The Cassandra Complex

Mikey put me onto an essay by an American IT businessman and self-professed nerd, Paul Graham, called “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”. It took me a while to find time to read it, partly because I heard him and Cthulu talking about Graham’s statement that schools are basically prisons where we put teenagers till they reach an economically productive age, giving them useless facts and figures to memorise to keep them occupied.

This led me to imagine that the author must be an embittered ex-bully victim who was dwelling on and exaggerating the difficulties of high school beyond all proportion – this despite my intense dislike of my primary school and early to middle high school years.

But today I actually had time to read the essay, and I was really impressed. The prison metaphor works insofar as what you’re talking about is a bunch of people who are kept in one place for long periods of time in relative inactivity, where the authority figures (teachers / prison guards) try not to get too involved in the social hierarchy and let it sort itself out – with results that anyone who was bullied at school can readily recall.

I’ve read a couple of other essays by Paul Graham since this first one, and it has actually shaken me up a bit. I was bullied because I looked different (I had glasses in a school where that was uncommon); my response was to spend more time with books. I distinctly remember spending one lunch time in primary school putting the encyclopedias in alphabetical order rather than going outside. I think this actually turned me into a nerd (maybe later a geek) by default, because what else was I meant to do? The books were a form of escapism, and I could get praise from teachers by doing well to replace the affirmation by my peers that other kids got.

Graham hypothesises that most nerds become that way because they are smarter than the other kids. They tend to be distracted with weightier ideas (more adult ideas) than their peers, and because being popular is a LOT of work, they don’t devote the attention to it that it requires and as a result they flounder. They also realise that the situation they are in is dysfunctional and that schools are holding pens, and it makes them rebel.

I didn’t do that. I tried to conform as best I could with my D table peers (though I was E table material in years seven and eight), though I was never very good at it. I ostracised people who didn’t fit in with that group, like the new kids, and I tried to get good grades because I thought it meant something. If I was distracted by anything, it was by elaborate day-dreams, and the development of my emotional maturity was actually slower than that of my peers (I think), presumably because I had less exposure to them. It’s also why I am largely an introvert now.

I gather that Paul Graham is an ambitious person, and that’s not a quality I’ve ever had either. While they are quite interesting to read (and make me wish I could be a teenager again with all of my adult knowledge), those essays of his that I’ve read now make me feel like I wasted an awful lot of time at school and that maybe I wasn’t even the archetypal nerd that, till now, I thought I was.

Or maybe I am just suffering from a temporary case of inferiority complex, in which case I should get over it shortly. Certainly I am quite envious of this man and his essays – they are well thought out and well written, and show a capacity for critical thinking far in excess of my own.

Check them out and let me know what you think. The index of his essays is here. The other article I was particularly impressed with is here.