[387] in Humor
HUMOR: Eccentricity is the key to long life
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Thu Jul 28 15:14:43 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 14:57:44 EDT
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 11:33:43 PDT
From: Connie_Kleinjans@Novell.COM (Connie Kleinjans)
Just in. (And curiously reassuring.)
----- Begin Included Message -----
From: jeffs@sherpa.com
Eccentric souls find the key to longer life
Excerpted from _The European_ (newspaper), 15 July 94
Eccentricity is good for you. It makes you happier, healthier, and likely to
live longer, according to the first in-depth international study on the
subject. Clinical psychologist Dr. David Weeks, of Scotland's Royal
Edinburgh Hospital, has spent the past ten years meeting and studying the
habits of around 1500 eccentrics from Britain, the Netherlands, the USA,
Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand.
The typical eccentric is non-conforming, creative, obsessive, intelligent,
and driven by extreme curiosity," explained Weeks, who funded the study
himself. Weeks has met an exotic sample of the breed, including a Catholic
priest in Spain who has been single-handedly attempting to build a
cathederal outside Madrid for the past 11 years. Then there is Englishman John
Ward, who has a fondness for abseiling from high office buildings dressed as
a pink elephant, and has spent several months building a one-seater car from
scap metal.
"The incidence of eccentricity has been on the increase since the
mid-1960's," said Weeks. He puts it down to the liberalizing influence of
the hippy generation and the increase in leisure time. "Britain and Holland
have by far the greatest number of eccentrics in Europe. I estimate there is
one eccentric for every 10,000 people in Britain. The figure for Europe as a
whole is only half of that, and Germany has the fewest eccentrics of all."
Many eccentrics find an outlet for their creativity and extreme curiosity as
artists, scientists, inventors or academics. One of the oddest characters is
a man known as Jake the Rake Manglewurzel, who has transformed his farmhouse
on the Yorkshire moors into a monument of eccentricity. Every day he climbs
to the roof of his house, where a lectern enables him to delivers lecture to
the sheep. "Eccentrics are extemely obsessive people," explained Weeks. "One
man I met was obsessed with potatoes. He went to Peru to study them growing
in the wild. He ate only potatoes and had about 50 recipies for preparing
them."
But in spite of appearances, eccentricity and clinical madness are two
entirely separate things, says Weeks. Eccentrics are, he maintains,
extraordinarily healthy people, both mentally and physically. "In all my
research I was unable to find any link between eccentricity and
schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. In fact, eccentrics tend to live
longer. I assume this is because they are much happier people who do not
fall prey to stress." Weeks is now compiling the research for a book which
will appear early next year.
