I spend a lot of my
time thinking about how intelligent I am and comparing it to those
around me. I'm not sure that this is a good instinct, but it is
mine. It is one of my primary motivators and as such I have taken
some time to get to know it. In all things and at all times I want
to be smart and to be sure that other people know that I am. I
believe many people have similar such drivers, an example would be
the person who was told many times how good they look when they were
growing up. They may have many other valuable qualities and traits,
but as a result of that original praise they will spend a lot of
their time thinking about (and judging themselves) on how they look
and how others think they look.
Realising this fact
has been valuable for me. It means I can convince myself to pursue
things further than I otherwise would because they will be evidence
of my intellect. It also means that if I feel down about a failed
task I can much more easily predict what it is precisely about that
task that is making me feel down. I am a great believer that
achieving great things requires fully understanding ones own
motivations and turning them towards the task. In the case of my
wanting to write, I have, through this blog, managed to convince
myself that I am adding depth and cleverness to my writing by
recording and expanding my thoughts*.
However in valuing
an area such as this, there is an inherent danger, that I will begin
to judge others around me based on what I perceive as their
intelligence and begin to feel superior. My tendency is to say that
such feelings of superiority are almost always unhelpful at best and
destructive at worst. There are so many collaborations, friendships
and good ideas which I missed out on when I was younger and more
arrogant. I think there are some interesting arguments to be made
along the lines of no person being smarter than any other, or at
least that they are smarter in different and equally useful ways**,
but that is not what I am writing about today. I wanted though to
briefly mention a technique which I use to attempt to keep my own
intellectual superiorities and inferiorities in check.
I call this game
'I'm the smartest, I'm the dumbest'. In it I attempt to convince
myself (normally during a long meeting or conversation) that I am
either the smartest or the dumbest person in the room by a decently
large margin. There are times when simply finding that going in one
direction or the other is easier will tell me a lot about my own
confidence level. The real value of the game though comes from the
effort of imagination required to move significantly in either
direction. This tells me about some of the dumber things which the
more classically intelligent people in the room are doing and it lets
me notice and elaborate on the insights of the supposedly less
intelligent. I am forced to work to put myself into other people's
shoes, to either see how cleverly they might be outwitting me, or to
allow myself to believe that I am out thinking them to the point that
they are like a child to me. Just the evidence of that work
demonstrates very ably how far I (and everyone in the room) am from
being a masterful genius or a complete buffoon. It has also allowed
me to think with more clarity about the different types of
intelligence and smarts which exist beyond those which we might
ordinarily expect.
Right, so there are
lots of advantages of my thought exercise and I learn a lot, but I am
sure that it has not slipped past all of you how this entire thing is
simply another way of really truly proving to myself just how smart I
am. After all if I can find ways to think my way around what
everyone in the room is doing then I must be really very clever. The
reality is that I believe that while, in the moment, I feel
excessively pleased with myself, in the long term I think that it has
helped me to better consider other people and to realise that how
many types of intelligence there are.
* [ This is almost
certainly not the case, or at least not the whole story. But just
the fact that I can tell myself this helps me to bash out an extra
thousand or so words every week that otherwise wouldn't happen.]
** [ My favourite
analogy is to compare different types of intelligence to different
artistic masters. You might think that Rembrant is the best, but
almost certainly you can find it in yourself to realise that the
world is also better off for having a Caravaggio in it as well.]
No comments:
Post a Comment