4 ms·

Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals

31 points by hhm 19y ago

bmaier 19y ago
>>When their intensity is combined with multi-potentiality, these youngsters become particularly frustrated with the existential limitations of space and time. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to develop all of the talents that many of these children have. Making choices among the possibilities is indeed arbitrary; there is no "ultimately right" choice. Even choosing a vocation can be difficult if one is trying to make a career decision between essentially equal passion, talents and potential in violin, neurology, theoretical mathematics and international relations. I'm curious how others have dealt with this. When faced with seemingly equal career and life decisions how to you go about choosing what vocation or path to pursue. Does anyone have any specific methods?
- mgummelt 19y ago
  I flipped a coin to choose which college to go to. I actually ended up going to the school that lost the coin flip, however.
- curi 19y ago
  Don't do any of them, and instead learn how to do things faster and learn faster. Then get bored a lot... ;)
- corentin 19y ago
  Up to now, I trusted my guts and went without much thought to the path with the best profits/effort ratio (that is, I usually chose the easiest, satisfying enough path). The good thing is that you avoid analysis paralysis (by not thinking too much) and prevent a lot of effort (as a kid, I used to be guilty of being lazy but today I understand that hard work is overrated anyway). On the other hand, you can end up in a dead end. So, from now, I continue to move through small steps (I don't believe in bold moves) but I also "look deeper in the tree"; I think about the next step as well when I look at a path, to avoid being trapped in a dead end (of course, I learned to do this because I ended up in a dead end recently). I have a vague idea of a few ultimate goals I'd like to achieve, but not a crystal clear vision so they're rather irrelevant to my small steps. But it's OK as long as the decisions I make lead to better opportunities.
maurycy 19y ago
Reminds me http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3503877302082311448 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3503877302082311448
kingnothing 19y ago
I read this almost a year ago, although it was posted on a different site. It's a pretty good read.
curi 19y ago
He advised parents to lie to their children about hugs :( Someone should tell him (and the rest of the world) that immortality is coming. It's sort of funny that he says these gifted children will question traditions, and then wants to help them via the rather arbitrary touch=comfort tradition. He also says essentially: they don't fit in, but help them feel like they do. Why not tell them that fitting in isn't such a great thing anyway, and they shouldn't feel bad about being better?
- jey 19y ago
  "It's sort of funny that he says these gifted children will question traditions, and then wants to help them via the rather arbitrary touch=comfort tradition." I doubt it's arbitrary. It seems to be, as the article said, "a fundamental and instinctual aspect of existence". A lot of stuff is just built into us, and touch=comfort is a prime candidate for one of those things that's hard-wired into us. I doubt it's a culturally acquired/transmitted trait.
  - curi 19y ago
    High level human personalities aren't hardwired. They are many layers of interpretation above any hardwiring. It's like imagining that which assembly language is under your Ruby makes a difference to which programs you can write.
    - maurycy 19y ago
      (I would ask why curi's comment was down voted, but I'm afraid of my karma, so I won't do so)
    - jey 19y ago
      This isn't a question of a high-level personality trait, but a question about the low-level firmware in our heads. The standard myth that we all grow up with is that everyone is born as a blank slate, and the child's environment shapes the person from scratch. This is only partially true, there's a whole lot about our nature that is simply fixed in stone (ok, neurons really) before we even take our first breath. Two obvious examples are the innate human calls of crying and laughter. The weird thing is that most of the rest of our minds are pre-determined by biological evolution too. <insert shock, awe, indignation, cries of "What, I'm not even at all like my identical twin brother!", etc here> There's far less variation between people than we normally think; a whole lot of us is dictated by the low-level firmware we're born with. We're just acutely sensitive to the relatively minor differences between us, just like you can tell faces apart even though they're all basically the same. If you're saying is that the relative weights vary between people, so while one person might be very comforted by touch another wouldn't care for it much, I agree with that. But this is just the small amount of variation between different people, the small amount that isn't fixed and can vary person-to-person. This is just a difference-in-degree, not a difference-in-kind. I doubt you can find someone who reacts to touch by immediately beginning to juggle knives or by sneezing. Now that would provide some evidence for the whole blank-slate hypothesis. Evolutionary Psychology is fascinating stuff. As I said in another thread: "EvPsych basically makes one important observation and asks the natural question leading from it: Just like our eyes and hands, our minds have also been developed in response to evolutionary pressures. What were these pressures and how do they account for the features we see in ourselves, like language, love, laughter, crying, etc?" A good pop-sci book on the subject is The Moral Animal by Robert Wright: http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Animal-Science-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996 http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Animal-Science-Evolutionary-Psyc...
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Best book for a gifted existential crisis? "Man's search for meaning." I wish I had read it as a teenager. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning
- hhm 19y ago
  I read it. I'm not sure it's very specific about gifted existential crisis, or about existential crisis at all...
  - DanielBMarkham 19y ago
    You don't think Frankl tackles head-on the meaning of existence? I mean, he's the father of logotherapy, which, as Wiki describes it, is "a type of Existential Analysis that focuses on a 'will to meaning' as opposed to Adler's Nietzschian doctrine of 'will to power' or Freud's of 'will to pleasure;'." Can't get much more specific about dealing with existential crises than that, right?
    - hhm 19y ago
      Hmmm... yes, you're right, my mistake.
- cibermole 19y ago
  Listen to Paul Grahams conference speech on Great Hackers in 2004. That should help with your search for meaning!!!! http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Great%20Hackers.mp3 http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Grea... CM cibermole.com
steveplace 19y ago
What's the point in reading this... everything gets Dugg in the end...
mynameishere 19y ago
Existentialists should stay true to their natures. http://madelyn.utahunderground.net/links/jeanpaulsatrecookbook.html http://madelyn.utahunderground.net/links/jeanpaulsatrecookbo...
tel 19y ago
I think the book he wrote is even more interesting. My ex-girlfriend was exceedingly smart, but in her young life did poorly being judged as ADD and Dyslexic. I got the opposite treatment with gifted programs and expanded curricula. When we compared symptoms, though, we were generally the same. I wonder how many children in "special" education should actually be in gifted education...
MagicFingers 19y ago
Scarey place to be. did anyone read this by a cibermole? Burnt-out programmers:: Existential Depression - the biggest threat to your brand? www.intrench.com

31 points by hhm 19y ago

>>When their intensity is combined with multi-potentiality, these youngsters become particularly frustrated with the existential limitations of space and time. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to develop all of the talents that many of these children have. Making choices among the possibilities is indeed arbitrary; there is no "ultimately right" choice. Even choosing a vocation can be difficult if one is trying to make a career decision between essentially equal passion, talents and potential in violin, neurology, theoretical mathematics and international relations. I'm curious how others have dealt with this. When faced with seemingly equal career and life decisions how to you go about choosing what vocation or path to pursue. Does anyone have any specific methods?

mgummelt 19y ago
I flipped a coin to choose which college to go to. I actually ended up going to the school that lost the coin flip, however.
curi 19y ago
Don't do any of them, and instead learn how to do things faster and learn faster. Then get bored a lot... ;)
corentin 19y ago
Up to now, I trusted my guts and went without much thought to the path with the best profits/effort ratio (that is, I usually chose the easiest, satisfying enough path). The good thing is that you avoid analysis paralysis (by not thinking too much) and prevent a lot of effort (as a kid, I used to be guilty of being lazy but today I understand that hard work is overrated anyway). On the other hand, you can end up in a dead end. So, from now, I continue to move through small steps (I don't believe in bold moves) but I also "look deeper in the tree"; I think about the next step as well when I look at a path, to avoid being trapped in a dead end (of course, I learned to do this because I ended up in a dead end recently). I have a vague idea of a few ultimate goals I'd like to achieve, but not a crystal clear vision so they're rather irrelevant to my small steps. But it's OK as long as the decisions I make lead to better opportunities.

maurycy 19y ago

Reminds me http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3503877302082311448 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3503877302082311448

kingnothing 19y ago

I read this almost a year ago, although it was posted on a different site. It's a pretty good read.

curi 19y ago

He advised parents to lie to their children about hugs :( Someone should tell him (and the rest of the world) that immortality is coming. It's sort of funny that he says these gifted children will question traditions, and then wants to help them via the rather arbitrary touch=comfort tradition. He also says essentially: they don't fit in, but help them feel like they do. Why not tell them that fitting in isn't such a great thing anyway, and they shouldn't feel bad about being better?

jey 19y ago
"It's sort of funny that he says these gifted children will question traditions, and then wants to help them via the rather arbitrary touch=comfort tradition." I doubt it's arbitrary. It seems to be, as the article said, "a fundamental and instinctual aspect of existence". A lot of stuff is just built into us, and touch=comfort is a prime candidate for one of those things that's hard-wired into us. I doubt it's a culturally acquired/transmitted trait.
- curi 19y ago
  High level human personalities aren't hardwired. They are many layers of interpretation above any hardwiring. It's like imagining that which assembly language is under your Ruby makes a difference to which programs you can write.
  - maurycy 19y ago
    (I would ask why curi's comment was down voted, but I'm afraid of my karma, so I won't do so)
  - jey 19y ago
    This isn't a question of a high-level personality trait, but a question about the low-level firmware in our heads. The standard myth that we all grow up with is that everyone is born as a blank slate, and the child's environment shapes the person from scratch. This is only partially true, there's a whole lot about our nature that is simply fixed in stone (ok, neurons really) before we even take our first breath. Two obvious examples are the innate human calls of crying and laughter. The weird thing is that most of the rest of our minds are pre-determined by biological evolution too. <insert shock, awe, indignation, cries of "What, I'm not even at all like my identical twin brother!", etc here> There's far less variation between people than we normally think; a whole lot of us is dictated by the low-level firmware we're born with. We're just acutely sensitive to the relatively minor differences between us, just like you can tell faces apart even though they're all basically the same. If you're saying is that the relative weights vary between people, so while one person might be very comforted by touch another wouldn't care for it much, I agree with that. But this is just the small amount of variation between different people, the small amount that isn't fixed and can vary person-to-person. This is just a difference-in-degree, not a difference-in-kind. I doubt you can find someone who reacts to touch by immediately beginning to juggle knives or by sneezing. Now that would provide some evidence for the whole blank-slate hypothesis. Evolutionary Psychology is fascinating stuff. As I said in another thread: "EvPsych basically makes one important observation and asks the natural question leading from it: Just like our eyes and hands, our minds have also been developed in response to evolutionary pressures. What were these pressures and how do they account for the features we see in ourselves, like language, love, laughter, crying, etc?" A good pop-sci book on the subject is The Moral Animal by Robert Wright: http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Animal-Science-Evolutionary-Psychology/dp/0679763996 http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Animal-Science-Evolutionary-Psyc...

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

Best book for a gifted existential crisis? "Man's search for meaning." I wish I had read it as a teenager. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

hhm 19y ago
I read it. I'm not sure it's very specific about gifted existential crisis, or about existential crisis at all...
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  You don't think Frankl tackles head-on the meaning of existence? I mean, he's the father of logotherapy, which, as Wiki describes it, is "a type of Existential Analysis that focuses on a 'will to meaning' as opposed to Adler's Nietzschian doctrine of 'will to power' or Freud's of 'will to pleasure;'." Can't get much more specific about dealing with existential crises than that, right?
  - hhm 19y ago
    Hmmm... yes, you're right, my mistake.
cibermole 19y ago
Listen to Paul Grahams conference speech on Great Hackers in 2004. That should help with your search for meaning!!!! http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Great%20Hackers.mp3 http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/Paul%20Graham%20-%20Grea... CM cibermole.com

steveplace 19y ago

What's the point in reading this... everything gets Dugg in the end...

mynameishere 19y ago

Existentialists should stay true to their natures. http://madelyn.utahunderground.net/links/jeanpaulsatrecookbook.html http://madelyn.utahunderground.net/links/jeanpaulsatrecookbo...

tel 19y ago

I think the book he wrote is even more interesting. My ex-girlfriend was exceedingly smart, but in her young life did poorly being judged as ADD and Dyslexic. I got the opposite treatment with gifted programs and expanded curricula. When we compared symptoms, though, we were generally the same. I wonder how many children in "special" education should actually be in gifted education...

MagicFingers 19y ago

Scarey place to be. did anyone read this by a cibermole? Burnt-out programmers:: Existential Depression - the biggest threat to your brand? www.intrench.com