The Smartest Person Ever Born?

 The following essay is about William James Sidis, whom Robert Persig (Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) discusses in his novel, Lila. Sidis's one great passion in life was collecting street car transfers.

The account comes from a web page I saved to my hard drive. Before uploading it, I checked it and found it dead, but still want to give credit, so here is the obsolete URL--http://members.aol.com/popvoid/TOC.html. Jim Morton, the essayist, uses Peridromophilia as a term for Sidis's love of street car transfers.

Peridromophilia Unbound:William James Sidis
By Jim Morton

The great geniuses of mankind are often said to be "born ahead of their time." William James Sidis, on the other hand, seems to have been born out of his time completely; on the wrong world, in the wrong dimension. Perhaps someday the world will understand "Willie" Sidis's strange genius, but that day is far off indeed.

You Were Born and It's All Your Fault

Existence is a predicate without a basis.

The self does not see.  Instead, there is a sense of self.  That is the seen.  It is seen so it cannot be the seer. 

The distinction with finite is not infinite.  It is unknown.

The seeing.

Perceive:  discern, recognize, become aware of.  Typical belief is that the organism perceives, that perception is biological sentience. If it is biological sentience, whatinhell is sentience?

Like existence, sentience is a predicate without a basis. It is universally thought of as consciousness.

The sense of self evolved in human community.  Tribes into villages into towns into countries, the sense furthered survival of individuals within community by fostering moral behavior.

Moral behavior and responsibility means nothing if a person is alone on a desert island.

The belief in free will and personal responsibility is contingent on the belief in moral behavior and life within communities.

Communities tend to cull out those lacking behavior necessary for their continuance. The culling results in prisons.

Communites depend on belief.  It's called convention. Conventions depend on belief.

On the sometimes value and sometimes uselessness of belief:

Decapitated Heads Remaining Conscious?

Q. Would a guillotined person die instantly or would the severed head live long enough to feel itself hit the ground? How could anyone but those executed ever know? A guillotined head opened its eyes its name. This is the bizarre story of Monsieurs Beaurieux and Languille and a macabre study done in 1905.

The Man Who Found Einstein's Brain

Steven Levy said that he had almost a religious experience when he found it in Wichita, Kansas. A journalist for a magazine, New Jersey Monthly, he knew it had been missing since Einstein's death. Yes, missing. The most brilliant mind of all time was buried without his head intact when he died in 1955.

Richard Halliburton Lived Several Lives in One

 This art-deco image of a pilot, scarf flying over a vintage biplane, evokes for me an entire era, and one man helps capture that era.  A while back I found a book in a used book store.  It was about Richard Halliburton, written by his father, Wesley.  I bought it and set it aside for reading on some day when I had both free time and the inclination.  When I did read it I was hooked.  I learned Richard Halliburton was a travel-adventure writer and wrote many books.  I bought them all and read them all.  I could go on but that would not compare to the life I read about.  Instead, I provide a summary from my book.

Richard Halliburton was a misfit, a rebel, in an America coming of age in the world. In the 1920s and 1930s he was one of the most famous persons in America, even more than Amelia Earhart, and today he is forgotten.

Pain & Pleasure: The Lobster Reconsidered & David Foster Wallace

A few years back I read about George, a 140 year-old lobster that did not wind up on somebody's dinner plate. Instead, he was returned to the ocean at Kennebunkport, Maine. Lobster age is calculated by weight and this one weighed 20 pounds. George would have provided a dinner at over $100 in a good restaurant.

Mercedes de Acosta Met Ramana Maharshi: Here Lies The Heart

Descended from the legendary Dukes of Alba, daughter in a wealthy Cuban family, Mercedes de Acosta was born in 1893 in New York, raised near Fifth Avenue, and had a beautiful sister Rita de Acosta who was a model for artists John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini. Married to painter Abram Poole, Mercedes was socialite, poet, playwright, Hollywood set and costume designer as well as script writer.

The Revolt of Pancho Barnes

Born to immense wealth, Pancho had an arranged marriage to a minister. Newspapers proclaimed the marriage of a socialite to a pastor. Tired of the marriage, she couldn't get a divorce so each Sunday morning she climbed into her biplane and dove down over the steeple, buzzing his church during his sermons, drowning out the service.

Don't Forget This: The Triumphal Parade of Ancient Rome

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In ancient Rome, a general, many to become emperors, presided over The Triumph (Triumphus), a victory parade through the streets of the city with throngs watching him pass by.  In a chariot he lead the parade, and heard the ovations of the masses. He wore a purple tunic, for purple was a rare dye only the nobility and powerful could afford.  Behind him walked all his army, his men and women captives, soon to become slaves, followed by his other spoils of war.  A slave held his golden crown, but the main role of the slave was to occasionally whisper in his ear,

Memento mori, memento mori.

Translated it means, Remember, you will die.

I dedicate this story to all politicians of power and high station.

Meditation, The Narrator, and Self-Therapy

The years have piled up on me and through them I have at times been happy, have been sad, have suffered, have been calm.  Over the years and as a lesson hard-won, looking at mind with its ups and downs, I find one thing stands out.  If mind identifies with a narrator, somebody who tells his or her story, then dukkha, suffering, is greater.  The narrator is a voice, a series of thoughts, or images, that seems to have continuity, but in fact it comes and goes.  I also found that a narrator impartially takes credit for bad feelings as well as good ones when in fact either kind of feeling doesn't depend on a narrator.  They just happen. They arise and fall away, just as the narrator arises and falls away.  There is no continuous stream.  The continuity is ego's necessary fiction.  Yes, in life we have a story-line.  We were born at a certain place. Went to school somewhere. Married.  Etc.