What do we tolerate in a genius?
I’m not offering any answers in this blog, I just thought it was worth asking the question. Extraordinary people often aren’t the easiest to get along with. This can be because they’re so involved with the awesome thing they do that they don’t connect with the rest of life easily. They may think differently, have different priorities. Some, it must be said, are a long way up their own bums, suffering from over-entitlement issues, ego trips, power trips… How good do you have to be for it to offset not being very good at all?
It comes up every time some high profile, brilliant person is caught doing something downright criminal. This happens a lot. See previous comments about ego trips, and feelings of entitlement… How much slack do we cut them because we like what they do? How much do we tolerate in the allegedly great and the good that we don’t find acceptable in ‘ordinary’ people. What’s the basis for the massive double standard? Is life a scales where the harm we do and the good we do (or the goals we score, or the songs we sell) can balance each other out? Does anything that isn’t about making up directly for our shit offset our shit?
When people are successful, the price of their success looks justified. They were bold, heroic, courageous. They kept to their vision, were disciplined, had integrity… When there is no success, those same actions look like utter selfishness and stupidity, often inflicting ongoing damage on friends and family. We frame it with the outcome and judge it accordingly. Obsession in the winner is something to be proud of. Obsession in the loser is probably going to be treated as a mental health problem. Dedication or self indulgence. Persistence or stupidity. How much money you make will probably define how everyone else judges you, including the people who bear the brunt of it. If you’re suffering for someone else’s heroic achievement, that’s pretty heroic too. If you’re suffering for someone else’s selfish indulgence, there’s not much to be proud of.
What price do we pay? What price do we ask others to pay? What are do we think we are entitled to? How does the idea of success reshape the ideas about entitlement? When does it become acceptable to stop making effort towards being a good sort of human being?
