On the oppression of geniuses

On the oppression of geniuses...

A month or two ago, I stumbled upon an audio article at the national public radio website. It was interview with a British savant. You can listen to it here, if you'd like...

I also happen to have a close writer friend who is now in his second year of college - who apparently was labeled as having aspergers syndrome as a kid. He is a genius as well. He can write these incredibly detailed philosophical essays.

The question, dear reader, is whether genius children are simply misunderstood. These types of children have different aptitudes than most... and they perhaps have a desire to spend more time alone, because their aptitudes require this kind of focus.

Now, I know how this savant, Daniel Tammet, has learned. What are colors? What do they mean to him? Well, colors represent a box he's packed his mathematical techniques into. I know the feeling. I have done the same thing with writing. My technique which I write with, is represented by such a box... I use the idea of "How the words would sound if presented orally." Of course, this is a very ambiguous kind of thing, isn't it? You aren't giving any explicit instruction, if you tell a student to just write so the essay sounds good, if read aloud - as if it were a speech. Everyone would have an affinity for different kinds of oral presentation... depending on their cultural background, and depending on any of a thousand different personality factors. Now, looking back at my writings from years ago... I find lots of analyses where I have written about exact kinds of techniques, which I established I should use in putting words on paper. Over the years, I have lost sight of the algorithm. All I need to do now, is simply compare the words on paper, to how they would sound orally. This is what some people call "talent." I've always had mixed feelings about the word "talent". The concept is, that some people just can do something naturally, from the very beginning... when in reality - everyone who's learning something has to sit down and analyze it, and lay out all the parts on the table and think about each part, piecemeal.

So... thinking about colors is how Daniel does his mental footwork in respect to mathematics...

It's poetic, if you think about it; if you do certain actions with amounts - multiply, divide, subtract, add, etcetera... do the amounts change hue, so to speak? For instance, with addition... if you see thirty ducks out there on this side of the lake, and fifty on the other... if you put those amounts together, what you have now, is exactly what you had before, in some sense... a group of thirty, and a group of fifty... but... then, you also have a new distinct amount - eighty ducks. So perhaps, we can poetically say that the same base color has morphed somewhat, into a different hue.

Now colors, as such, don't represent an algorithm. It's much the same as thinking about "how an idea would sound when presented orally." As I was saying above: colors and the concept of oral presentation - both are boxes in which a person packs all the specific ideas and approaches, which he learns over the years are best, when he has that task in front of him.

So what has Daniel done his whole life in his solitude? Analyze... think... He's done what most people never do with numbers - that is - sit down and creatively think about why numbers interact the way they do. What are numbers? And how do amounts change and morph, when you combine them?

I'm sure he has established a million new mathematical techniques over the years. For instance, here's an interesting technique for multiplication (film). So different from what we learned in elementary school, huh? No decimal numbers (1234567890) involved until the very end - when you simply have to count up the marks.

Now, because of the stigma his parents placed on him, over the years - I can guess he probably didn't develop other basic skills early on - such as writing, or typing. And so, I don't believe he would have written down all the analyses he made over his lifetime, in respect to mathematics... All he has left, is this new personal algorithm - which has do to with a very deep and intuitive understanding of numbers.

And look at us today, gawking at him. Aren't we fools?

We - this society - who never respected this man, are left out in the cold.

He had a task. He had a project since birth. But no one respected the value in what he was doing. He was studying mathematics like no other person in the world does.

There is a riddle in Daniel Tammet - and the riddle is: How do we, as a society, view children? How should we? And damnit... where are the writers, the mathematicians, the guild people who should be seeking out and finding these kinds of kids when they are young? Our current social formula in ethnically european society, is the nuclear family. We are so isolated from eachother, overall. People come to the usa, and they say that it feels so sterile here - people are cold. In past centuries there were extended families - there were communities where people knew eachother - and did things together. Not so, anymore. So kids are left out. There are very few community groups where families with children meet, regularly. So what's a kid to do when his parents cannot comprehend the kind of posture he needs to pursue his aptitudes?

For anyone with a further interest in numbers and their history - this is a great film...