Comments on: seek out the exceptional minds

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 04:32:41 +0000

What is most exeptional off all is this fork in the road website. Everything on this website is true in perspective, and understanding yourself could very well lead you to a exeptional perspective. I turn, doing so will only promote great ideas, and to me everyone has a great idea but getting of their block and doing so is another thing. Idea+Ambition=(You tell Me)

By: Gaylord Focker

Gaylord Focker — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 22:51:40 +0000

Hugh:
I like what you write. Ever read any Ayn Rand? I ask because even though I think she’s over the top I do agree with her in many regards. Especially when it comes to having to deal with people who just can’t keep up with you.
Gaylord

By: coderman

coderman — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 03:56:07 +0000

i find there is another alternative to avoiding the water cooler groupies: isolation. this is actually a good thing, as it allows me to be productive in an attempt to do something with merit that will lead to many conversations with gifted people. until then i toil…
[i’ll end up in the dissipated-dreams-midlife-depression category most likely, but at least i didn’t take anyone else with me. heh]

By: meditemaniac

meditemaniac — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 00:21:28 +0000

its been interesting reading all your views here and i can’t believe the amount of commentary over such a short timespan! (aside to hugh — do you really work/sleep? you’re quite omnipresent).
to add a little thought — i fundamentally agree with the nurturist view touched on earlier that most have the innate ability but lack the motivation/catalyst. the solution for excellence/exceptionality and what we should be striving to is to solve THAT riddle. when everyone (read “the majority”) start climbing the ladder concientiously — then we will see progress and then will our hopes be attained as humanity.
the best we can acheive with minimal participation is discrete bubbles of acheivement (read “the brilliant”). sure feeds the individual ego for those that make it but leaves the rest behind and in a rut. especially the gawkers!
out of curiousity — are most of you commenters here based in the US? the tone and idiom here suggest so but i just wanted to check. it would be interesting to see if this is a culturally unique mode of thought. to make it simpler — who here is not in the US? (disclosure — i am in kuwait)
hugh — a final note: keep up the brilliant work.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 21:43:23 +0000

I love it.
I’m the controversial ruthlilycat at livejournal.com — look me up and join my blog if you’re interested.

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 17:34:42 +0000

Touch

By: Ben Hamilton

Ben Hamilton — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:24:15 +0000

“I am unique, just like everybody else.
We all have our strenghts,
We all have our weaknesses,
That is what makes us unique.“
I used to believe (genuinely) that I was better than everyone else. I went from nothing to having a VC put great gobs of cash into my dream. I was achieving. I worked hard. Too hard. I had a nervous breakdown. Depression, suicidal. Then, with the help of my CBT psycologist, came up with the above mantra.
It gives me value (I am unique), it gives you value (you are unique).
To phrase this another way, I am exceptional in something, you are exceptional in something.
It is not about anyone being mediocre.
Life is about associating with people who share your passion about what you are exceptional at. Your passion may change, who you associate with will change.
It’s ok not to spend a lot of time with the others, but it is foolish to dismiss them as mediocre.

By: kate macdonald

kate macdonald — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:42:31 +0000

I remember a poem by Bukowski:
The Strongest of the Strange
You don’t see them often
For whereever the crowd is they are not,
these odd ones ‚not many ,
but from them come the few good paintings,
the few good syphonies,
the few good books,
and other works
and from the best of the strange ones
perhaps nothing,
they are thier own paintings,
thier own books,
thier own music,
thier own work.
Sometimes I think I see them,
say a certain old man
sitting on a certain bench
in a certain way
or a quick face going the other way
in a passing automobile,
or there’s a certain motion
of the hand of a bag boy
or a bag girl
while packing supermarket groceries,
sometimes its even someone
you’ve been living with for sometime,
sometimes its even someone
you’ve been living with for sometime
you will notice a lightning quick glance
never seen from them before
sometimes you will only note thier excistance suddenly in vivid recall some months,
some years after they are gone.
I remember such a one
he was about 20 years old
drunk at 10am
staring into a cracked new orleans mirror
face dreaming againt the walls of the world
where did i go?

By: P"

P" — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 22:17:56 +0000

from monty python:
– All of you guys are so exceptional!
– I’m not! (somebody from the crowd)

By: Beck

Beck — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 21:27:38 +0000

I just recently quit my job to go work somewhere else. I’d been interviewing at various places for over a year, but no place had really impressed me. Last week, talking to the director who would be my boss, he told me, “Other places I’ve been and people I’ve worked with all try to surround themselves with average people who make them look good in comparison. I hate that. I only hire people who are smarter than me and harder working.“
I accepted the offer without a second thought.

By: boris

boris — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:08:47 +0000

This is a truly enlightening discussion. I think the problem with the world at the moment is that it isn't run by ad agencies. People keep complaining about the lack of accountability, honesty and results from our society's leaders, without realising that such mundane concerns are better seen as the lack of CREATIVITY and EXCEPTIONALITY. If the world was more supportive of the truly, creatively exceptional (don't bug me, anyone who's exceptional *knows* they're exceptional, we're self-selecting) we'd be so much better off. For instance, products would be nicer, people would be inspired to spend more (which in the long run provides opportunities for the poor anyway), and so on. I'm surprised no-one's picking this up. Don't politicians read blogs?

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 16:58:57 +0000

All good points, Dave.
Moral of the story: it’s OK to seek out the exceptional minds, just not OK to discuss it with others. Heh.
Maybe “remarkable” would’ve been a less contentious word choice. But less punchy. Oh well…

By: dave

dave — Sun, 29 Aug 2004 09:55:41 +0000

Andreas: you have described the paradox that I think most people whom consider themselves to be exceptional (including myself) struggle to overcome.
Here is the logic behind our affliction:
–You cannot truly be exceptional, in every sense of the word, without being morally exceptional.
–Being morally exceptional is to be truly humble.
–One who passes judgement upon another based upon _any_ metric has abandoned humility.
So then, by brazenly dismissing others as lacking exceptional qualities, Hugh therefore cannot be exceptional. And in doing the same thing, neither can I.
As others have mentioned, part of being exceptional is having an ability to cultivate a harmonic existence. When we fail to do so, we ourselves fail to be exceptional.
It is easy to toss up our arms in frustration when dealing with a seemingly incompetent boss, co-worker, or spouse. But it is at this point in time that we must stop to realize that these ‘difficult’ people are ultimately in our life because we allowed them to be there. If my level of consciousness and self-worth is so awe-inspiring, than why have I allowed these hurdles to become a part of my life?
In my view, those whom have reached the true pinnacle of exceptionality view the above question differently: These problems I seem to encounter, they are of my own making, how can I overcome them? What can I do in order to ensure the most amount of smiles on the most amount of faces?
Once you reach this level of consciousness, you sail through life. This is why Andreas remarks that in general, the people she’s observed to be exceptional, are not trumpeting their achievement. To them, having self-fulfillment is an almost natural and effortless occurance. They needn’t tell others about it. Their humility does not permit their doing so. Having the opportunity to live in a state of self-actualization is in and of itself sufficient compensation.
Examples of historically exceptional people in this regard might include Mother Teresa, Confucious, Abraham Maslow, Bob Marley, and/or Epictetus.
——-
Thank you, Hugh, for the stimulating discussion. Your blog is new to me and was found via blogdex.
e-mail = digs ( at ) myway .com

By: Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 11:41:36 +0000

Duncan J. Watts writes: “Real science occurs in the same messy ambiguous world that scientists struggle to clarify, and is done by real people who suffer the same kind of limitations and confusions as anybody else.… Our papers get rejected, our ideas don’t work out, we misunderstand things that later seem obvious, and most of the time we feel frustrated or just plain stupid.“
This is the story of my own experience, and to that I would also add the impossibility of knowing about everything in one’s own field, let along the wider world, the unertainty in the face of critics, some of which are genuine and others of which are less so, and the difficulty of expressing that which is so clear in one’s own mind as clearly in written words, equations, algorithms or diagrams.
In such a state is the exceptional. How, then, to expect them to simply declare themselves as such? Any self-declaration will draw a mixture of the profound and the pedestrian. Probably the only way to find the exceptional is to know what you are looking for, more or less, and to then go looking.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Sat, 28 Aug 2004 03:46:58 +0000

Katherine,
Yeah, agreed.