Manía

In a not entirely inconceivable 2011, society embraced Mental Parity, an ideology that proclaims absolute intellectual equality and threatens to redefine the very essence of intelligence. Under its new tenets, words like "smart" or "stupid" become taboo, and combating discrimination against less gifted minds becomes the rallying cry of a renewed fight for civil rights. Universities censor required readings to avoid any suggestion of mental superiority or inferiority, and even classics like Dostoevsky's *The Idiot* are deemed problematic simply because of what their titles seem to imply. Pearson Converse, a university professor of Literature, observes this tremendous drift toward intellectual homogeneity and the restriction of language with growing skepticism, and the day her son Darwin is reprimanded at school for calling a classmate's T-shirt "stupid," she says enough is enough. With a fierce aversion to any kind of dogma ever since Jehovah's Witnesses shaped her childhood, Pearson is determined not to let the new tenets of Mental Parity crush the spirits of her children or her students. When her controversial teaching decisions and her commitment to preserving freedom of thought in a world that threatens to stifle all differences place her at the center of an ideological storm, Pearson takes refuge in her best friend, Emory, with whom she can vent her frustrations and share her socially reprehensible ideas about the gender parity movement. Or so she thinks… Faced with censorship, ostracism from her colleagues, and even intervention from social services, Pearson must find the best strategy to raise her voice in a society where dissent and intellectual meritocracy are punished like an ancient heresy.