There’s the regular and there’s the exceptional.

There’s the normal and there’s the abnormal. Abnormal, which can be positively abnormal (genius) — or negatively abnormal (madness).

With the normal being normal, regular, predictable, common, mediocre, and quite functional.

 

Thus already the common denominator of both genius and madness is that both are abnormal, both are exceptional.

Furthermore both are at odds with what is normal, what is common.

Therefore are inevitably at odds with the society

 

Because if your superior insight could possibly have been understood by the average — then it would no longer be exceptional, no longer be superior.

It has to be misunderstood if you want to call it exceptional

And again the line between genius and madness is so blurry, with this definition.

Is it misunderstood because it’s just meaningless, mad?

Or is it because it’s an insight so profound and deep?

 

And of course the higher quality of insight, the MORE misunderstood it is.

There are rare exceptions.

There exist savant geniuses in one field — who are utter mediocrities in every other respect. They ultimately don’t come across as exceptional in any way, their thinking is otherwise not exceptional in any way — and they are hardly at odds with the society, actually.

Those are not only not reflective of what we would really call GENIUS — nor is it the kind of brilliance that even interests us.

What interests us is the WHOLE of life-living. Therefore extreme broadness of problems, solutions, paradigms, ideas…

We want the exceptional all across the board

We’re alive and we want to deal with this subject the best it’s possible

We seek exceptional, and all across the board

We want exceptional insights, exceptional plans, exceptional actions — all across the board

 

Thus

The normal, the average, is moderately wrong about everything.

The genius is orders of magnitude more accurate.

Or orders of magnitude less accurate. Which is MAD.

Again, the process is inevitable.

To unravel higher-level truths, higher paradigms — one must challenge existing ones.

For better or worse — the existing ones stood the test of time.

It’s extremely difficult to improve upon that which had proven itself.

The world is complicated.

We only scratch the surface with our reason.

But it’s that which has survived — which reflects the true wisdom

It’s the natural selection, no less.

It’s trail by error, no less.

Your rational mind is but a low-resolution instrument of simulation.

You merely SIMULATE what could happen, and come up with conclusions.

Your simulation is low resolution, and thus your conclusions are childish simplifications of the complex reality.

It works great when the systems are relatively simple.

It doesn’t fucking work at all when the systems are complex.

And this is why when you stray from straight and narrow, from the traditional and proven — you’re more likely to be a MADMAN than anything else.

 

Does it mean there’s no room for improvement?

No

It mostly means that the room for improvement is FAR less obvious than you’d initially suspect.

What typically happens to our revolutionary ideas is indeed that they fail miserably.

The more divergent one’s ambitions were from the norm — the greater the fall

Such fallen angel now finds solace in the abstraction.

They reject the world as not fit for their genius.

Which is a hilarious hubris.

For the world is the only test of genius, and the only true source of ideas. Everything else is an illusion, a dream

 

The truly exceptional often actually take their time with their revolution.

It’s again a matter of survival.

THE EXCEPTIONAL must be proven in the real world

The task which on paper is easy — and in real world is extremely, EXTREMELY difficult.

Thus the truly exceptional one’s — those that had proven their ideas — have typically found a way to slowly and steadily build towards the extraordinary.

By grounding every step in reality.

By starting as small as necessary.

From the ground up.

From the first principles.

Keeping everything as small and tractable as possible.

Using this as the guardrails.

And then very slowly climbing up.

 

This also hinges on the fallacy of abstraction vs reality.

That which actually works is often very, very, very different to that which makes the most logical sense to you.

The truly exceptional understand this — and eventually doubles the fuck down on that which WORKS. And there he slowly pursues an innovation, an improvement.

The MADMAN crashed and burns and doubles down on the madness of his ideas, rejecting that the real world is the only reality.

 

These days I actually recommend GOING WITH THE CROWD first.

Going with the TRADITION first.

I don’t think you’re ready for freedom

I don’t think you’re ready for the exceptional.

I recommend first proving your worth by taking the ORDINARY to it’s PEAK.

By ABSOLUTELY TRIUMPHING in the common, ordinary games of this world.

 

I recommend introducing the exceptional slowly. Steadily.

If you want to control it you have to be extremely careful with it

There’s a thin line between genius and madness.

You want to retain that control — or see yourself do something exceptionally stupid, and crash and burn, and your only exceptional outcome will be an exceptional failure.

 

I recommend the pace of introducing the exceptional, the extraordinary, the abnormal — to be reflective of the pace at which you are indeed PROVING yourself to be exceptional.

For every OBJECTIVELY EXCEPTIONAL OUTCOME you have attained — THERE introduce a bit of the exceptional, heterodoxical actions, beliefs.

THERE take that risk.

 

I recommend of course starting with low risk high reward kind of heterodoxy.

If you can test that “crazy idea”, if you can test it cheaply — then obviously go ahead. It’s a gold rush then.

But if it’s costly, and you can’t control it, and you don’t truly know what’s at the end of it — then pass up that idea.

You’re not ready for that level of extraordinary.

First harvest that which is already proven to be fertile, tractable, productive.

 

Finally,

The problems don’t end here,

You might have attained the extraordinary, and continue having success with heterodoxical, exceptional, uncommon, iconoclastic…

The problem is — you’re still inevitably MAD.

You can’t avoid it, no matter how slow you go

The best you can ever do is have reality keep you in check. Engage in ACTIONS, rather than ideas. Play only games which are useful, and not stupid games like chess or philosophy or political ideologies…

But no matter how much you ground yourself in reality — you INEVITABLY will have ABSTRACT MODELS to visualise that reality, to consider it and to make predictions based on it — and those very predictions are precisely the ABSTRACT IDEAS. For as long as they are not tested.

And inevitably complex systems will elude your understanding, elude coherence. Incoherence, logical errors, oversimplifications — INEVITABLY will creep out.

And finally: the MORE EXCEPTIONAL you are — the MORE used to IGNORING THE CONSENSUS

Therefore inevitably you become less and less grounded in the old and traditional and widely believed and proven.

Therefore ALL so much more susceptible to MADNESS.

ESPECIALLY there where you can’t test it in real world.

But even there where you seem to have the real world, the outcomes, corroborate your ideas — MADNESS will still creep in.

Because you’re just one man.

The world is very random and it will fool you with it’s randomness.

You’re simply to small, to finite, too myopic — to ever see your ideas proven by the world, the reality.

And the higher you get the more detached you become from the ground.

 

I find this an exceptionally profound problem

That mediocre idiotic mass disagrees on their own stupid little problems, which they understand in extremely low resolution, fraught with delusions and biases — that doesn’t bother me.

Transcending that is not trivial, it does sets you off from the masses — but is still a relatively straight-forward process:

–Study much much more

–Think more

-Test it more and more and more

And this is but first level of exceptional — merely rectifying the utter ignorance and mediocrity of the masses

THIS IS NOT A HARD PROBLEM

It’s more than we can ask of most man, who will never truly educate themselves, and ALSO think critically, and ALSO understand to test those beliefs in real world.

But this is all still easy

 

The exceptionally profound problem is when we have a TRUE GENIUS.

With truly INGENIOUS ideas.

Truly PROFOUND insights.

EXTREME knowledge and intelligence and lucidity .

And there where we understand his insights — we are struck with wisdom and conviction and enlightenment.

And there where we don’t yet understand — we crave the revelation.

Oh how we crave to subjugate ourselves to his authority.

How we crave answers.

We want to believe his words.

Now that the answer is so close — now we truly crave it

 

And of course we can’t corroborate their genius by testing it against the crowd. The crowd is stupid. His very genius is defined by divergence from the crowd

And the greater his genius the more divergent it is from ANY point of reference.

And the more success we saw with the extraordinary — the more we crave to absorb more of it

And when it’s laid down for us to take, the pure wisdom, the divine insight, how we crave it then,

How we wish we could trust them

We wonder what more can we ask of them but what is already revealed in their clear genius

 

And unfortunately,

The answer is — there’s nothing more we can ask.

And there’s nothing more they can do.

And unfortunately — they can’t PROVE their trust.

They just can’t.

Because genius is fraught with madness.

And they are only one man.

And their genius by definition separates them from the rest of the world.

Therefore the rest of the world can’t possibly contribute to the proving of their insights

 

Therefore no exceptional can be trusted.

Including you, should you ever get there.

Exceptional is madness.

Exceptional inevitably gets too separated from the known, from the collectively agreed, from the “scientifically” proven, from the everyday reality.

Damage can be largely mitigated by grounding everything in reality, in real world causes and effects, and in maintaining immaculate coherence of the systems.

But the very PURSUIT of the EXCEPTIONAL is by definition PLUNGING into the UNKNOWN, and GROPING in the DARK

And it’s always madness.

And it’s sometimes genius.

 

And this is why for even a slightest deviation from the proven — one must already be himself proven in the ways of extraordinary

Else it’s but madness, and leads to more madness.

And that’s why to even listen to the extraordinary requires extraordinary.

Because half of it is madness

And the other half of it is genius

But genius you’re not ready for — therefore madness anyway

And this is why no one can give you answers

And even you yourself can’t

The closer you get the truth — the more MAD you become

Because it’s you finding yourself further and further away from the common and collective and agreed and normal and safe

And eventually nothing can curb your madness

 

Let’s pursue truth, what else is there to do

Let’s learn what we can from the enlightened, the ingenious

Let’s not forget that what we also learn from them is madness, is delusion, is visions which they never in their lifetime managed to prove or disprove, there just wasn’t time, only vision. Ingenious or mad

Let’s be therefore careful with the extraordinary, the exceptional

But when it beacons us and the truth can no longer be resisted — let the MADNESS be embraced as well

Because you can’t avoid it