An Optimistic Nihilist’s View on Entitlement and Human Evolution

I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2019, ready to start my first year at Loyola Marymount University, thrilled to be waking up right next to the beach, surrounded by ocean air, breezy winds, and miles of sand. It had been my dream to live in California ever since I was a child, and because I’m usually a leap-before-you-looker, I took the risk and moved across the country on my own. No friends, no family, no car, not much money either- I was excited to start a new journey in the Sunshine State, eager to see what I’d find next.

I’ve always been somewhat of an enigma. Raised by a rather Victorian and extremely strict household, I was forced to worship at the altars of the Catholic Church and an Ivy League education. I’ve been blessed to come from a highly educated and successful family- my parents are both attorneys who went to Georgetown and Harvard, while I quickly became the black sheep. After a manic senior year in high school, I went on to fail out of three universities and am back on my feet, excited to attend and finally finish my degree at my fourth. The majority of higher education is centered around Washington, D.C., and the area above —where the smartest, most successful, and most privileged people in the world reside. The epicenter of intelligence and education is the boundary of Washington, D.C. up towards the New England/Boston area. This is where all the Ivy League schools, financial institutions, law firms, and policy-makers congregate. And when that network is so closely and physically intertwined, the nature of reality is dictated by the most educated, knowledgeable, and insightful people in the world. Like a cell phone tower, the Empire State Building acts as a beacon- in essence, the closer you are, the more, “in the know”, you are. Or at least, maybe. Confused yet? Let me elaborate-

I come from a long line of narcissists. My father’s side is riddled with ivory-tower academia, and visiting his side of the family is almost like stepping into a historic gothic mansion. Conversations are scholarly and profound, expectations are disastrously unrealistic, and family rules are brutally draconic- the house must be kept clean at all times, never a hair out of place, and if one were to act out of line, the consequences would be catastrophic. With this narcissistic gene came anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and a hair-trigger temper. Violence was almost always the answer to everything, and the more explosive you were, the more destructive you’d become- and that was a powerful thing. However, this piggy-backing gift box of genetic mental illness did have one silver lining- extreme, extreme intelligence. They are, quite literally, geniuses. It was how my father and uncles got away with their sometimes unruly behavior- they were smarter and much more intelligent than everyone else, and they knew it. I had inherited this gene, and up until recently, had tucked it away silently in the back of my mind, careful about ever letting it see the light. With brilliance comes madness, and if you’re not aware, boundless intellect can quickly turn you into an unapologetic tyrant, alienated and isolated from the rest of society, surrounded by either adoring fans or dictators of the same blood.

You might be thinking- dang, so are all smart people shit-heads? And oh, Annika, are you going to turn into a narcissist? My answer is no, I have committed to staying true to my being, and am learning how to identify these triggers that come with unearthed smart-ness. As complex as life and love and everything else may seem, I think all of it is stupid. Even more confused? Let me explain my theory — and with a diagram this time!

This is Hippocrate’s Four Temperaments, which is a proto-psychological theory that distinguishes four main personality types — melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine. Most people are somewhere in the middle, dotted along the x-axis. Now, if you possess an above-average IQ, and you let yourself be influenced by other people’s praises (plus your own), your ego balloons to the size of a blimp and you float UP (marked by the red heart above). Suddenly, you’re a conceited and self-absorb maniac who thinks that everything is about them and that they know more than everyone and blah blah blah who cares dude? Anyways, when you stand so firm in your unwavering beliefs about how the world works and what things are like and that everything is about you and oh look, they’re probably obsessed with me too kind of mindset, you start to operate in a different wavelength than everyone else. Meanwhile, while the rest of the world is having a jolly old time doing their own thing and living their own life, there you are, sitting up top, hating everyone and everything and thinking that you’re God because you’re “smarter” than a bunch of people and because of this perceived intelligence, you believe that you should be entitled to more benefits and special treatment. How do I know this view? I’ve been surrounded by it my entire life (shout out to childhood trauma and escapism! Okay that wasn’t funny). But seriously, since I was so accustomed to this behavior manifested by my primary caregivers, I associated this kind of personality with “love”. Yuck. And when you’re around people like that for a long time, especially your closest family (aka the people you’re supposed to idolize), you put up with a fuck-ton of unfair abuse and mistreatment. The worst part? I used to think there was no hope for me to get out of it- so if I couldn’t beat them, I should join them.

Luckily I was able to break out of that mindset when I examined the Four Temperament Circle again- was higher intelligence and human evolution even possible without creating a legacy of extreme narcissists and draconian generational trauma? Not the question that most people would be asking themselves as they zoned out in a Starbucks line on a cloudy Tuesday morning, but alas, I came up with an answer to my existential question. My response? Everything is bullshit. (Confused? I thought so. Consult the diagram below.)

What’s one way to not inflate your ego off into outer space? Turn that frown upside down (exemplified by the green heart). Sever the direct link between severe mental illness (lol oh lord) and intelligence by understanding that everything you’re saying is stupid. Literally! Or at least, in my opinion. Think about it with me- what makes a pillow, a pillow? There’s no proof, there’s no absolute way for humanity to insist that a pillow is a pillow. If someone were to come up to your bedroom and point at your pillow and say, “oh hey look, that’s a whale!”, what argument would you have against this ridiculously strange intruder other than, “no, it’s a pillow, and how’d you get into my house!?” My point is, that the only thing that makes a pillow real is that everyone has universally agreed that it’s a pillow. Without that agreement and shared reality, literally, nothing is real. Seriously. “Intelligence” isn’t an innate knowing or extensive memorization of more made-up human “awareness” because all information could literally all be completely wrong. Do you mean to tell me that Einstein never once thought to himself, “what the hell am I even talking about? Oh well, I’ll just roll with it.” Even scientific proof is dubious at best- there’s no concrete or surefire way to know exactly if everything humanity has ever done is correct, we’re all simply making it up as we go along. My theory is this- intelligence is creativity. We measure intelligence by our ability to come up with new ideas, new things, new situations- novelty. It’s our capacity to look at a current situation and do something else with it. Take Henry Ford, who created cars from horses. Or the Wright brothers, who literally made an airplane- like how on earth did they come up with that? Imagination is our assessment of intelligence. Like the Big Bang, creating something out of nothing. It is alchemy, magic, witchcraft- conjuring up something new from nothing new. It is inspirational. It is leading. It is bold. It is risky. It’s taking a leap and never looking back.

Get to the point Annika? Sure, why not- keep dreaming, keep imagining, and keep reaching for the stars! Who knows what you might come up with.