We are all amazed and distressed by this odd creature masquerading as a part human/part mystery.
We know him as more than the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the exceptional Barry Levinson opus. He is symbolic of the weird science creation we refer to as “idiot savants.”
Clearly an oxymoron, an idiot is a village dunce–which is one part of this strange brew– and a savant is a learned person. We cannot really understand why and how these extremes appear to be fused within a single person so we develop a zillion hypotheses designed to put it all in a neat little box but all it does is make us look stupid, groping in the dark for answers we surely don’t have.
We can’t explain prodigies but they are safe because they appear on the stage armed with a glowing gift and without the so-called anti-social behavior displayed by a Rain Man. But the fact is, there is a correlation between the savant of the idiot savant and the Bobby Fisher’s of chess, music and math, where prodigies reign.
When one of my sons was a high school junior, a famed math professor, a legend, sought to recruit him to attend a prestigious university. We visited the campus and spent time with the sage, who was clearly on the “safe” side of the idiot savant concoction. Like a genius child, he squealed and comported himself like a precocious infant. It was a joy to behold.
There is something in the odd, the unvarnished, the pure, the intense, that frightens and disturbs those of us who like to proclaim ourselves as “normal.” But instead of running away or holding ourselves as superior, we would be well served as a society to dive into the belly of the beast, discovering just what this savant quality is, this rough hewn and messy prodigy, that sees into dimensions the rest of us are blind to.
How do they count cards, identify math puzzles, peer into the composition of atoms, decipher the majesty of Bach without a day at Julliard.
These are the dangerous minds. We need to run toward not away from them. We need them in our companies. We need to learn from them.
We need to drop the word “idiot” and face up to our own limitations.
Mark Stevens
CEO
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