As someone who has something like su-level intelligence, (185 or so according to some tests) I can report that when I was very young I raged at normal people for being boring and unrelatable. I was an utter arrogant jerk. And it was mostly because I hurt. I was in a little town between the boondocks and the sky and I was lonely and I felt like a literal alien. I spent a few years uncertain whether we were even really human. If it hadn't been for my (also ferociously bright, but closer to normal than I) older siblings ... I don't know what would have happened to me. It would have been harder, and it was hard enough as it was.
Empathy came later. As I say now, I grew up and quit being an asshole. There are a few experiences I consider formative; one of them was meeting a few people as smart as I who were utter and complete assholes and realizing there were things wrong with them that had nothing to do with intelligence but which were just as important. It followed that these things NOT being wrong with normal people deserved some respect. Another formative experience was finally realizing that when I cared for ordinary people I was much happier myself - the loneliness had been largely my own fault when I kept not considering normal people worthwhile to care for.
That said, now that I work with a bunch of really bright people - I can tell you that a bunch of them were alienated and hurt so much in childhood that they never rose above it. A bunch of them are now the fuck-you-I-got-mine breed of Breitbart libertarian, and a bunch of them are narcissistic abusers of other people.
A guy I used to correspond with about the design of virtual machines, who was brilliant and disciplined as an intellectual, turns out to be someone who also featured in my wife's past, as a narcissistic faithless bastard in his interpersonal relationships. He never stopped raging, and later committed suicide.
A guy who was an internationally ranked chess champion, who I used to game with, stressed out so much about finals one year that he quit sleeping. A week after finals he'd become so obsessed with sleep that he started breaking into the homes of strangers in the dead of night to WATCH them sleep. He wasn't back next semester.
Another brilliant friend, with a Ph.D in pharmacology and masters in chemistry and toxicology, who used to be part of the same severely gifted kids club, is now in jail - predictably, on drug charges.
There was one incredibly brilliant guy who was never much of a scholar always an asshole. I pitched him out of a fifth-floor window after he raped someone I cared about. He escaped conviction and committed suicide years later, after committing another rape - leaving his final victim tied to a hotel bed with his blood and brains all over her until the maid came in and found her. Heck of a guy.
A classmate who graduated with me, every bit as bright as I am, went to work for Microsoft straight out of college. Seven years later she had grown so angry at people that she moved alone into a cabin twelve miles from the end of the nearest road and foreswore the use of language. Haven't heard from her since, obviously. When she was still in school, she had a nearly-as-brilliant boyfriend (I never knew him except by reputation) who apparently had so much rage he developed a hobby of blowing up parking jeeps with pipe bombs. None of us knew anything about that until he went to jail.
I went a few rounds with Fred Phelps, who was just as smart as me - but for whom intelligence was nothing more than a weapon. He was a brilliant legal scholar who got disbarred from practicing law, and a brilliant religious scholar who got defrocked and formed his own denomination, and a homophobic, bigoted, hateful bastard who abused his family and preached a hateful neocalvinist bent religion. He never stopped raging. Long may he rot.
Being different is never a picnic, and as the twig is bent so grows the tree.
Empathy came later. As I say now, I grew up and quit being an asshole. There are a few experiences I consider formative; one of them was meeting a few people as smart as I who were utter and complete assholes and realizing there were things wrong with them that had nothing to do with intelligence but which were just as important. It followed that these things NOT being wrong with normal people deserved some respect. Another formative experience was finally realizing that when I cared for ordinary people I was much happier myself - the loneliness had been largely my own fault when I kept not considering normal people worthwhile to care for.
That said, now that I work with a bunch of really bright people - I can tell you that a bunch of them were alienated and hurt so much in childhood that they never rose above it. A bunch of them are now the fuck-you-I-got-mine breed of Breitbart libertarian, and a bunch of them are narcissistic abusers of other people.
A guy I used to correspond with about the design of virtual machines, who was brilliant and disciplined as an intellectual, turns out to be someone who also featured in my wife's past, as a narcissistic faithless bastard in his interpersonal relationships. He never stopped raging, and later committed suicide.
A guy who was an internationally ranked chess champion, who I used to game with, stressed out so much about finals one year that he quit sleeping. A week after finals he'd become so obsessed with sleep that he started breaking into the homes of strangers in the dead of night to WATCH them sleep. He wasn't back next semester.
Another brilliant friend, with a Ph.D in pharmacology and masters in chemistry and toxicology, who used to be part of the same severely gifted kids club, is now in jail - predictably, on drug charges.
There was one incredibly brilliant guy who was never much of a scholar always an asshole. I pitched him out of a fifth-floor window after he raped someone I cared about. He escaped conviction and committed suicide years later, after committing another rape - leaving his final victim tied to a hotel bed with his blood and brains all over her until the maid came in and found her. Heck of a guy.
A classmate who graduated with me, every bit as bright as I am, went to work for Microsoft straight out of college. Seven years later she had grown so angry at people that she moved alone into a cabin twelve miles from the end of the nearest road and foreswore the use of language. Haven't heard from her since, obviously. When she was still in school, she had a nearly-as-brilliant boyfriend (I never knew him except by reputation) who apparently had so much rage he developed a hobby of blowing up parking jeeps with pipe bombs. None of us knew anything about that until he went to jail.
I went a few rounds with Fred Phelps, who was just as smart as me - but for whom intelligence was nothing more than a weapon. He was a brilliant legal scholar who got disbarred from practicing law, and a brilliant religious scholar who got defrocked and formed his own denomination, and a homophobic, bigoted, hateful bastard who abused his family and preached a hateful neocalvinist bent religion. He never stopped raging. Long may he rot.
Being different is never a picnic, and as the twig is bent so grows the tree.