Is there really a fine line between genius and madness?

Question

The intelligent always seem mysterious, eccentric, and loner types, whereas, say the mentally challenged seem to always have a smile on their face. So, is ignorance really bliss?

Answer 1

genius is a form of madness.. madness is a form of genius.

Answer 2

Don't believe that the 'mentally challenged' are always happy that way. People who are mildly retarded know darn well that they're not as smart as most people, and it is frustrating to them, even if they are generally happy with their lives. Nor is ignorance the same as low IQ, which I think is what you're actually asking about here.

Why should anyone expect highly intelligent people to act just like the majority? You're talking about people who make up less than half of a percent of the population. By their intelligence alone, they're well outside the norm. Does that mean they're crazy? If you define crazy as "acting in a way not approved or understood by the average person," then yes. If you mean it as "unable to adapt to changing situations and respond in a beneficial manner," then no.

For that matter, who says that a 'mysterious, eccentric loner type' has to be unhappy that way?

I cannot imagine that having a lower IQ would make me more happy. The world would be a much scarier place if I was unable to understand other people and what was happening around me. Either that or it would be incredibly boring.

Answer 3

Well I don't know who said it
but a famous guy once said that the difference between genius and insanity is only measured through success. And I believe there is a lot of truth in that. Geniusses are always working their mind at high capacity. So I guess it's not unusual for one to snap a wire or cut all cords at some point.

Answer 4

I knew a guy once who was a genious. I'm not quite sure what happened to him, but when I saw him again years later he was standing on the street corner yelling out obsanities to anyone who walked by. The towns people call him Crazy Tim now.

A girl I went to college with was one too. I never saw it coming, when she ended up in the mental institution. She's out now though. She thinks Aliens landed in her brain or something and for some reason, when she's at the grocery store, at the end of every isle she has to do a complete spin with her shopping cart.

These stories are 100% true and the sad thing is they are both people from a small town.

Answer 5

Very Intelligent people have trouble finding intellectual peers do to geographic isolation and tend not to be able to or don't try to conform to the social norms around them isolating them even more because most societies are conformity based and shun non-conformists (perhaps this is how individual societies come about to begin with). This makes them seem mysterious, weird or eccentric to people who want to conform or naturally conform more readily. And then that social isolation allows a more individualistic development of personality traits, habits and interests making them fit in even less and seem even more eccentric to those (self chosen or biologically instinctual) conformist people around them as well as other intelligent people because they have great variety do to there divergent interests and don't have many things in common other then there intelligence.

Ignorance is bliss because what you aren't aware of can't be a dis pleasurable experience to you and people naturally avoid even the possibility of displeasure(fear of the unknown do to the possibility of displeasure) and impulsively chase what they think will be pleasurable to them usually leading them to what they consider pleasure but also having unforeseen and unconsidered consequences.

Answer 6

Being mentally retarded is not the same as Asperger's, Depression, antisocial behavior, or any of the hundreds of other types of mental disabilities. Mentally challenged people are people who have a limited ability to learn new things and process information. These are people who literally think slower they are not mad. But people with other types of disabilities like bipolar definitely seem mad and their intelligence is not compromised at all by their disability. Bill Gates is thought to have Asperger's. I'm sure tons of world leaders suffer from depression. Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow. Brilliant or madness?

Answer 7

True genius requires creativity and that would seem to some to be madness, Some like Howard Hughes crossed the line into madness, but most live happy and productive lives

Answer 8

i'm fairly looking forward to this Ashes sequence and fairly have not thoroughly written the Aussies off. however England might desire to bypass into the sequence as overwhelming favourites by using modern-day type and the undeniable fact that the sequence is being performed in England. I reckon Chris Rogers could be a sprint a gloomy horse as he knows the situations over right here somewhat lots. solid to be certain some friendly banter flying around between the two instruments of supporters too!

Answer 9

Your question is very valid, and one which there is lots of dissension and research studies which lack any conclusion to the topic. It prompted me to look on the Internet and I found the following article. Read it and see if you can answer it yourself.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Phenomenology of genius and psychopathology.

Doerr-Zegers O.

University of Chile, Santiago.

The relationship between genius and madness has been a subject of interest since the beginning of critical and philosophical thinking. Thus, Aristotle, in the Book XXX of the Problemata, asks himself "why are all extraordinary men in the fields of philosophy, politics, poetry and art melancholic?, adding afterwards: "...and some of them in such a way that they may suffer from pathologic manifestations whose origin is in the black bile". In the past decades the German author Tellenbach studied the personalities of several geniuses, both from fiction, such as Hamlet, and from reality, such as the writer von Kleist, concluding that they suffered from a specific form of depression that he called "Schwermut" (melancholy), which was supposedly different from the narrowly defined illness of depression. Other work done on this subject is the extensive study by the North American author Kay Jamison, who, after researching the biography and the tree of a long list of writers, composers and musicians, concluded that all of them had suffered to some degree from a bipolar disorder. This author strives to carry out a phenomenology of genius, and he finds that, together with other essential features, the geniuses always show forms of experiencing and/or of behaving which do not fall within the range that is considered normal, although they can not always be classified as pathological. His study is based on the analysis of the life and the work of three men whose genius could not be doubted: the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, the philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. This author specially focuses on the last named, since in his later work he explicitly meditated on the suffering that has meant for him his condition of genius and what he considered the only way to overcome them: to be faithful to the work of art, whose fulfilment was imposed on him--to a certain degree from the endogenous--as an unavoidable imperative.

Answer 10

Ignorance really is bliss. How people would be considered mad men in this life, but are revered as geniuses when they die. Go figure? The thought process of mankind is a strange thing.

Answer 11

I don't know, but there is a fine line between a guy standing on the edge of a river bank fishing and a guy being an idiot wasting his life away.