This week the movie The Ruins comes out on DVD. I always found Mayan history really interesting, especially the idea that there was an ancient very advanced culture which could just disappear with only a few descendants and cultural and physical artifacts to tell their tale. The characters in The Ruins go seeking a vacation adventure in Mayan archeological hiking. What they find is a carnivorous and sentient plant, bent on destroying them. I don’t think a super-intelligent hungry vine is really what ended the society of the Maya, but watching humans being stalked by a vegetable can be good viewing fun. I couldn’t help thinking of Little Shop of Horrors while watching though.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is out this month in paperback from Random House’s Pantheon. The hardcover was my favorite fiction read of last year. Which is saying something because I go through an average of a couple hundred books a year. From some of the promo when the book was first released, I sort of assumed it was going to be a geek chic thing. If there was ever something I was into that I had thought nobody would pretend to like just to be cool, it was being into fandom and having a big brain. Which just goes to show that, no matter how smart you are, sometimes you’ll get it wrong. When I finally got around to picking up Soon I Will Be Invincible, I couldn’t put it down.
The story is an exploration of the issues of alienation and self-confidence which face someone who is exceptional. A person can be different from the other children without being technically lesser, yet there is still enormous alienation which comes with being different. In a very real way, a top scientist or a top athlete or a top musician is truly alien, in the dictionary sense that he or she is estranged and unlike those who should be his or her own. I have often observed among my friends and acquaintances, in real life, that those who are just a bit above average often seem to function best in society. A person with a 120 IQ succeeds in a general way more often than a person with a 180 IQ. Human beings are social animals and that is just the way the system works. Which is not to say that someone who is exceptional …
Since 1992, Blue Blood has been about encouraging people to think critically and not just go along with the herd. My hair is purple and red at the moment. But the hair color is a signifier, not the endgame. What I mean by this is that all of us who fought the battle to convince the world that someone with primary-colored hair or tattoos could be beautiful or sexy, we can all pat ourselves on the back and go home, if that was all the whole thing was about. That battle is won. But the point is that the physical appearance was supposed to be about being a maverick and living on your own terms, about marching to the beat of your own drummer. If mohawks become trendy, then having one does not necessarily signify that one is a nonconformist. You can still aesthetically enjoy very tall hair, but the most important body part in the battle against conformity is slightly lower — your brain. You need to have an evolved intellect to avoid being a bah bah sheep conformist.
I’m about to tell you all the most important lesson of a liberal arts education and it is not even going to cost you a hundred grand or whatever higher learning is priced at these days. I was less enamored of the lessons I learned in school, while I was paying off the tab, so here is the most crucial stuff for free. My parents certainly deserve most of the credit for my brain, but my education really helped ingrain some of their lessons.
In order to have an intelligent and human approach to the world, you must learn to be analytical and think critically. Some people are born more or less disposed …
