The Madonna-Whore Complex and the Power Broker-Intelligentsia Complex.

Madonna Whore Complex. (from fashiontribes.typepad.com)

Folks that are really good at math, writing, painting, music, etc, seem to be quite happy just being really good at those things.

Folks that are really good at athletics, entertaining, governing, etc, often seem to want some credit for more cerebral qualities.

That's not a judgement, just and observation.

I have great admiration for folks that are humbly good at something I'm not, regardless of what it might be.

I think however we've conditioned ourselves to publicly imitate powerful stereotypes but secretly admire the reclusive thinkers.

L: Forbes magazine cover (from deep-ocean-technology.com) R: Stephen Hawking (from greatmindsoftheworld.com)

The "Madonna-Whore Complex" was a popular topic in the 1980's on talk fests like Phil Donahue (and had its modern expression in Freud > ) The idea was partly that men seek loose women for fun but ladies for love. My generation would say that there's one type you take to bed and another you take home to Mother.

(Then there are guys like me who think there's a Madonna in every woman. )

But you rarely find a madonna and whore in the same woman (because they are male constructs, not real people), nor a mathematician in a CEO or a CEO in a mathematician (because theory and practice must bludgeon each other into consensus).

And I'm not sure I'd want a world in which we did.

[2014-12-09]

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