intelligence need something to explain things to them, and who better than their imaginary friend Jesus and his dad?
Once you grow into young adulthood and can be responsible and make
some of your own choices, being surrounded by religion and having no choice in the matter can seriously handicap you.
Dating
Ah, this one's my favorite. As far as the IQ #'s in men vs. women, we must remember that much of this science is government funded. The numbers have to be often cooked in order to spew out the proper results so the scientists can continue to get their funding. And you just CAN NOT say that men are smarter than women, that's a big no-no, even if it's true. This is a topic of much debate for a long, long time. For centuries before the 1960s or so (when feminism was introduced), the science was pretty ubiquitous on men being ever so slightly more intelligent than women. Things changed, and now we're supposed to be the same. The testing was changed starting in 1974 to equalize the genders. But good science (in the private sector), to this day, still shows us that although gender plays no role in intelligence from ages 0-14, after that the curve bends slightly towards men. Particularly in the areas of math and science. No matter how much they try and cook the books, there is always that one difference between men and women. The general consensus is also that there is a mean difference of 3 IQ points to the advantage of males. That ain't much, but it's something.
How can this handicap a smart guy's dating life? Well, in many ways. First, hotter girls are generally dumber. Although easy to bang, you won't have much to talk about with them if you're dating them at any length or significance. Hot girls are dumber because there's no need for them to be smart. Men don't correct a hot girl when she's wrong because they usually wants to fuck her. Attractive girls can get things provided for them far easier for a far longer time. While it's easier for a smarter guy to manipulate his way into a hot girl's life (using game and general cognitive advantage), she will then likely expect provisions and resources from him, simply because biology and evolution suggest that women are attracted to men with more resources (intelligence and otherwise) for purposes of breeding. There is also a long-held direct correlation between intelligence and income. We make more money than dumb guys do, regardless of field, so we're more likely to have women around because we have more money. The handicap here is that we have a higher chance of getting manipulated out of our resources. After two decades of bachelored singledom and many, many relationships, I've found that the best bet for happiness is to find a 7-8 with lower intelligence than me.
These women are everywhere and can make a smart man very happy, even for a small amount of time. Let's also remind ourselves that we are far less likely to breed, which correlates to being far less likely to marry, which can send women of ALL intelligence levels packing very quickly. I've lost more good women because of my refusal to marry and procreate than for any other reason. Oh well!
Keeping hours
This one turned up a lot of results in my research. Higher intelligence people are more likely to operate best at night. I found this to be true at a very young age, and it's to my advantage now because I live my life in show business. We work when all the other worker bees are off, which is at night, on the weekends, and on holidays. This night-owl type stuff can also lead to depression, some science says. People with high intelligence can often experience frustration with many common interactions on a given day. Say for instance, everyone getting upset when you correct them during conversation. We don't even think about that when we do it, but it makes people very angry. Being called an “egomaniac” or a “braggart” when you're simply excited to share something you've learned. And after all this brow-beating, people still expect you to be a top performer when you're smart. This can frustrate us and make us feel shitty.
More....
A common association in many bullshit studies is that people with high IQ's are “more socially inept or awkward”. It may be true. But not if you associate with other smart people. If I'm in a fucking Wal-Mart or passing through a crowd of women watching the Kardashians, no, I'm sorry, I don't want to talk to any of you and I will act like an asshole to get you out of my face. If that makes me “socially inept”, fine. High IQ also commonly results in the individual requiring a higher amount of solitude and contemplation than the middle of the curve. People will call you socially inept if you like to be by yourself. They'll also call you depressed, lonely, and sad when in all reality you may be perfectly content. Being an “outsider” is very common for people with high intelligence, but thankfully, in this day and age, we are all connected through an insanely accessible network. It's easier today to find other intelligent people than it ever has been in any time before. It's easy to find those people like you, and spend time with them. When smart people hang with smart people, it's not an echo chamber, it's a wonderful exchange of differentiating ideas and yet another learning experience that can contribute to our intelligence. So go find each other.
