Smart people go by many titles. Expert. Guru. Professor.
Nerd.
We often look up to these people as supremely intelligent individuals. We trust them to come up with sound ideas and to think through complicated problems that we don’t feel qualified to touch.
Intelligence is accessible to anyone, though. It’s not something reserved for some elite few that we lock away in ivory towers to do all our thinking for us. It’s a gift that we can all acquire through determined effort.
Before we get into how to be smart, however, let’s define what intelligence actually means.
“Intelligence”
It might help to first look at what intelligence is not.
Think of that one smart person you absolutely cannot stand. The know-it-all. The one kid who finished all his exams in no time flat. That geek who shuts down all of your fun ideas with cold, heartless science. It could be that fellow who believes that logic is the end-all of rational thought. Anything that cannot be supported with hard evidence simply must be total bunk, to his thinking.
The truth of the matter is these people are driveling morons. Why? Because they don’t really know how to think.
Oh, sure, they can parse their way logically through a problem. They pride themselves on their sheer brainpower. But they only think in one way, and they are foolish enough to believe that that one way is superior to all others.
True Intelligence
True intelligence is being able to think clearly. It could be argued that the ultimate in intelligence is having full command of one’s faculties, whether they be mental, emotional, kinesthetic, etc. It is breaking the ruts dug into one’s psyche through years of ingrained thought, then learning to piece things out on one’s own.
It has nothing to do with memorizing facts. While having rote knowledge in your head can help with the thinking process, you’re probably just as well served by knowing what you need to look up. When figuring out a problem, you’ll get the piece you need to solve your puzzle either way.
The ability to rattle off useless trivia has nothing to do with how smart you are, and if you focus on your vast knowledge overmuch, it can preclude you from actually coming to sound conclusions. After all, there’s always the possibility that you’ll be wrong. If you do not consider that possibility, it will likely catch up with you eventually in some unpleasant way.
Intelligence has little to do with logic. Logic is a tool. So too, however, is intuition. If something feels out of place, it probably is, and it’s often logic that needs to catch up. Your gut will often sense things that your mind will miss, and it will therefore work on more complete information.
Certain chaos theorists have asserted that logic is a fallacy. Of course, the one time I heard that notion, it was from a fictional character who was high on morphine, so that idea should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
Intelligence isn’t about speed. Albert Einstein, who thought of something amazing that no one else had really considered, took forever to do so. He was slow at everything, including math. Balancing equations in your head in record time doesn’t show intelligence. It just shows that you’re well trained.
Ultimately, intelligence is the ability to think on your own with your whole being. Some of us think with our gut. Some think on paper. Some think through music. But the point is you use what you have—and in a way, you use what you are—to make sense of the universe.
This is an ability that leads to truly dramatic instances of genius, for it enables you to see the universe through your own unique perspective. You ask questions that no one else has considered. You think in ways that no one else can, because they are not you.
Drawing on Uniqueness
Your intelligence is closely tied to who you are. Your unique perspective and your individual way of doing things enable you to think in ways that no one else is quite capable of. Put simply, your being is your lens.
With this in mind, we start to get an idea of how true intelligence can be developed. That will be the focus of Part 2 of this series.
What are your thoughts? Think I’m right? Sort of right? Flat out wrong (and a driveling moron to boot)? Let me know in the comments! Also, please share this with your friends so they can learn to become more smarter people too. All proceeds go toward rehabilitation services for morphine-addicted chaoticians. Really.