healthy adversity and challenge, people struggle even more. They become
more selfish and more childish. They fail to develop and mature out of
adolescence. They remain further removed from any virtue. They see
mountains where there are molehills. And they scream at each other as though
the world were one endless stream of spilled milk.
Traveling at the Speed of Pain
Recently, I read a cool Albert Einstein quote on the internet: “A man should
look for what is, and not what he thinks should be.” It was great. There was a
cute little picture with him looking all science-y and everything. The quote is
poignant and smart-sounding, and it engaged me for all of a couple of seconds
before I scrolled on my phone to the next thing.
Except there was one problem: Einstein didn’t say it.
Here’s another viral Einstein quote that gets passed around a lot:
“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it
will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
That’s not Einstein, either.
Or how about “I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our
humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots”?^8
Nope, not him.
Einstein might be the most ill-used historical figure on the internet. He’s
like our culture’s “smart friend,” the one we say agrees with us to make us
sound smarter than we actually are. His poor mug has been plastered next to
quotes about everything from God to mental illness to energy healing. None
of which has anything to do with science. The poor man must be spinning in
his grave.
People project shit onto Einstein to the point that he’s become a kind of
mythical figure. For example, the idea that Einstein was a poor student is
bogus. He excelled at math and science from an early age, taught himself
algebra and Euclidean geometry in a single summer at age twelve, and read
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (a book that present-day graduate
students struggle to finish) at age thirteen. I mean, the guy got a PhD in
experimental physics earlier in life than some people get their first jobs, so
clearly he was kind of into the school thing.
Albert Einstein didn’t initially have big aspirations; he just wanted to
teach. But being a young German immigrant in Switzerland, he couldn’t get a
position at the local universities. Eventually, with the help of a friend’s father,
he got a job at a patent office, a position mind-numbingly dull enough for him