The ability to become emotionally detached is a useful skill (e.g. if you are being tortured) but when it becomes an automatic reflex to any emotion, it can take all the colour out of life.
Sometimes highly intelligent people are also overwhelmingly sensitive/empathetic so detaching is very tempting. The first few minutes of this video with the genius girl walking around the spaceship shows what it’s like to be highly empathetic (Firefly). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsyuTLYx59g
But also: emotions come from the subconscious, and the subconscious contains that which is done repeatedly on the conscious level. So if you are habitually rational, does that effect your subconscious and therefore your emotions?
I think what happens is, you are so consistent on the conscious level (e.g. the way the our host cross-links all his posts) that the subconscious is also highly consistent. So when it produces an emotion it produces it with the whole of itself, instead of just one part contradicted by another (mixed emotions). Therefore the genius has very strong emotions, which interestingly is the stereotype: the overwrought genius who flys off the handle.
The sheer strength of having a conscious and subconscious in total agreement, and both in turn in agreement with reality, can be overwhelming and, like the girl above (“It’s getting very crowded in here!”) you just want to shut it off.
The ability to become emotionally detached is a useful skill (e.g. if you are being tortured) but when it becomes an automatic reflex to any emotion, it can take all the colour out of life.
Sometimes highly intelligent people are also overwhelmingly sensitive/empathetic so detaching is very tempting. The first few minutes of this video with the genius girl walking around the spaceship shows what it’s like to be highly empathetic (Firefly).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsyuTLYx59g
But also: emotions come from the subconscious, and the subconscious contains that which is done repeatedly on the conscious level. So if you are habitually rational, does that effect your subconscious and therefore your emotions?
I think what happens is, you are so consistent on the conscious level (e.g. the way the our host cross-links all his posts) that the subconscious is also highly consistent. So when it produces an emotion it produces it with the whole of itself, instead of just one part contradicted by another (mixed emotions). Therefore the genius has very strong emotions, which interestingly is the stereotype: the overwrought genius who flys off the handle.
The sheer strength of having a conscious and subconscious in total agreement, and both in turn in agreement with reality, can be overwhelming and, like the girl above (“It’s getting very crowded in here!”) you just want to shut it off.