Tall Puppy Syndrome

Imagine that you are a world celebrity, you have a lot of influence and prestige in society. In an instant, a huge group will gather against you to cut you off from society. Without your knowledge, millions of enemies will be created behind you. And this is called Tall Puppy Syndrome.

If you suddenly become too tall, society will consider you a threat to their existence. For example, imagine that a blade of grass has become unusually tall in the forest. The hunter will first see that tall one. He will think that it is safe to cut it down quickly for the survival of the rest.

When a male lion in a lion pride becomes stronger than everyone else, he takes over all the females in the pride and kills the cubs. At this time, the young males around him gather and kill the main lion. But why? Because nature does not want a male to permanently occupy the place of the top predator and stop the entire genetic flow.

This tendency to cut down the top predator is called Tall Puppy Syndrome. If you are the most intelligent in your group, everyone will hate you. If you are the most beautiful in the group, haters will increase around you. If you argue with your family, your family will consider you a threat.

Humans evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups, where social unity was important for survival. But if one person in the society became too powerful, competitors would try to suppress him. That is why in ancient societies, the person who rose too high was brought down through social pressure, gossip, shaming or attack.

This was a kind of defense mechanism, so that dictatorship could be prevented within the group. Nature has its own immune system against tyranny. Remember, the female philosopher Hypatia? There is a stereotype prevalent in our society, that women should be soft and submissive. Men always considered women's intellectuality as a threat, which is why Hypatia was chopped into pieces by the people of her society.

The philosopher Bruno was burned alive to suppress his intellectual height. When you become too tall in your group, your group will automatically turn against you. The more humility you show them, the more they will think you are arrogant. This is game theory. When society sees a person as too tall, they also compete to achieve the same height.

That is why a truly intelligent person acts strategically, even after he is very tall, he does not let people understand it, silence and humility are his best strategy for survival.

Even if ordinary people fall into the Tall Puppy Syndrome, nothing happens to Einstein and Newton, because they do not show their power to people, they are busy unraveling the mysteries of the universe. They discover universal patterns in nature. They think things that have survived billions of years in natural selection.