Eccentrics

Eccentrics

History has celebrated a few successful eccentrics, tolerated some and persecuted many, including burning them at the stake or imprisoning them. Have we learned?

Published: The Vancouver Sun, May 27, 2000, Insight
By Deborah Jones

Do you tie ribbons in your dog's hair, pick up "lucky" pennies? Paint your toenails, then wear socks so your wife won't notice? Talk to plants, keep plastic flamingos, play with electric trains, dye your hair purple? Avoid sidewalk cracks lest you "break your mother's back", though you're 79 and she's long dead?

We all have habits we call eccentricities, which contribute to essence of who we are.

Then there are real eccentrics -- the rarified few whom neuropsychologist Dr. David Weeks calls "classic, full-time eccentrics." Most people exhibit eccentric behaviour on deliberate whim. Bona fide eccentrics do not doff their persona off-stage, like entertainers, but are born that way. And in a society that is arguably moving toward mashed-potato uniformity (with allowances made for narrow subsets of behaviour, sexuality and ethnicity), how do eccentrics fare?

We celebrate eccentricity in movies and art, but in everyday life the playschool child who stands out is ostracized and must either conform or become a social pariah. Adolescents are renowned for savage adherence to a narrow code of behaviour and dress. Success in most of the adult world -- with notable exceptions in creative fields -- requires team work and a deft understanding of social convention.

There is likely a biological reason for favouring the social status quo. Says UBC psychologist Dr. Stanley Coren: "Evolution designed us to be wary of anything unpredictable. Way back, it might just have turned around and eaten us. So, when we look at people who are different, our first feeling is they are a threat."

Undeniably, people with eccentric traits can be scary. Think Unabomber. But there is a distinction between mental ill-health and eccentricity, and there are plenty of reasons to nurture eccentrics.

Think of the younger Howard Hughes. Jonas Salk. Emily Carr. Glenn Gould. Alexander Graham Bell. Albert Einstein. And on the frivolous side, most any individual in the Guinness Book of Records.

Weeks, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, has taken a special interest in eccentrics. "Given the frequent association of eccentricity with genius, the ability to conceive startlingly original artistic and scientific breakthroughs, it seemed to be an obviously worthwhile subject for psychological research", he wrote in 1995 with co-author Jamie James in Eccentrics.

For 10 years, Weeks studied 1,000 British and American eccentrics, located through advertising, word of mouth and the media. Since his was the first formal study he had to find a working definition and settled on a list of traits (see sidebar). True eccentrics, says Weeks, are always non-conforming, creative, curious, idealistic and happily obsessed with hobbyhorses.

The key is happily. Eccentrics share some of the same traits as those he calls "neurotics" -- and people suffering from mental illness -- but eccentrics are not Unabomber-ish. They take great joy in their quirks. Many not only function in the world but make an indelible mark.

Still, call someone an eccentric, and they might take umbrage. Eccentricity is publicly equated with mental infirmity. One source for this story gleefully described himself as eccentric, but quickly said, "Don't print that, it will upset my colleagues!"

Simon Fraser University philosopher Dr. Peter Raabe owns up to eccentric behaviour, but says: "It worries me, off and on. I don't consider myself as eccentric. It's like a label, and can make the person feel abnormal or defective or mentally ill. It's like a wart on your forehead and it doesn't bother you until someone says, `You have a wart on your forehead!' "

Wariness of eccentricity is hardly new. Although we have celebrated successful eccentrics from musicians like Mozart to scientists like Einstein, and tolerated the eccentricity displayed by Britain's ruling classes, we have also persecuted them, burning Joan of Arc at the stake, imprisoning Galileo during the Inquisition.

Social observers fear that we quash eccentricity at our peril -- especially eccentrics who are highly intelligent. "Gifted kids are absolutely destroyed by our system," says Coren. "By not educating those kids to their capacity, we are denying society the cure for AIDS, the means for cheap fuel. The people who, 20 years down the line could come up with those ideas, are eccentrics."

As an educator with the Vancouver School Board, Len Drugge helped set up programs like high school "mini-schools" for kids who could thrive best out of mainstream classrooms. Schools are doing better at accommodating a wider range of kids, Drugge argues. But being different, for a youngster, can still "have a devastating effect. They can become marginalized, it can lead to serious consequences over a period of time such as nervous breakdowns or suicides or a spectacular reaction against other students."

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears."

Philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, in On Liberty, "Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."

Both men wrote some 150 years ago. Today, they might find that eccentrics are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or a Personality Disorder, and prescribed Ritalin or another drug to fix them. Vancouver physician Gabor Mate has urged caution in prescribing medications like Ritalin to people whose behaviour lies outside accepted circles.

"There is very little room in the various institutions... for people who don't go by the rules or fit in with the expected mold. Certainly in the schools there's an assumption that everyone's brain works the same way and all people need to learn at the same time, same rate, same age," he says. "All of those assumptions are false. People's brains are different both by inborn temperament and environmental influences."

Raabe, who recently completed his PhD in philosophy at UBC and now conducts philosophical counselling and public workshops, notes that our views of what is eccentric change over time and with exposure to behaviours new to us.

The first time a non-Sikh sees a man with a turban, or vice- versa, such dress may be considered eccentric. In an increasingly multicultural society, a turban or a bare head is part of normal attire.

Perhaps our tolerance of eccentricity can be measured by our most basic yardstick: Success. "If someone eccentric climbs some mountain or reaches the North Pole, they become a great international hero," says Coren. "If they fail, people say, `What a dummy. He gave up everything and died someplace on some iceberg.' "

Copyright Deborah Jones 2000
About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted.
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The rarified few: persecuted, treated, celebrated

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