Pugsworth´s Thoughts

This is a place for me to store ideas, thoughts and feelings that I would like to share with the rest of the world.

Name:
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Comfortable Intelligence

A close friend recently suggested that I should learn to become more comfortable with my intelligence. I was immediately struck by the wisdom of this suggestion and it stimulated some interesting reflections about my relationship with my intelligence and my reactions to some of our cultural attitudes towards it.

I am a very intelligent person. However it is very difficult to write that without sounding and feeling conceited (I’m much more comfortable saying that I’m of above average intelligence). Taken at face value those five words express in a fairly matter of fact way what most of my friends tell me is true. However without a carefully crafted context our culture generally hears those words as being full of ego or as an attempt at saying that I am better than someone else. Even overt displays of intelligence can have this affect. This has led me to be wary about displaying my intelligence (outside of my circle of close friends) for fear of being judged, ridiculed or ostracised.

I guess I’ve always been fairly smart. I come from a well-educated family and my parents always encouraged and stimulated me in many forms of learning. In grade four I remember taking what seemed like long walks with a friend during school lunch times to contemplate the immense ability of the human brain even in contrast to a calculator (which seemed like a fairly impressive thing in itself back in 1988). But even then I knew this was a conversation that wasn’t worth trying to share with other friends. At high school there was a clear divide between those with academic abilities and interests and those without. One’s intellectual ability seemed to be inversely proportionate to one’s social rank so I tried (without much success) to avoid demonstrating any sort of intellectual ability to my fellow students. At university being smart was a bit more acceptable, but in general my experience has been that intelligence is more likely to be scoffed at than rewarded, so I remain to this day hesitant to display any significant prowess or capacity other than to those who I know won’t judge me for it.

‘Intelligence knocking’ seems like a rather odd cultural attitude and one that isn’t really going to help us advance ourselves either as individuals or as a nation. It’s an attitude that’s part of the more extreme egalitarianism we call the ‘tall poppy syndrome’. Anyone who gets ahead or does better than us is cut down to size. So I wonder how it came to be? I guess the origin lies in earlier historical times where intelligence was used to justify a higher social status whether between classes or races. In Australia’s case I guess this is the result of our convict and settler past. So many of the people who came here wanted to escape the entrenched social hierarchy of Britain. And when they arrived here they found themselves in a strange utopian equality imposed by the harsh physical conditions.

Perhaps it goes further back, to the age of the enlightenment, when a rapid growth in our knowledge about the world led to significant social developments. This put the power to bring change and advancement in the hands of those at the forefront of knowledge. Generally they were members of the already powerful wealthy classes and in a time of change and upheaval it was only natural for them to use their newfound power to reinforce their position. Over 200 years or so we’ve tried gradually equalised access to a good education but judging by the level of social concern about our schools and the competition between them we haven’t yet succeeded. At least this is a sign that we do indeed value intelligence even if it is only about making sure that we are keeping up with (or getting ahead of) those around us.

Of course the snobbery of the intelligent elite is not limited to the enlightment, it continues today. No doubt this contributed to the contemporary contempt for intelligence as the victims of snobbery take their revenge. This in turn reinforces elite attitudes as those who feel they aren’t accepted (by the now more educated masses) cluster together and bitch about the rest.

This brings me back to my friend’s advice. We have to learn to carry our intelligence in a way that doesn’t impinge on the self-esteem of others. This means not using it to prop up our own sense of self-esteem. It means using our intelligence for the empowerment of others and not in a way that disempowers them. We are all gifted with one form of intelligence or another, whether it be intellectually, emotionally, physically, spiritually, artistically, linguistically, socially, intra-personally, financially, or in one of the many forms of intelligence we’ve yet to put a name to. We also experience a lack of natural intelligence in some of these areas. So the relationship between the ‘haves’ and the ‘haves not’ of intelligence is one that we all experience from both sides. This should give us the perspective we need to approach each other’s gifts in a more mature way. Basing our self-esteem on whether we are more gifted than others in a particular field doesn’t do us any good in the long run.

How do you feel when you see someone do or say something with an ease and elegance you could never hope to achieve? Well in part it depends on how that person carries themself in that action. If a person acts out their intelligence in a way that tries to belittle us, then we are likely to feel belittled or offended etc. If they act in a timid way, then this may reinforce our prejudices against this particular gift or it may inspire sympathy towards someone who doesn’t value their own gift. Hopefully they will act in a way that expresses their intelligence as a genuine gift to be shared with whoever they can, and we are able to accept this gift not with a sense obligation to repay it in kind but a grace that simply takes joy from a beautiful thing shared.

So my mission from here is try and share my own intelligence and receive other people’s intelligence in this third way and eventually for this to become an easy and natural habit. Hopefully that is something I have achieved here.