This week / shallowness

It was a rough week weather-wise.  The roads were a disaster with ice and snow and hardly anyone we know did not do some damage this week.  My husband, for one, ended up in the ditch with his truck as it spun around on ice.  I've been crawling around in my new four-wheel drive at super-slow speeds and managed to get to places without harm.  But it seems the wrong thing to do.  One should be able to stay home when it is this bad.

What is on my mind is a conversation I had with a young person, well not as young as that person used to be--still pretty young to me--and it seemed strange to me.  This person is well educated, talented and in some respects brilliant.  And he (ok--it's a "he") is very aware of himself, feels old and complex beyond his years and feels other people are "shallow."  

This whole line of thinking reminds me of someone else I've known in recent times, also a "he", educated, talent and in some respects brilliant.  He thought other people "profane".  Then there are famous people like Goethe and Emerson who always talk about "genius", as opposed to "imbecile."

This all drives me fairly rank.  I'm not really stupid myself and intelligent people have called me intellectual.  But there is so much I don't know and so much I don't understand, and there are things other people know and understand which I want to know more about.  I have never called any other person "shallow", "profane" or "imbecilic".

Well, I call some people selfish, egomaniac and my favorite -- "malignant narcicissistic".  Yes, I see them behind every bush.  Well, no not really.  I only know a couple in real life and then there are the famous, historic ones:  Stalin, Joseph Smith, Hitler, and so on.  Probably Swedenborg, too.  Well, yes, no doubt, I shall call him malignatly narcissitic, also. -- There, I've done it again.

What about the shallow and profane?  People who are quite artistic seem to call this people who are not so artistic.  Of all the human abilities and strengths and tasks--why is the artistic the most defining one for "genius", "profanity" or "shallow-ness"?  It seems rather arbitrary and self-congratulatory (or narcissistic).

I suppose a genius, perhaps, needs to invent something, create something new.  But some of our famous geniuses don't seem that genius-like when one gets beyond the glitz and accolades.  And come to think of it, I have called gifted people geniuses who have not invented things, they have simply spoken the bon mot into the situation.  It was nothing new.  It was only the right thing at the right time.

Walther was a genius, he applied Law and Gospel the right way and wrote a fantastic book about it, even though he is accused of only ever quoting people.