I was talking with my aunt the other night, and she told me a couple of times how smart she knew I was. I'm not saying this to brag; I hope that all aunts think their nephews are smart, but it raises an interesting question: what is intelligence? Really my question is how and why intelligence is perceived as it is and why people think that I am smart when I perceive myself as a slacker.
Now I don't think that I am dumb by any means; I am quite arrogant in my intelligence, I just think that I don't do much worth while with my brain, and that there are many people who are much smarter than me.
The reason that I consider myself smart, is that I have no doubt that I can understand anything if I have the desire and am given the time to learn. What I wonder is, can't anybody?
I really do wonder if this is something that is particular to a few or if all have the ability.
This question of ability is one of the fundamental tenets of US society and is the foundation of most policies aimed at education. If someone tries hard they can learn and do anything; this concept is part of the American self-mythology.
But what if it is wrong? What if some people, for whatever reason, lack the ability to learn certain things. Should we denigrate these people, change the educational structure for them, sit back and think, "Hmmm, how very interesting."
I don't really know, but I think that if there were some changes made there might be a little more hope and happiness in education and subsequent employment.
A few years ago I took a very in depth aptitude test. The results said that there were a few specific areas in which I excelled. These tests planted some ideas in my head that eventually shaped my career choices. One of the areas in which I scored very highly was in something called ideaphoria. I think the test makers made up the word to sound smart, but people who posses this ability can rapidly generate ideas. And this is where I think others get the idea that I am smart.
In a recent issue of Time magazine there was an article about bosses and perception. The study put people into groups and had them solve a problem, then asked the groups to rate each other on intelligence and leadership skills. The results were that the people who had the most ideas and were the loudest, most dominant, scored the highest. These people scored high regardless of whether or not their ideas were any good, just talking about them generated the perception of intelligence.
This is what makes it so hard to define, intelligence is more often then not a personal perception. There are other standard measures of intelligence like IQ, SAT scores or other tests, but more often then not, these test only test a single aspect of a very complex and often elusive concept.
Recently some psychologists have written about multiple intelligences: emotional, physical, social, and so on. I think that this sort of concept makes more sense (I also just read an article that women with higher levels of emotional intelligence reach climax more often, just an interesting side note).
I wonder if instead of the current standardized tests that are given in school, there was more of a focus on aptitudes and different kinds of intelligence, individuals would be introduced to avenues of study that fit their own unique blend of skills, leading to increased efficiency, productivity and job satisfaction.
Look at all that drivel, I'm such a sap; talking about mass happiness. The world is a cold hard place, and beer, I mean work, is the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. So why change the system?
Instead, those of us who are smart should just weasel our way into power and live comfortably on the labor of those not intelligent enough to work the system.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
