 The fact that the usual definition of genius excludes the majority of people is a sign of a deep belief in mediocrity in our society. Most people believe that the majority of people are not particularly intelligent or creative, and that only a few people can learn many things with ease, and that only a few people can make beautiful paintings or invent lovely music. But what if this wasn't true? What if everyone had within them capacities that, up until now, they had not been able to even dream of? Now this belief in mediocrity depends a lot on the way we interpret the meaning of the word “normal”. Actually, the word “normal” has three different meanings that are sometimes confused. First of all, it can mean: average - what the majority are like. You know the bell curve? Well, “normal” is what makes that big bulge that forms a bell shape in it. Now another meaning of normal is what is conforming to a norm; in other words, what things should be. If we say that somebody is behaving abnormally, we are worried about them or maybe trying to criticize them. A third meaning for the word normal, somewhat related to the second one, is: what things would be like if all the obstacles were removed. It is by this third meaning that I believe that the normal person should be a genius - if the obstacles were removed, and we're going to look at those obstacles. When we talk about intelligence, we often think about the IQ test, which is supposed to be a measure of intelligence. But we have to remember that IQ tests only measures behavior - they do not measure someone's innate capacities. For example, since they rely heavily on vocabulary questions, somebody who hasn't been exposed to a lot of vocabulary can't know as much as someone who has, but that's because of their experience, not because of their innate capacities. But these people will be measured as having a lower IQ than people who have been exposed to a more varied vocabulary. So when we say that someone has a normal IQ, we're talking about normal in the first sense, that is, they're in the average. Not only that, but somebody who isn't motivated to make an effort to answer the questions will also come out with a lower IQ. Even if they have very great intelligence, it won't show on the IQ test if they don't answer the questions correctly because they don't feel like it or don't see the point in answering those kinds of questions. So we must not forget that IQ results are simply statistics. They're a snapshot of what is now, but they don't give a clue as to why these results happened for individuals or the group as a whole, and they have no relation to what the results could have been under different circumstances. So what I would like you, dear reader, to do now, is simply to entertain the idea that what we have, up until now, considered to be normal, may not really be normal at all in the third sense of the term of how things could be and should be under optimal circumstances. And remember too that no one has ever proven the contrary; no one has ever proven that the generally accepted limits that we see today are real. These are just assumptions. But assumptions that are so widespread that people do not even think to ask whether they are true or not. But that's just what we are asking right now. |
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