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Do You Know That So Many Smart People Are Dejected And Sorrowful?
~5.4 mins read
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.” — Albert Einstein
If you’re anything like me, then a high level of intelligence has been a huge handicap throughout the course of your life. It might sound a bit counterintuitive at first, but trust me, it’s a lesson best learnt from the experiences of others.
A friend of mine once posted a picture on Instagram with a rather saddening caption — something to do with depression. In the picture, he sat on the edge of a street pavement looking like he had just drank an entire distillery. Strangely, what caught my attention wasn’t the post itself, it was actually a comment left by one of his followers that read, “Aren’t you supposed to be smart? Why can’t you think up a way to be happy.” If I’m to be completely non biased, there’s a reasonable element to that question but a large part of me just thinks it’s a stupid thing to say to someone. No matter how intelligent a person is, they are still human not machine.
It’s a well known fact that nobody is perfect. We’re all good at certain things and not so great at others. The most athletic kid in your high school as at that time was probably not the brightest, and I’m betting same was the case vice versa. I believe that’s just nature’s way of balancing the equation — making us all need each other for different things. After all, no man is an island… right?
We know how much we don’t know
Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? If you haven’t come across the term before, you have definitely experienced the principle. It’s a psychological rule that states; it’s the most incompetent who are the most confident, while the intelligent ones doubt their own abilities. Put simply, dumb people are too dumb to know how dumb they are. Smart people are clever enough to know how much they don’t know. British philosopher Bertrand Russell who first laid out the idea perhaps summed it up best: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Basically, all of us have a pretty lousy grasp of the limits of our own competence one way or another.
We often suffer from loneliness and depression
As Brookings Institution researcher Carol Graham explained to the Washington Post, “Those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it… are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer-term objective.”
Whenever I realize I don’t carry the same worries as my peers, I tend to stay on my own. Or worse, I imprison myself in my own depressed state. I am always analyzing problems I can’t solve in my mind which leads to deeper depression.
People expect too much from us
Having a brilliant brain is wonderful. But having to deal with people’s expectations of the great things I’m supposed to do with my brain? Not so much. The pressure can be overwhelming, and as I noted earlier, we’re not machines.
We get bored very easily
Prioritizing all the great ideas I constantly come up with is a big problem for me. The moment a project, relationship, or person stops stimulating my brain, I’m done. Ready to move on to the next challenge. This is the main reason I rarely follow through with things and most of my relationships suffer.
We think we’re too advanced for the basics
I honestly do. Perfecting the fundamentals always appears to be a daunting task. Why waste time on the basics when I learn things as fast as I do?
Most times, I avoid the basics to shield myself from any revelations of my ignorance.
Overthinking!
As far as I’m concerned, things are never as they appear to be. I read between every line and then the lines in-between those. It’s extremely exhausting but I can’t help it.
We are widely misunderstood
It’s difficult finding people who understand me as a person and the burdens I carry. That’s why there’s an automatic emotional and mental connection when I meet people who are in some way similar to myself.
We find it difficult to give and show love
My romantic partners suffer this the most. I can be distant and sometimes insensitive to delicate matters. In relationships generally, I tend to ignore the looming problems until they become too big to ignore. Because there is always so much on my mind at any given time, I find it hard to truly sympathize with people or feel empathy. I wouldn’t say my emotional intelligence is completely wack, but it does need a lot of work.
In conclusion…
We try to avoid unsatisfactory feelings by hanging out in our own imagination most of the time. Our perspective is completely different from that of others. People find it hard to understand us, and that’s because we’re a very niche group. They’re simply not used to our type.
We all have our own major flaws. The most important thing is that you know what they are and continue to work on them.
I have accepted who I am and all the baggage that comes with it. If you’re in a similar situation, you should do the same. If you personally know anyone in a similar situation, at least now you can understand them a bit better.
Written by Michael Ndubuaku
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Ugobaby
Generation Z, No Longer Says Hello To Answer The Phone
~4.2 mins read
When you answer the phone, do you say "hello" or offer some sort of greeting right away, or do you expect the caller to initiate the conversation?
If you're over the age of 28, my guess is you're confused by this question. Of course you say "hello" when picking up the phone.
But Gen Z — a generation raised in a post-landline universe — may disagree. They expect you — the person calling — to speak first.
A recent viral tweet brought up this alarming etiquette divide. Someone who works in recruiting tweeted that she's noticed that when she calls Gen Z people (at their scheduled call time), they often wait for her to speak first instead of saying "hello."
The replies to her tweet were even more eye-opening — to me, anyway: Many young people agreed that it should be the caller's responsibility to start speaking and offer a greeting, not the person answering the call.
The reasons these people gave settled into two main camps: The first is the huge amount of spam calls we all receive. (They are annoying.) Often, those telemarketers or robocalls don't start until they hear someone say "hello." By remaining silent when you pick up, you can screen for a real human.
Gen Z is wary of scammers
Spam calls are a scourge, and it's hard to complain about anyone's tactics to avoid them. And yet there's gotta be a better way, right?
(I must note here that in my experience as someone who almost always answers unknown calls, since they may be work-related, if I say "This is Katie" instead of "Hello," it seems to stump the robocall software, which activates on the word "hello." I would recommend you all try this technique, but you'll have better results if you use your own name instead of "Katie.")
Another concern is that scammers might use a recording of your voice saying "hello" to clone it for use in other scams. There is some real concern here. Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN, told me there's scant data on how often this happens, but it's a real thing. "If you must respond, a neutral, non-personal greeting like 'Who is this?' may be less useful for cloning because it is less emotionally expressive and less common as a voice sample," Briedis said. (Personally, I think that's more rude than just silently breathing into the receiver, but hey.)
Etiquette is changing
The other reason some people are avoiding the "hello" seems to be a generational difference in etiquette. Some young people simply believe that if you're the one who is calling, you should initiate the conversation.
If that makes your blood pressure start to rise, like it does with me, let's take a deep breath together and try to think about this kindly. Are young people hopelessly adrift in society, untethered from being capable of the most basic elements of communication? Is this perhaps related to the "so-called "Gen Z stare" where young people in customer service situations blankly stare back at you (or avoid eye contact, wordlessly)?
I'm not saying it's not that. I think that saying "hello" when you answer the phone is normal, commonly accepted social etiquette, and not doing it can be slightly confusing for a caller.
But just because something used to be common etiquette doesn't mean it has to stay that way. The telephone is a relatively recent invention in the history of human communication, as is the word "hello," which Thomas Edison encouraged as the way to start a conversation on the new invention in the 1870s. Not until the 1940s did the majority of American households have their own phone. A whole new etiquette for handling phone calls has been invented within a generation or two.
Landline phones had different customs
As an elder millennial, I grew up with a home landline without caller ID, answering with variations of, "Notopoulos residence, this is Katie." I've also had jobs with desk phones where strangers would call out of the blue (gasp!) and I would answer with the company name, my full name, maybe even a rote "How can I help you?" Might we have possibly missed out on the Beastie Boys' album "Hello Nasty" if not inspired by the way the receptionist at the Nasty Little Man PR firm answered the phone?
But just within my (relatively) brief time as an adult, the way we use phones and what we do with them has changed drastically. Now, when you call someone, you assume you are reaching their direct personal mobile phone, not a shared family phone that other people might answer. Answering machine outgoing messages used to be an art form; now people rarely leave or check voicemail (I usually read the transcription in my iPhone's Visual Voicemail instead of actually listening to the recording). There's a new calculus we're all still muddling through about what should be a Zoom and what should be a regular phone call.
I'm often texting or emailing someone several times to agree on a set time do to a five-minute phone call. When I do call someone out of the blue, I find myself apologizing for it, as if I had shown up on their doorstep unannounced at dinnertime.
I enjoy waxing nostalgic about the Old Days of Landlines, but it doesn't mean any of the old ways were necessarily better. Progress marches on!
Just because it has been the etiquette to say "Hello?" when you answer the phone doesn't mean it has to be that way forever. The technology of phones has changed completely. Why shouldn't the rules change with it?
Written by Katie Notopoulos
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