The Loftus Paranoid Theory
of Gifted Child Suppression
by David Loftus
[This essay has not been published anywhere else.]
See, I have this theory.
I believe that society conspires, unconsciously or otherwise, to keep talented individuals soft. That is, young persons who could conceivably pose a threat to the system are raised in such a way that they will be unlikely to make hard decisions for themselves.
Here's how it works. Sometime in elementary school, the system identifies you as an intelligent or talented child. It may be your grades or your IQ test scores, your performance in the classroom, whatever.
From that point on you are marked, and in effect the system -- in the person of your teachers, your parents, your counselors, and coaches -- puts an arm around you and says, "Right this way." Everyone tells you the next thing you should want. You are pushed toward the college-prep courses in high school, then toward the best college you can get into, and then graduate school.
Each step in the process is delineated for you before you have a chance to look at the options and weigh them for yourself. Being young and impressionable and eager to please, you grow into the habit of responding, "Well, why not?"
Once the conspiracy takes hold, you're conditioned to experience mounting anxiety as you near the end of each stage. You're not sure what is supposed to come next. You grab onto whatever's within reach because you're afraid you'll fall off the edge of whatever plateau you're on. You're terrified of making the "wrong" move and never getting back on track.
Less talented kids get married straight out of high school, because they think that's the next step in the process. They don't have a lot of options, and they can't think of anything else to do. Marriage is the culmination and the badge of adulthood in their eyes; they mistakenly regard it as a destination, the completion of all their waiting and struggles through childhood.
They regard marriage as a final prize, when it is actually the start of a whole new adventure -- the first day of another kind of kindergarten rather than "graduation into adulthood."
As the slightly more talented kids close in on college commencement, they throw themselves at corporate recruiters and graduate schools -- anything to prove they are still on a track of some kind. The thought of not knowing what one is going to be doing in a year or two, of having the freedom to choose among many different options whose direction and value is not really measurable against the others, is unnerving.
I suspect one of the causes of this behavior is the simple fact that we all stop growing physically in our late teens and early twenties, yet we don't quite feel grown up yet. What's missing? We search for further proof that we are maturing -- have matured -- because there's no physically objective evidence of it anymore. We take up external badges of adulthood such as smoking, drinking, driving powerful and elegant machines.
Once you've developed the habit of responding "well, why not?" it becomes the toughest challenge in the world to say no.
No.
No, that's not what I want. I don't even know what it IS that I want, but that's not it.
To say no to the next suggested step in the process would be to throw the entire process into doubt. It would imply that maybe the process is not all that logical after all; worse, that all those wonderful people who really do care about you might not have had your own unique and best interests at heart. (Sure, you might have been happier as a dancer or a musician, but everybody assured you that lawyering or doctoring would be better for you in the long run.)
To say no would be to question the basis for your identity up to that point.
So instead, many of us go sailing off into college, business school, law school, medical school, and beyond without really knowing why, without having a clear personal reason.
This is how society ensures that talented, thoughtful, intelligent individuals who might otherwise pose a threat to the system, are gracefully shunted into positions of power and responsibility that support the status quo (medicine, civil service, corporate law, business administration, and so on) rather than challenge it.
And it may explain why so many people wake up with a jolt in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, and cry: "What the hell am I doing here?"