Genius Or Madman?

Blas is 20 years old. He speaks equally fluently Spanish, English, German, French, Portuguese and Swedish. But he is incapable of catching double meanings. On one hand, the incredible talent and on the other, socially incapacitated.

Together with the protagonists of 'The Rain Man; or 'Forest Gump', or that of 'The curious incident of the dog at midnight', the book of Marc Haddon. All these people have 2 things in common: possessed outstanding talent for concrete or specified topics, activities or applications, but totally incapable to connect normally with other people. This is the syndrome of Asperger, also called 'syndrome of the sage'. Known names suffering this include Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol and Steven Spielberg.

The parents of Blas began to notice that something was not right with their son when he was 3. He showed astonishing ease of speech with words and phrases not appropriate at his age, and had fixation on certain concrete themes. Although very intelligent, his social behaviour was weird. He preferred to be alone, didn't show any emotions with parents and tended to throw tantrums. His learning was not balanced. At that time very little was known about this medical condition, even psychologist, psychiatrist and neurologist didn't give any clear diagnoses. Finally a psychologist who had been in America knew something about this abnormality Blas was linked to when he was 12. Similar to autism.

They achieve amazing results working on something alone, not so much in groups. If people in general take some effort to understand the disease and those who are affected, things would be much easier for all and their talents would also be better employed and utilized. All I know is, there's only a very thin dividing line between a genius and a madman. Depending on each person's view and mentality, morality as well as ethics to decide, and even so one might still be wrong.

Tags:madman,genius

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