Is Greatness Becoming Extinct?

I wondered about this as I continued to read Aaron Clarey’s new book The Curse of the High IQ. There is an excellent section in the book called “Limiting Greatness” that describes the current path of young, high IQ people who want to achieve and produce great things in life. Unfortunately, there are a myriad of obstacles in the way of those wanting to achieve greatness and he lays out the problems.

Society puts up barriers to those who want to produce at a high level. Unless one is well-connected with the government or lucky, these obstacles will effect high achievers on their personal path to greatness. Most people are slow and dumb, Clarey says, making it difficult to get anything done. If you have to hire people, they will often “stop the presses, monkey wrench the factory, or drive the train off the rails.” People who are supposed to be family or friends will often sabotage the high achiever due to envy or greed. Greed, he says, is what the education industry is made of so they force you to stay in school for 20 or more years, stealing at least 10 years of your life and $75,000 or more in tuition.

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome on the way to greatness Clarey says, are parasites–basically the government and its parasites who take money from the producers to give to the non-productive:

This is not to be political, nor to besmirch or belittle those who are parasites, but merely to be descriptive and to tell you the financial reality of where the majority of your efforts will go.

If you are successful and that success translates into financial success, you can expect, at minimum, around 50% of your income and wealth to be given to other people who did not work anywhere near as hard as you. This is an Idiocracy after all and it is the people who determine how much of your money you’re allowed to keep, and how much of your money you will give to them.

The cognitive dissonance between feeling that one is trying to achieve great things while being treated as the evil capitalist who deserves to be shaken down for cash without even a thank-you leaves the productive with a feeling of disdain, disrespect and hatred for his fellow man.

“Welcome to the world of misanthropy,” Clarey states.

The reason Trump has such appeal is that he gets this psychological angst of those who are trying in society to get ahead, build businesses and want to do well in life. It’s no wonder that Trump’s slogan,“Make America Great Again,” resonates with so many people: The #1 candidate of small business owners is Donald Trump.

If the drive to succeed and become something greater than oneself is allowed to die, then America as we know it is on life support. There is no perfect candidate. There is only the best of the imperfect. Donald Trump may not be perfect, but he believes that greatness is a virtue and not a sin. That is huge.