The time when geeks, eccentrics and peculiar people of all walks of life had to hide their oddities is long gone. Going against the tide is a rising stock and, as the researchers point out, it may even be the key to success.
A I am cookhe was considered a boyeccentricand not very clever. He had left his studies very early, was always in the clouds and seemed unable to focus on anything. He spent his time writing to his friends on his cell phone and his parents often scolded him for this habit – he would send SMS messages even during the celebration of mass. The good boy could only boast of sending a message without a single mistake with the phone tucked in his pants pocket or under a desk.
But Ben got famous in 2004, when he won the world championship and beat theSMS writing speed record. In the grand finale, followed by hundreds of thousands of viewers across various television channels, he defeated his friend Dave Stoddard. His numbers impressed everyone: he managed to write“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human”, that is, 160 characters, in 57.75 seconds. Surely, the amount of the award made him forget the boy’s fame as a freak and lifted his parents out of poverty. And in addition, it served so that many people were once again aware of a reality: being peculiar can be, in the long run, beneficial.
Scientists have always taken into account the idea of the adaptive value of diversity, especially since thedarwinian revolution. Variability is the raw material of evolutionary processes. For natural selection to act on a trait, there must be several options, that is, several alleles or variants of the gene that determines that trait. The statistician and biologist Ronald Fisher (1890-1962) mathematically demonstrated that the more alleles there are, the more likely one of them will prevail over the rest. This implies that genetic variability in a population increases the rate of evolution.
There are other areas in which the idea that the unusual is important and deserves to be studied has been incorporated. A recent example is the success of the bookThe black swan, of the mathematician andbrokerLebanese Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who analyzes the nature of highly improbable events. Taleb argues that there are three characteristics common to these events: they are unpredictable, they generate a tremendous impact and, after they have occurred, they give rise to a multitude of ad hoc explanations to justify it. The success of Google or YouTube are two classic examples. The author calls these facts “black swans”, because until the seventeenth century it was believed that only white ones existed and the discovery of dark specimens in Australia gave rise to a multitude of theories.
Human Sciences
However, human sciences researchers seemed to have forgotten the importance of variability until a few years ago. The general trend wasnormalization: the general behavior of individuals andanything outside the rule was considered to be suspected of being pathological. The lesson Ben’s parents must have learned was often forgottenswift fingerCook: The environment changes, and what was previously maladjusted can become a survival value.
In the middle of the 19th century, the British physician William Acton presented the results of his study on human sexuality. In it, he reflected that some women had orgasms during intimate relationships and argued that this effect was a disorder produced by overstimulation. One hundred years later, William Masters and Virginia Johnson came to the complete opposite conclusion that the disorder was lack of orgasms.
Doubt about the potential of traits considered strange has assailed many people. The writer Edgar Allan Poe expressed it this way: “Men have called me crazy, but it remains to be clarified if there is madness or if it is not the highest intelligence … If a lot of what is wonderful, if everything is which is profound, comes from ravings of thought, from the moods of an exalted mind at the expense of common understanding. “
Society has changed, and today things are beginning to be analyzed from another point of view. Psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and other researchers of the human mind have been hunting for strange behaviors and trying to unravel what their adaptive values might be.
Various experiments
One of the most recent examples is the research on eccentricity carried out by a team of neuropsychologists led byDavid Weeks, from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, in Scotland. According to your criteria,one western person in 10,000 can be considered rare, and one in 15,000 totally eccentric. Part of his work was devoted to finding out if there were differentiating biochemical parameters. The main conclusion is that, during their intellectual activity, singular people increase the production of hormones that we usually generate when we do physical exercise or have sexual relations.
On the other hand, the conclusions of his study contradict the common idea about the suffering of the peculiar. “If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up,” said the eminent Massachusetts jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). However, Weeks and his colleagues found that quirks see a doctor once every nine years on average, while the general population does so twice annually. This good health is surely caused “by your insulting happiness.” The research shows a personality pattern characterized bynonconformity, idealism and obsession with their hobbies. And in addition, they present a high degree of tolerance for frustration: they are individuals who explore new paths and do not fear failure. “In each field, they accept any challenge. Of course, quality is not their motto: they can be great or harmful,” says the director of the research.
Weeks’s project also included an approach to the lives of certain historical figures. And his conclusion, here yes, gave the reason to the collective imagination: many of the great creators and discoverers of history would fall into the category of eccentrics. The cases of Benjamin Franklin, who often walked naked, are known? “I am taking air baths”, it seems that he was saying – or Oscar Wilde, who asked for champagne on his deathbed “to die beyond my means”. According to this neurologist, figures of the stature of Galileo, Kepler, Darwin and Einstein were also very much his.
These suggestions from the Royal Edinburgh Hospital study once again bring evolutionary value to the fore. It is difficult to think that humanity does not need characters like Newton, another of the rare ones recorded by Weeks. But it is also true that many of the evolutionary advantages of these types of individuals were problematic for their time and place. A good number of those cited in the investigation died because they were different. Is the same thing happening today? Is it maladaptive to be special?
Dustin Wood, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, in the US, thinks not. His research, focused on the development of personality, concludes that until recently the expression of our traits was regulated by a kind of barometer that told us how to act as stipulated. In Western culture, this regulator has ceased to exist:the ordinary is the exceptional. Individuality and outstanding traits are increasingly valued. In fact, according to this professor, the collective imagination begins to associate normality with neurosis. Those who do not excel are quickly branded as rigid and unadventurous.
Question of cultures
The cross-cultural question is, of course, essential in this matter. In collectivist societies it is much more difficult to find people against the tide. In Japanese, for example, the word “eccentricity” does not exist. The only concept that comes close to it – haaji – is a combination of shame and guilt associated with strange behavior.
In individualistic cultures like ours, however, being weird is getting better and better. The new generations will be raised with heroes like Shrek, who shows off his surly character. “An ogre is like an onion. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers,” says the green protagonist. Although his partner, the donkey, replies: “You know … onions don’t like everyone. Cake! People like cake! And it has layers too!” Shrek knows that it is enough that there are a few who like onions … and live in a society where the different are accepted.
By Luis Muiño
