Wow-- I'm really enjoying this, too.
Giftodd and JamieH both hit upon some of the same things I was thinking as I read your opening post, Val. I'll add that I had a bit of a chuckle at Giftodd's characterization of her childhood. Likewise, let me just say that.
I'll add to that that there may be "mitigating" factors which are
not randomly occurring within the population as a whole, but have a positive correlation with cognitive ability.
Some of THOSE factors (which would seem to mostly dramatically limit achievement, at least achievement in terms that matter to the so-called outside world):
schizoaffective disorders-- these become a lot more
common and also significantly more severe as one goes out to the tail of the cognitive bell curve.
Someone already mentioned OEs, which I think, when present in extreme forms, can be fairly debilitating in terms of allowing a person to live normally and interact with the world the way others do-- I also hypothesize that some of them may, in fact, lend vulnerability to the development of mental illness when they are severe enough.
Another thing that I see as missing (thus far, anyway) is the notion of
focused PASSION for ONE thing in particular.
I mean, sure... there are the Tchaikovskys of the world, the Beethovens, the Mendeleevs, for that matter. But there are also the Borodins-- he's not as famous as any of the others...
because of MULTIPOTENTIALITY and the ultimate inability/unwillingness to choose between two passions.Some HG+ people seem to have more than two. In fact, in looking at my own family, I'd say that is probably more the rule than the exception.
I don't see multipotentiality as being a
bad thing. Maybe it is just a THING. It's bad from the larger world's perspective, because it limits the advancement that could be achieved
for humanity as a whole... but on the other hand, I think that it is probably a MUCH healthier way to be a PG person. A burning passion for a single thing all too often seems to lead to some of the darker side... the mental instability, workaholism, etc.
After all, look at what happened to Mendelssohn (Felix, I mean)... to Mozart (Wolfgang, I mean)... to Schubert.
None of them lived very long-- but all were incredibly prolific and blindingly brilliant. I'm not sure that the two things are unlrelated. It seems like a rather quaint notion, but I think that in Feliz Mendelssohn's case in particular, a very good argument can be made for him simply using himself as a non-renewable fuel source in his inbridled passion.
This particular Howler Monkey has a lifetime habit of wide-rangin dilettantism that keeps ME safe from such dangers, thankfully.
LOL. Then again, I suppose that has probably kept me form winning a Nobel Prize or anything, too. On that note, however, several people have mentioned serendipity/luck as being a factor. I tend to think of that as a HUGE factor, one that is completely overlooked by the most successful among us. Human beings simply do not wish to believe in chance governing our lives. It's part of our psychology as human beings to construct
reasons or causation-- even when it isn't factually based or even... uh.. "real." Particularly so when we are ascribing why something GREAT happened to ourselves, we don't want to imagine that it was luck-- but skill, somehow. Truth is that it
is probably luck, at least in large part.
Rambling, I know...
I'm sure that someone else will probably have something far more erudite to add. But this was my one-penny thought off the cuff.
Fascinating topic.
