A Beautiful Mind

Someone asked me what I would do if I were sitting under an Apple tree and an apple falls on my head. I could only think of the obvious answers - eat it, throw it away, move to a safer zone, look for other apples which I could catch before they fall. Sir Issac Newton instead got into a contemplative mood and the rest on gravity is history. However what is an interesting theory of speculation is that Newton was someone who had Asperger syndrome.

 

Asperger syndrome is a term that is used to describe a form of autism referring to a condition that is characterized by difficulties in social interaction, repetitive patterns of behavior that relates to abnormality or weirdness. For that matter most people today are still unaware of autism unless they have a direct experience through someone in their family.

However there is a lot more awareness thanks to the growing publicity provided for by various movies like Rain man. Many who have asperger syndrome also demonstrate savant syndrome which is mostly characterized by extremely good memory which is very deep but narrow. Asperger syndrome is not mental illness but just a state of mind for lack of a better term given my limited exposure to medical terminology. Imagine a world where we did not have Sir Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jane Austin, Henry Ford, and Michelangelo all of whom have been speculated to have demonstrated signs of Asperger syndrome.

There is a general feeling that most celebrated scientists and many other people who have been outperformers in various fields have demonstrated asperger syndrome with savant skills. Since this is all speculative this may or may not be reality though. One plausible reason is that these geeks who excel in one particular area often have shown lesser social skills and stories (maybe real) about traits which are now considered Aspergerish, are also associated with them. In simple words a boy with an IQ of over 150 but limited social skills would have been thought of as a genius a century ago may now be called a person who has Asperger Syndrome with Savantism.

Irrespective of the whether the above theories are correct or not what you will uncover with such people is a beautiful mind underneath. Immense fascination for structure, a mind which can understand numbers without being able to appreciate currency, a deep rooted fascination for melancholy, a heart which is pure, a mind which does not understand sarcasm, expressions which in a normal world are scoffed at as sarcastic or mad but which definitely mean quite a bit, feelings which are richer and truer but never expressed that well, a focus which is narrow but deep, an ability to notice very small things which we take for granted and never notice. While all of the above may vary between individuals there is some commonality in many of them.

Forget the geek world, forget all the jargon of the current day, I think it is still a gift to be associated with such people just for the reason that it is a pure and uncluttered mind not willing to change in a world which is clamoring for money and following Darwin’s survival instincts. Surely the world has become a better place thanks to these people