by Angela K. Durden
The Most Brilliant Woman in the World
A friend recently gave me a copy of Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality. “Angela!” he gushed. “Seeing as how you are a writer and deep thinker, you might very well enjoy this book.”
He then went on and on, loudly repeating himself about what he knew about the Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and professor as if I had not heard him the first time. Or else he had forgotten he told me five minutes before.
In any case, my friend does love to hear himself talk. So much so that he will ask a question and before I’ve gotten three words out in answer he will have zeroed in on one of those words and will attempt to fashion a joke or witticism around it. Then he will repeat that until I react with a smile after which he will say, “I just knew you would find that [insert rotating descriptions of reaction type here (see choices below)].”
Hilarious. Funny. Witty. Smart. Reminding one of….
In other words, whatever reaction he needs, he implies it from my smile, though “patiently waiting for his mouth to stop running” is never one of his descriptors. Then, and only then, will he again ask his question and wait for my three-word partial answer before he interrupts with another thought suggested by one of my words.
Thank goodness our time has a forced limit and I have a polite way of sending him on his way — even as he’s backing down the sidewalk and still carrying on his oration as I’m waving goodbye and walking the other direction. Before you ask: Yes, he believes I tear myself away from him.
At this point you may believe I am changing the subject. I am not. Please bear with.
I had been tasked by my Aunt Virginia to read the 1956 book Miracle in the Mountains: The Inspiring Story of Martha Berry’s Crusade for the Mountain People of the South by Harnett T. Kane and Inez Henry. A book she gave me because she herself, one of those mountain people, had just celebrated her 55th reunion of the 63C class of Berry College in Rome, Georgia. The story was fascinating, and I had determined not to start another book until I finished this one.
In any case, I took Eco’s book home and moved it up in queue to be read after I finished the Martha Berry story. And so it was that five days after my friend gave me Umberto’s book, I cried when Martha died on or near (I don’t quite remember) her seventy-fifth birthday as Atlanta experienced its first war-time blackout; I vowed to live my life with more gusto and gumption. On day six, I eagerly cracked the spine Eco’s 1973 paperback.
And was promptly bored out of my gourd.
Not because his writing was terrible, but because he repeated his brilliant bits over and over. No wonder my friend liked him so much. If a point could be made, Eco would damn straight make sure you knew it from every point of view there was and translated through the eyes of each epoch of mankind’s history.
Talk about beating a dead horse. Which probably will happen in Eco’s debut novel…after The Girl does something with a chicken a la Equus. You may remember a movie called The Name of the Rose. It was based on Eco’s novel featuring a murder mystery in a monastery that, if I read correctly, Eco based on some old notes by a real monk from that period. That period being the Middle Ages, of course. The movie starred a very young Christian Slater, helper to the investigator and a monk in training, who furtively watches The Girl have sex with a chicken against every natural law but boy, oh boy, is he repulsed and turned on and conflicted and bi-curious and she is too, and guilt fairly oozes out of him. Top billing went to a grittily handsome Sean Connery playing the monk-ish type of person who is sent to solve the grisly murder.
Hang in there, y’all. You’ll thank me later.
While the movie was dark and weird and there is The Chicken Incident, it was a pretty good murder mystery and the helper monk chooses the path of God and all’s well that ends well as they ride off into the gloom on a horse and donkey. I bought the book with the clear intent of reading it after Travels in Hyperreality was finished. I believe that the read will begin on Day Seven after Travels receivership because I cannot bear to waste any more time on such tedium.
I’m glad Umberto is now dead so that he won’t have to read my opinion. Still, I am sure that, should he and I have found ourselves together and had a conversation about my opinion of his opinions, we would have invented a new form of tête-à-tête called Conversations in Hyperreality. It would not include my friend because nobody would get a word in edgewise nor complete a thought.
I believe Umberto and I would have enjoyed conversation with the other as it would have proved to be lively. Further, I would have had someone who could possibly keep up with me and, this is more important, he would have someone who could magnificently and methodically test his logic; after all, nobody can test a man’s logic like a magnificently methodical Southern Woman. I am a magnificently methodical Southern woman and not the first. Martha Berry was lauded around the world as being the same. That’s how she got Henry Ford and his wife to pony up so much money, time, and advice over the years when nobody else could.
Lest you think I’ve got the big head about myself in this matter, let me be frank: Ain’t bragging if it’s a fact. But enough about you. Let’s talk polymaths, of which Eco was one.
A polymath is someone who has a deep learning about a wide variety of subjects. No, polymaths are not know-it-alls. A know-it-all is one of those people who, at the drop of a topic, will opine ad infinitum about any topic whatsoever whether or not they really know anything about it. These are the people who put the yawn in party and they are most definitively not a polymath, that is, a person such as my friend who gave me the book.
Granted, polymaths can be boring, but that is so rare that the following statement is almost always 100% true: All polymaths are not boring, and all know-it-alls are not polymaths.
In fact, a true polymath has more questions than answers. A polymath will readily admit they hold Opinion A and will recite marshalled Arguments A-Plenty to let listeners know why they reached said opinion.
A know-it-all states baldly then insults you if any proof set is asked for.
Unlike know-it-alls who form an opinion and never change it come Hell or high water, polymaths hold an opinion and pray and hope that somebody will shed light on the dark corners about it; dark corners they know can exist. In fact, they are notorious for questioning themselves to the point that, weeks — sometimes years — later, they will change Opinion A to Opinion A-2.X and will apologize for not having known the clarifying facts and/or taken so long to uncover those.
Know-it-alls are rigid and never change their minds. They live in the world of definitives: Black and white are clearly delineated and never intersect.
Polymaths are flexible and readily change their minds when there is logical reason to do so. They live in the land of the rough draft: Where black and white exist along with every spectrum of gray.
Know-it-alls, while universally hated, are universally lauded when they come in the form of a politician or preacher who is willing to tickle the ears of their audiences.
Polymaths, while universally lauded, are universally hated because they ask others to think and confirm for themselves. Polymaths never tickle ears by telling a mob what they want to hear more of — like false promises of a chicken in every bed…errrr…I mean pot and a smartphone in every pocket — and that ticks off a lot of folks.
Which explains why I tick off a lot of folks. I am a polymath. And let me be the first to tell you, in case you’ve never met another polymath, that is a hard life to lead. A life, by the by, that one cannot choose not to live because one’s brain simply works that way.
My nickname growing up was “Angie…Aaahhhh!” It came about because all conversations with me ended with “Angie…Aaahhh!”
The “Aaahhhhs” were not of the admiring variety like were hurled toward the girl from Ipanema. No, my “Aaahhhs” were of the exasperated type hurled by vexed folks who could not answer my questions or hold up their end of a damn conversation or defend their absolute statement.
Relatives, teachers, possible business associates, now-ex-husband, my children, and a lot of men these last few years, have all said, “Angie…Aaahhhh!” Some have followed that with invectives, a few quietly muttered, others bursting forth in censured tirade, one or two or ten with a wave of a disgusted hand, and a surfeit backing away as if a bullet would be seeking their back.
Being a polymath sounds sexy, I grant you that. And as you began this most profound essay, you were saying to yourself, “My God! Why can’t I, too, be a polymath?” Let me assure you that this is not an easy life.
You see, firstly, getting and keeping a job is difficult. You can’t specialize in anything because your mind not only sees it all, it sees connections between it all where others do not. These connections make sense and next thing you know somebody says to you, “Stop trying to figure out a better way….Just do what I tell you, okay?....Because we’ve always done it like that….YOU’RE FIRED!”
Secondly, if you have a spouse with an ego, said spouse will always accuse you of being a know-it-all because they cannot see the difference between asking questions to learn from a bad situation and asking questions to point out their shortcomings. Polymaths must have mates with thick skins and lots of love for their cuddly widdle polymath.
So, no. I would not wish upon anyone the brain of a polymath. And yet…
We seem to be in a new renaissance — or as the Brits and the rest of Europe says: ree-NAY-saunce — of polymaths. Much like the Middle Ages heralded in massive social change after a thousand or so years of out-of-control barbarians at the gates, we are seeing a reawakening of wide-ranging thought at a faster pace than ever before in human history.
That’s because we have the Internet.
True, the Internet has become a free and public forum for know-it-alls who used to have to chase friends and strangers down at the coffee shop and in the grocery store aisle to opine. And this is where the polymath makes a connection: Have you ever noticed that with the rise of the Internet, nobody talks at the grocery store or coffee shop anymore? That’s right. We can whip in and out with never making but the merest human connection at all.
You see? Polymath thinks of these things.
Of course, like all good things, institutions of higher learning want to find a way to co-opt the title — for a fee of course. There are degrees in polymath now being offered to turn you into a polymathtician. There are three tracks you can choose, but you just wait, there will be more. And who will teach these courses? You can bet your sweet, chapped cheeks it won’t be true polymaths. Universities’ strengths are in turning out know-it-alls thus making this a true statement: Know-it-alls will teach the polymath courses and polymaths will never teach Polymath 101 or any other number.
Further, being a polymath is dependent on a brain pattern that is naturally occurring in a population and is not dependent on schooling. In fact, the polymath that does not get higher learning from an official institution of advanced studies usually has more imagination than a polymath who has to fight prevailing wisdom upon which his job is dependent.
For instance, take me, the polymath you know. I did not go to college. And yet, I have been in the company of inventors and industry-recognized thought leaders as they walk me through their newest project and of whom I have asked one simple question that usually goes like this:
“Right. Wow. That…just…looks good! But…what is that thing right there?” I cannot tell you how many times that question has stopped them cold. Their answers are:
“Huh. I do not know.” (Turning to project leader who then says —)
“Holy crap! That should not be there.” (Frantically dialing a phone; ripping somebody a new you-know-what as he dashes off to handle “that thing right there.”)
Now, if I had had all that higher learning, I would have been sufficiently awed by what they knew that I would not have thought to question something that didn’t seem to fit. I would have been useless to them and when failure ensued, they would not have known why.
Only recently, in the last five years or so, have I come to understand that I am a polymath. I started to that realization when People Who Matter in the tech sector and the Music Industry, in Atlanta and in other cities, told me, “Angela, you are a Thought Leader and an Industry Disruptor.” They said this because I was able to explain to them the concepts of protection of Intellectual Property. A subject they, who make a living from the public dissemination of their thoughts, should have understood but did not.
They did not understand how it is that I knew all this. You see, they knew everybody, the schools they went to, and their majors. They knew where they specialized and here I was, going deeper than they had thought and they couldn’t find out anything about me. But they took it from me because, you see, I am a magnificently methodical Southern Woman.
And, as men quickly find out, a magnificently methodical Southern Woman gets their attention. Hmmmm…might there be a higher concentration of polymaths in the South? See? Connections where others do not see them.
* P-HWPCDLRSFC is Pussy-Hat Wearing Politically Correct Democrat Liberal RINO Socialist Fascist Commies
** FLOTSAM means For Liberal Opinion That is Serious and Actually Matters
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