TED Conversations

Jake Maddox

Field Service Engineer,

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Do you find it difficult to engage in intellectual conversations with people in general?

It happens to me all the time. My wife encourages me to have dinner with her friend and her friend's husband. "It's the opportunity to socialize and meet new interesting people!", she proclaims. And yet the same boring conversations unfold. The guy rambles on about how many yards this guy ran, and how many interceptions this guy threw, and did you see how many spiders that guy ate on Fear Factor, etc, etc. I ask something like, "Hey, did you see that they possibly discovered the Higgs Boson at the LHC?" And the guy looks at me like I'm from Mars, "The LH what?". Then my wife makes a comment like I'm a nerd then everyone laughs. I'm far from a social misfit or hobbit, I just prefer to discuss things that stimulate me intellectually. I hope I don't offend anyone for saying so, but most of the time I feel like I'm surrounded by people that are intellectually challenged, to put it kindly. And maybe that's just it, if you consider that the average intellectual quotient is around 100. They're easily entertained and amuzed to watch television shows cataloging the "real world" of college kids living in a house together, arguing over who got the most trashed the night before at the club.

+47
Share:

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • thumb

    elizabeth muncey 10+

    • +2
    Aug 29 2012: Don't think I will be adding anything new to this conversation. It is about how happy you are in your own company really. If you have a strong enough internalized self and can cope with being different then go ahead and keep right on being the way you are. There are places and people you can be around who will indulge your intellectual tastes, like here on T.E.D. In real time we all need people, people are strange, mixed up entities full of hormones and contradictions. Anything different takes time to evaluate, just to make sure it is safe. It seems you have a quicker mind than most and have a lot of information 'under your belt'. Having time and space to think have always been luxuries and the opportunities to do this are getting rarer. Not many people spend lifetimes in monasteries any more. I've found some of the best 'company' in the curiosity of young minds, amazing their different takes on the world until it gets 'coralled' by an education system that wants 'productive workers'. Maybe televison is the new 'opium of the people', it certainly dulls the pain of not being allowed enough space to be a thinker and be different. How alone do you want to be now, at 40, at 60 ? Yes too much candyfloss makes you sick but it's good fun for a little distraction now and then.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.