LOSERS

At the upcoming Mensa World Gathering, on August 8 - 13, 2006, one Deborah L. Ruf, PhD will be addressing the topic: "Why Do So Many Smart People Not Fulfill Their Promise?" I am not acquainted with Dr. Ruf and have never heard her speak on this topic, neither is it my intention to second guess what her considerations on the matter are. But the topic is of great interest to me and I should like, at the risk of raining on her parade by writing this treatment of the topic before her lecture is delivered, to address the question independently.

We are all familiar with the heartbreaking story of James Sidis, as described by the equally tragic figure of Grady Towers, in his essay "The Outsiders". We are all familiar with the phenomenon of the phenomenally intelligent being phenomenally unsuccessful by societal standards, and often, by their own standards and those of others who they care about as well. Many of us know this all too well "up close and personal".

We may have felt defective and have been accused of being somehow defective many times. Sometimes being both intellectually gifted and "sensitive" feels much more like a birth defect than a gift. This essay comes in the hopes of allaying those thoughts, feelings, and self-doubts.

Before those who unquestioningly accept Capitalist society with all its attendant ills and injustices, and to those who readily acquiesce, surrender and capitulate to it; a dizzying array of choices as to what type of cog in or appurtenance to the industrial machine are placed.

Some of those professions are noble indeed. Certainly the seamstress, the baker, those who work in factories and in shops render essential services to people. At a higher level of education and training: medical personnel, many research scientists and educators provide critical services to the public-at-large.

Some people possess talents that allow them to be gainfully employed in a way which provides profound satisfaction and an outlet to their abilities: musicians, dancers, actors come most immediately to mind.

Perhaps the luckiest of all in Capitalist society are those whose talents allow them to create original works in a manner that is recognized by society as useful and desirable: inventors, composers, artists, choreographers are among those.

However, all of those workers share the fact that in order to work they must sacrifice their values. They must remain silent in the face of injustice. They must buy cheap and sell dear. They must engage in misleading advertising. They must remain silent when they know they should speak. They must create a professional "network" and that always involves "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" relationships. In the worst cases the relationships are more on the order of: "You don't tell on me and I won't tell on you." Those in the most competitive and desirably fields must be ruthlessly ambitious. They must work 60,70 and even 80 hour weeks.

There are some, of course, who are unemployable due to a physical and/or mental and/or emotional deficiency or illness.

There are some who wish to serve Humankind but Capitalist society does not have a job description for the service they wish to, and are able to, render. They are unique individuals with talents that society has not evolved to the point of recognizing. They exist "before their time". They may wish to spend their lives considering the nature of love. They may wish to put more emphasis on being than on doing. They may consider attaining wisdom more important than acquiring material wealth or even knowledge. They may wish to do something that has never been done before, which will not produce a saleable commodity. These people will not find employment, or will be classical "underachievers" in Capitalist society.

Then there are those who will not accept the injustices of Capitalist society. They will not acquiesce. They will not capitulate. They will not surrender that which they know to be true and good and just. They will not remain silent when they see a coworker abused. They will not buy cheap and sell dear. They will not engage in misleading advertising. They will not demoralize others or themselves by engaging in opportunistic and mutually using and abusing relationships. There are those who, together with John Henry Mackay, declare: "Wherefore I will Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!" (Poem entitled "Anarchy"). For these there is no hope of ever being able to put what they are best at to work in Capitalist society. These people are labeled rebels. They are said to be "bad" and "troublemakers". They made outcasts. They are the losers. They are very likely to be menial workers if they are employed at all. Most of their life will be spent in frustration and depression.

Noam Chomsky writes: "Fame, fortune, and respect await those who reveal the crimes of official enemies; those who undertake the vastly more important task of raising a mirror to ourselves can expect quite different treatment, in any society. " ["Containing the Threat of Democracy", 1990]. (This, of course, brings us to the question of how and why it is that Dr. Chomsky enjoys the fame and comfortable tenured professorship that he does if indeed he is the Anarchist sympathizer that he claims to be, but I digress).

Capitalist society does not reward the morally gifted, the unique and the sensitive. No jobs have been designed for such as these in Capitalist society. Even Professors of Ethics must belong to a faculty in a college or university and we all know the games, politics, power plays and generally simian hierarchy involved in being a member of those august institutions.

Those who are morally gifted are labeled "overly sensitive" or "hypermoral", the latter being a designation that is considered pathological, a symptom of syndromes such as Geschwind's. Of all of the "losers" in society, this waste of Human potential is the most tragic. It is tragic for the individual who can never be of service to society as he or she would wish to be and it is more tragic for society, which does not receive that which the morally gifted would give were they not marginalized, penalized, povertized, demonized, silenced and at worst institutionalized.
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In response to this essay, I was asked what I mean by the phrases "overly sensitive", "morally gifted" and the term "hypermoral".

I began to treat that question some time ago in an essay that I wrote entitled "Moral Giftedness", which can be found on the following URL:

http://www.geocities.com/dordot2001/MoralGiftednessXP.htm

At this juncture I will elaborate on the subject by offering some information about three very concrete examples of people who were, in my opinion, preternaturally morally gifted.

I have chosen to quote from the writings of Louise Michel, Emma Goldman and Gustav Landauer not specifically because they were Anarchists (although I do believe that those who are morally gifted are far more likely to arrive at the correctness of Anarchism than is the general population), but rather because of the way in which these people were described by those who knew and loved them in contradistinction to the way in which their respective societies treated them. I quote from their works directly because they articulate so very well the reactions to injustice that the preternaturally morally gifted experience. They were contemporaneous and constituted a mutual admiration society.

Louise Michel was one of the leaders of the Paris Commune. "She was a member of two vigilance committees established in the eastern suburbs of Paris – one for men and the other for women…she was elected president of the Women's Vigilance Committee." (louise michel, Anarchist and revolutionary feminist, jailed and exiled for leading the 1871 popular uprising in Paris – rebel lives, edited by Nic Maclellan, Ocean Press 2004)

Louise Michel was honored with tribute in writing from Victor Hugo, her life-long friend; Bertolt Brecht and Emma Goldman. Of course, the Paris Commune as a whole would be memorialized and held up as a paradigm of what is possible when a "peoples' government" exists by many Leftists in the years to come. Among those who praised the Paris Commune as a whole were: Mikhail Bakunin, William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin.

About herself Louise Michel wrote: "As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the powerful was my horror at the tortures on animals. I used to wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was mercilessly beating him, that the horse bleeding under the whip could throw off the man tormenting him. But mute animals always submit to their fate…
Animals always submit, and the more ferocious a man is toward animals, the more that man cringes before the people who dominate him…
My evening in the village added to the feeling of revolt that I felt time and time again. The peasants sow and harvest the grain, but they do not always have bread…
I thought that if that usurer had come into the village at that moment I would have leapt at his throat to bit it…I was indignant [that] everybody couldn't have food every day." (op. cit. sources of rebellion)

When she was exiled to New Caledonia she wrote: "The Kanaks (the indigenous people of New Caledonia who were said to be cannibals and who the other exiled French in New Caledonia felt ethnically superior to) were seeking the same liberty we had sought in the Commune…" (op. cit.). Louise Michel sought to understand their culture and undertook to learn their language. She also ministered to them in whatever way she could.

The second example I will proffer is that of another woman who, like Louise Michel, was considered saintly by those who knew her but was considered a "firebrand" and "extremely dangerous" by her society, Emma Goldman. Emma wrote prolifically and was a lecturer much in demand and so we a large corpus of her works is extant.

About Emma Goldman, who was jailed, exiled and vilified by the American establishment it was said by those who knew her and were sympathetic toward her: "Your beautiful letters have been a great comfort to me, when I have an opportunity of reading them. E.G., my spiritual mother (you have permitted me to call you in this way) you are a daughter of dreams." (Ba Jin)

[Emma Goldman was] "a role model and exemplar, as a stunning speaker, a star, as an anarchist leader of immense energy and integrity always willing to go to jail for her principles (parentheses mine)." (RED EMMA SPEAKS, Compiled and Edited by Alix Kates Shulman, Humanity Books, 1998)

"An anarchist like Goldman, an individualist concerned not only to change social structures but to live out her principles as well, was sometimes impatient with women who were unable to follow her example. She frequently exhorted people not only to organize to resist authority but to change their ways as individuals." (op. cit.)

"Goldman was always political, fighting to change the social structures that restricted women instead of simply changing her own life." (op. cit.)

She was considered "hot-tempered". (op. cit.)

"…Goldman was denouncing what she called "internal tyrants" that thwart and cripple women." (op. cit.)

She was a fierce critic of society's moral norms and the soi-disant guardians of societal norms, like Anthony Comstock. She wrote an essay on this topic entitled "Victims of Morality", which was published in her periodical Mother Earth in March 1913.

As to how the state saw her: "During her thirty years as an anarchist agitator, labor champion, free speech activist and birth control advocate, the notorious Red Emma was feared a promoter of violence, free love, and anarchy." (op. cit)

About herself Emma wrote: "Each child responds differently to his environment. Some become rebels, refusing to be dazzled by social superstitions. They are outraged by every injustice perpetrated upon them or upon others. They grow ever more sensitive to the suffering round them and the restrictions which authority places in their way. Others become rubber stamps, registering every convention and taboo imposed upon them.
I evidently belong to the first category. Since my earliest recollection of my youth in Russia I have rebelled against orthodoxy in every form. I could never bear to witness harshness whether on the part of our parents to us or in their dealings with the servants. I wept bitter tears when the young men were conscripted into the army and torn from their homes and hearths. I resented the treatment of our servants, who did the hardest work and yet had to put up with wretched sleeping quarters and the leavings of our table. I was indignant when I discovered that love between young people of Jewish and Gentile origin was considered the crime of crimes, and the birth of an illegitimate child the most depraved immorality…

On coming to America I had the same hopes as have most European immigrants and the same disillusionment, though the latter affected me more keenly and more deeply." (op. cit.)

The final figure who I will hold up as a paragon of morality is Gustav Landauer. Gustav Landauer was deeply loved and respected by those who were close to him and who understood what motivated him and why he wrote what he wrote and acted as he did for society. As for the society in which he lived: they beat him to death at the age of 48.

About Gustav Landauer it has been said: "The memory of Gustav Landauer must not fade…" (Eberhard Arnold)

"…Landauer deserves to be remembered as a saint." (Hakim Bey)

Gustav Landauer's close friend and student, Martin Buber, based a good deal of this thought and work on that of Gustav Landauer and quoted him in his work.

We turn now to the words of Gustav Landauer himself.

"…compassion and love are not necessarily the right words to describe our deepest motives. As for my animating force, it lies in the repugnance of the humanity that encircles us, a rage at the indolence of the rich who blithely build their happiness on the ruins of the joyless existence of the dehumanized multitude. My rage dissipates not one iota when I consider the extent of the squalor to which the oppressed are subjected." (Anarchism in Germany, 1985)

"…something new, grand, magnificent, is about to be realized by the united efforts of mankind…"(Social Democracy in Germany 1896)

"In unspiritual times of decline, un-culture, un-spirit and misery, men who suffer not only externally but also internally under this general condition which seeks to engulf them fully – in their life, thought, feeling and will – men who resist this engulfment must have an ideal. They have an insight into the oppressive depravity and debasement of their situation. They are unspeakably disgusted with the misery that surrounds them like a swamp. They have energy that presses forward and longs for something better, and thus arises in them, an image of a pure, salutary, joyous mode of human communality in lofty beauty and perfection…And now they no longer say: it can be so. Instead, they say: it should, and must come about." (FOR SOCIALISM)

"Sacred dissatisfaction is aroused and stimulated; something like a spirit…" (op. cit.)

"You people, one and all, who suffer under this outrage: let not only my voice reach you and the tone of my words. Hear also my silence an atonality, my choking anxiety. And see my clenched fist, my twisted features and the pale decisiveness of all my bearing. Grasp, above all, the inadequacy of this description and my inexpressible incapacity for I want people to hear me, stand by me, walk with me, people who, like me, can no longer bear it." (op. cit.)

We see, then, a number of similarities of character among these moral giants.

We see that they respond to the very same social injustices that people of ordinary moral caliber react to, but their reactions are far more "keen" and "deep", as Emma Goldman describes it. They are so keenly and deeply affected by injustice that they cannot but act to aright the wrongs.

They are not an insipid lot. Though they most certainly do love and feel the deepest compassion for Humanity, their "animating force", as Landauer calls it quite correctly, is a combination of rage, outrage and disgust at injustice.

They do not, however, allow that rage to drive them to commit acts of violence against innocent persons, as do common criminals who, like them, society calls "losers". If they do resort to violence, and they do not do so commonly, but only when the established powers give them no choice; the violence is directed against authority figures, not ordinary citizens.

Errico Malatesta, another central figure in the history of anarchy describes them thus: "Let there be no hatred, though, because love and justice cannot arise from hatred. Hatred brings about revenge, desire to be over the enemy, need to consolidate one's superiority. Hatred can only be the foundation of new governments, if one wins, but it cannot be the foundation of anarchy…For this reason true haters cannot be found among our comrades, although there are many rhetoricians of hatred. They are like the poet, who is a good and peaceful father, but he sings of hatred, because this gives him the opportunity of composing good verses…or perhaps bad ones. They talk about hatred, but their hatred is made of love.
For this reason I love them, even if they call me names." ("About My Trial: Class Struggle or Class Hatred?", 1921)

Ernesto (Che) Guevara would echo a similar sentiment when he said: "The true revolutionary is inspired by a great feeling of love."

They are guided by visions of what Human society can be, this is what leads them to be revolutionaries. They are idealist visionaries.

They all strove to make life better for all humanity, rather than to concentrate their energies on personal advancement, this despite the heavy price that was exacted from them from the establishment, which considered them criminals, not heroes.

They were often misunderstood and vilified not only by the establishment, but by the very people who they endeavored to help and whose lot they risked their own lives to ameliorate. Errico Malatesta explains this phenomenon thus: "…a man whose limbs had been bound from birth, but who had nevertheless found out how to hobble about, might attribute to the very bands that bound him his ability to move, while, on the contrary, they would diminish and paralyze the muscular energy of his limbs…Suppose a doctor brought forward a complete theory, with a thousand ably invented illustrations, to persuade the man with bound limbs that, if his limbs were freed, he could not walk, or even live. The man would defend his bands furiously and consider anyone his enemy who tried to tear them off." (op. cit.) Such is the case with most people in society. They have believed the lies that their masters have told them about their fetters being good for them, even essential, and they defend them with a vengeance. Thus, the revolutionary is often as hated and feared by the oppressed as s/he is by the establishment.

This, then, is the type of personality that I had in mind when I began to treat the subject of "hypermoral" or "moral giftedness" or "overly sensitive".

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com