Embracing Uncommon Minds and Multiple Intelligences

I am reading A Hunter-Gatherers Guide to the 21^st Century. Heying and Weinstein (2021) ask how a handful of our human ancestors with only Stone Age technology, within just a few tens of thousands of years of coming to the Americas, adapted (invented new ways to obtain new foods, invented and made new tools, etc.), and survived and thrived in a wide range of ecological niches (woodlands, grasslands, seashores, deserts, and more) across two continents. Heying & Weinstein’s answer, essentially: people with different abilities and intelligences, talking around a campfire at night, solving problems and making plans, and then putting those plans into action:

When so many people with distinct talents and insights come together around a campfire to discuss a shared problem, the spark of innovation can spread quickly.

Most of the best ideas that our species has generated, the most important and powerful ideas, have been the result of people who had different but consilient talents and vision, non-overlapping blinds spots, and a political structure that allowed for novelty.

With regards to niches, we are a generalist species that contains individuals who are often specialists. ... It is the connections between us that allow us to transcend our individual limitations.

As our species has evolved, we seem to have escaped a fundamental law of nature: the jack-of-all trades is the master of none. ... somehow, here we are, jacks of nearly every trade imaginable, and simultaneously the masters of nearly every habitat on earth.

Two important points:

1. Early human groups included people with different kinds of intelligences and abilities.
2. These early groups benefited from embracing a range of different types of people with different intelligences, thus transcending individual limitations.

I am also reading The Dawn of Everything, Graeber’s and Wengrow’s (2021) rethinking of what anthropological and ethnographic research says about the origins and development of human societies. I am struck by this series of quotes:

... what really struck him about the "primitive" societies he was most familiar with was their tolerance of eccentricity.

There is every reason to believe that sceptics and non-conformists exist in every human society; what varies is how others react to them.

The impression one gets from the literature is that any (Nuer) settlement of pre-colonial times was likely to be complimented by a minor penumbra of what might be termed extreme individuals ...

... (he) was interested in the intellectual consequences, the kind of speculative systems of thought such out-of-sync characters might create.

... they can and often do serve as a kind of reserve of potential talent and insight that can be called on in the event of a crisis or unprecedented turn of affairs.

Again, at least two important points:

1. Every society has "eccentric," “non-conforming," "extreme," or "out-of-sync"—that is, neurodivergent or neuroatypical—members.
2. When accepted and even embraced, they can help their societies adapt to change and survive and prosper over time.

These 21st-century quotes from Heying and Weinstein and Graeber and Wegrow are, I think, consistent with the thinking of mid-19th-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Consider these quotes from Self-Reliance:

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation ...

... though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn an come to him but through toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature ...

Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power ... it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system.

Recommendations for Atypical People and Their Communities in the Modern World

Everyone’s mind, perhaps especially yours, is unique and unprecedented—embrace and nurture it, don’t mask or hide it.

Intelligence Essential Reads

Beyond High IQ: Why Giftedness Is Not Just a Number

What Primitive, Ancient Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human

Everyone’s unique and unprecedented mind can be a powerful gift to society. Make space for atypical people.

As Cormac McCarthy’s main protagonist in his novel Passenger thinks to himself after sharing a meal (a version of sitting around a campfire) with a (very) atypical friend: “... God’s goodness appear(s) in strange places. Don’t close your eyes.”