Einstein: Too Smart For His Own Good?
Einstein was a strange bird, there can be no doubt about that. My first assumption from childhood, when I learned about Einstein, was that his style of dress and his hairdo were normal for his time period. That wasn’t true, though. Einstein was considered strange, socially inept, and childlike his whole life. While the rumors about him being a terrible student are not true, it is true that he was inept at many non-intellectual things. The gist of it is that Einstein was crap with practicalities: he was very smart in theoretical things, but his intellect was a hindrance in any other realm.
an Einstein novelty t shirt
One good example of this is in the job market. Einstein was not very good at holding down a job while he was young. In fact, he was consistently fired from most of the jobs he applied to. He was able to graduate from university, but he could not do any jobs without being fired. He even took jobs tutoring small children, and was fired from those jobs as well. Some have reported that Einstein was lost in his head much of the time and could not do practical work-a-day jobs very well. He simply wasn’t cut out for manual labor. He wasn’t cut out for tutoring, either.
Einstein’s big break came when he worked at a patent office. This worked for him because all he had to do was review paperwork. More importantly, he didn’t have to constantly pay attention all the time. There were long stretches where he simply sat at his desk and did nothing at all. During those long stretches, he could work on his physical theories. The patent office was a blessing because it gave him time to work on physics and did not demand things from him that he could not produce, such as constantly paying attention to what he was doing.
Einstein is now a man whose name is synonymous with genius. But there are some people who are too intelligent for their own good. If you’re too absorbed in abstract ideas, and cannot ground yourself in physical reality no matter how hard you try, then it may be that you’re past the point where intelligence has any practical value.
Another way to put it is that intelligence is only useful up to a point. The point where it stops being useful to an individual is when it can no longer work for practical things. Past a certain point, intelligence is only good for doing abstract theoretical stuff and doesn’t really help anymore with the ordinary practical stuff. In fact, as in Einstein’s case, it can even be hindrance. So keep in mind whenever you see a person wearing an Einstein novelty t shirt that the man on that shirt was brilliant, but handicapped in a way by his intelligence.
