It seems that most people who think they are exceptional aren’t, while most who are don’t know they are. Both problems can be addressed by paying attention to how people interact with the situations life provides.
It seems that most people drastically underestimate the breadth of human character found in this world. That’s because diversity of character is much like a paper fan. When closed, all parts of the fan are smashed together. It is only when you expand the fan that you see the distance between each of the folds, and it is vast. Only those with a great deal of knowledge, wisdom, and character can perceive the true extent of differences in human knowledge, character, and wisdom. Like with IQ, you have to be of a certain stature before you can realize the breadth of options and the difference being of a certain stature makes. The problem is that this awareness is rare and subsequently the status quo is designed from the perspective of sameness.
Sameness is a destroying influence. Most of the good in the world is done by a few elite people. Normal people need elite people to keep the world from falling apart, and exceptional people need to know they exist to rise up and do what only they are willing to do.
We are all unarticulated chaos. You only know who you are by how you react to the unending chain of stimuli life provides.
This is both massively empowering and seriously crippling. You can be anything you are willing to be, but you are also only what you are willing to be.
We have a strong socially-imprinted aversion to anything that suggests that we are not the same. Yet all nature testifies that it is so. People have different heights, different preferences, different dispositions, and different levels of productivity. Why shouldn’t we have differing outputs?
Correct beliefs can be ascertained by considering the utility of the outcomes of the belief. Supposing there are differences among us, what is the outcome if we assume we are normal? We will be no different than the average person, because even if we have the capacity to be more, we will never believe it and never try it.
The world needs you to stand up. The world needs you to lift what you are capable of lifting. There are people in this world whose lives would be so much better if you were to do what only you can do.