Saturday, February 20, 2016

One Picture of a Geek is Worth a Thousand Words of Description

"A 2012 study completed by Randy Buckner of Harvard University discovered that introverts tended to have larger, thicker gray matter in their prefrontal cortex — a region of the brain that is linked to abstract thought and decision-making — while extroverts had less gray matter." - Medical Daily

This painting is Gerrit Dou's "Astronomer by Candlelight." When I first saw it decades ago I thought, "This is a perfect example of what today people call a geek." It's an insulting term, of course, but the best way to stop that is appropriate the word for yourself.

This is a guy who is an introvert, who is imaginative and intellectual, who is curious and creative. Look at that expression on his face. This is a discoverer, an explorer, an inventor, a teacher.

I can guarantee you he is a loner, bored by the midwits around him, probably didn't like school, and is an autodidact.

These men have been around since the creation of the human race.

In Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," which is sort of the first English novel written, there is a character known as the Clerk (really, scholar). He is the one who would "gladly learn and gladly teach." He's satisfied with a bed with a bookshelf at the head of it.

The Miller, who is simple-minded merchant interested only in money, does not of course understand the Clerk at all. The Clerk understands the Miller pretty well. No surprise there.

I've read various theories about how geeks "evolved." I smile at all of them.

But I do know what geeks have done is amazing. The Isaac Newtons, the Adam Smiths, the Albert Einsteins, the Stephen Hawkings.

Where would we be without geeks? Ten thousand years in the past? That wouldn't surprise me at all.

The strangest of the geeks (comic book culture, programmers) have recently been under assault by the most fanatic of feminists/Social Justice Warriors/white knight manginas.

What gives? These women don't want to be in this culture anyway. Do they instead just want to destroy it, the way leftists (and feminism is leftist) want to destroy everything?

These guys overwhelmingly aren't even popular with women, not when they go to conventions dressed as Boba Fett.

This is an example of that bizarre feminist tendency to want to invade and destroy male spaces.

The only way to handle this is to never back down and never apologize.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What's the difference between an explorer and discoverer and an invader and destroyer?

Unknown said...

The first is white and the others aren't.

One Fat Oz Guy said...

An explorer is finding a new world or learning about a new culture (like the first comic book created), invaders are capable of discovering or creating new on their own, they seek to take what others have already made (SJWs attacking comics decades after it started), usually ruining what they conquer.

Mindstorm said...

I don't like the way he is holding the candle. It could easily stain the manuscript with dripping wax. Placing it in a glass holder, perhaps partially enclosed in a concave mirror, would be a better idea.