Out of all the reactions I\u2019ve heard to Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, the most disturbing are all variations on \u201cExcept stupid people. They shouldn\u2019t have kids.\u201d I could snark, \u201cYou mean people like you?,\u201d but that would be dishonest. The latter-day proponents of negative eugenics have reasonably high IQs. But their misanthropy is still morally and economically mistaken.<\/p>\n
Morally, I just have to ask the high-IQ misanthrope, \u201cWhat did stupid people ever do to you?\u201d Their complaints are pretty petty: The dumb kids asked annoying questions in class, made fun of your Star Trek costume, etc. Are these injuries even remotely awful enough to outweigh the fact that a human being gets to exist and enjoy life? In any case, once you reach adulthood, people of all IQs generally leave you alone if you leave them alone. If you want to give your kids a better childhood than you had, use your brains to make some extra money and move to a nicer neighborhood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Larry of Rust Belt Philosophy put it to his readers<\/a> as an open discussion question, but it turns out my thoughts on the matter were a little long for a comment, so I\u2019ve decided to do a full blog post.<\/p>\n
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As I\u2019m sure is unsurprising to anyone who knows me offline, and as may be apparent to online readers, I was not popular in middle\/high school.\u00a0 For a variety of factors (a school where classmates looked at each other as competitors, my semi-Aspergers tendancies, etc), I didn\u2019t just feel alone but profoundly alien<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t go so far as to say I was depressed, since, outside of school I had plenty of wonderful things in my life, but I did feel like my existence and my personality was profoundly off-putting to everyone around me.\u00a0 Unless I made a profound effort to cover up my enthusiasms, my interests, even the way I spoke, I was intolerable to everyone around me.\u00a0 And I was sure (after seeing reactions replicated at school, at summer camp, in after school activities) that it would never, never change.<\/p>\n
What I was being attacked for was my existence as an intellectual, someone who loved learning and loved sharing what I learned.\u00a0 Yes, my enthusiasm could be oppressive (the Little Professor Syndrome<\/a> seems apt), but instead of being encouraged to get better at sharing my passion, I was encouraged to shut up.\u00a0 The things I loved weren\u2019t appropriate, weren\u2019t what normal people liked.\u00a0 And I shouldn\u2019t expect anyone to put up with me.<\/p>\n
And then, thankfully, I went to CTY<\/a>.\u00a0 CTY is a summer camp full of strange, smart, enthusiastic, crazy, creative people.\u00a0 For the first time, I believed I wasn\u2019t an aberration or a changeling, and that, eventually, my life could get better.\u00a0 And it has.<\/p>\n
But even now, the anti-intellectual ravings of Sarah Palin set my hair on end, and not just because she\u2019s using them to hurt the political causes I support.\u00a0 Her contempt isn\u2019t just for my beliefs but for my being.\u00a0 And every time I hear her, I can\u2019t help but remember the students who, perhaps unknowingly, seemed to be urging me to negate myself by hiding every aspect of my personality in public.<\/p>\n
The \u2018stupid people\u2019 took away my comfort with my own existence.\u00a0 They left me always a little on edge when I meet new people, concerned that, if they really knew me, they\u2019d find me just as intolerable as I always was.<\/p>\n
And I got off pretty easy.<\/p>\n
Many LGBT students across the country spend their high school years in a state far worse than isolation.\u00a0 In Indiana, 15-year-old Billy Lucas killed himself<\/a> after being savagely bullied for being gay.\u00a0 Even after his death, anti-gay slurs were still being written on his facebook page.\u00a0 Billy never got a chance to get away from the stupid people or even wait for them to grow out of their ignorance.<\/p>\n
Sex columnist Dan Savage wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n
Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,\u201d a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. \u201cI wish I could have told you that things get better.\u201d<\/p>\n
I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better<\/em>. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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