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{don't worry: you're so smart (what is intelligence?)} jack wilder "I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to move on when the one you love walks away from you. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing." - Neil Gaiman I hear it all the time, people lauding other people, their ideas and actions as smart. Intelligent. People say things like: She’s smart. He knows a lot. They’re very knowledgeable. I was told by a wise man that somebody who is smart knows a little about a lot of different subjects. This idea certainly isn’t new but what it spawned, for this author, is the fluid nature of existence; that life, and especially social life is watery – it fluctuates, and it’s hard to predict. And much of the time, social is treacherous to navigate. In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed that there are multiple forms of intelligence: linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal and logico-mathematical. I agree with Gardner and others who believe that there are many forms of intelligence. However, I would like to make a couple of demarcations: between verbal and written linguistic intelligence; as well as personally and intrapersonally – emotional intelligence. Alas, in studying humanity you will find this grand axiom that, again: life is fluid. In flux. Oftentimes, difficult to pigeonhole with any precision. For this author, this problem stems from one of our primary cognitive functions: emotion. If you’ve ever spent time with a truly humorous person, you will find most of the supreme forms of intelligence represented. A funny person, in a social situation and when they’re “on”, demonstrates a couple of the greatest of all virtues for me: malleability and awareness. For your comedian friend, in conversation, is playing upon what is presented in the moment. Certainly, some of their phraseology is canned. But, what is most astonishing about this kind of interaction is the comedians ability to swim among the wash of words coming at them; and to play, mold and form, those words – spin them into something new. Knowledge, for this author, is about synthesis. Knowledge is about taking two independent items and fusing them together, to create something that is both an authentic and new amalgamation – relative to the two independent premises that were initially presented. This is where comedy lives, in that synthesis. Comedians like George Carlin, Bill Hicks and Lewis Black have epitomized this ideal, and more than that – they have demonstrated that this kind of synthesis can be profound and unfolding within that profundity is the humor. Yet, while the comic minds around us do illustrate some elements of awareness, where they do fall short is, oftentimes, in their emotional reading of a situation. Comedians like to be the centerpiece of the conversation. They don’t often like to let something outside of them to be either a catalyst or the subject for the conversation, the social interaction. We’ve all seen it: the funny guy, a lot of times, can’t stop. To this end, I am of the belief that it is the truly gifted conversationalists who may demonstrate the blending of most of the highest forms of intelligence at one time, in one sitting. In all, social intelligence may provide the kind of penumbra by which we could, or perhaps should, assess the bulk of human intelligence. I would argue that no other overarching intelligence may be more important, and encompassing. Social intelligence involves intelligence in the arenas of nearly all of Gardner’s original levels: linguistic, spatial, bodily, interpersonal, intrapersonal and logico-mathematical. In other terms, I posit that emotional and communicative intelligence are the primary factors. The other outlier is awareness: most predominantly - physically and emotionally. The great German thinker, Arthur Schopenhauer once said that, “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.” Certainly, we’ve all been in public and the person standing next to us – despite the fact that they have a large radius of open space around them – is standing on our toes. Or, we’ve engaged in an interaction with somebody who – in the first meeting was jovial and present; but in the second encounter – they are empty and aloof. As we all know, social interactions are not always simple. They are not always pleasant. For this author, a sense of awareness is paramount to demonstrating a high degree of any intelligence. For it stands as primary to what we are always attempting to do socially: to communicate. To communicate appropriately and effectively, one must be aware of social medians in language, context and subject-matter. One also must understand, to some degree, the emotional ground of the conversation – when to laugh, when to present heavy subject matter and when to engage with another at all. And certainly, don’t stand on my toes when you’re talking to me. Don’t spit in my face. Please, demonstrate some physical, bodily awareness. For the most part, intelligence, like God, is a human construct. As humans, we are social creatures – maybe even, the unsociable social creatures. We are forced to interact. In part, a lot of our lives can depend on our interactions. And while I’m always thinking about Herr Schopenhauer’s quote – I am also of the belief that if we were learned in these forms of intelligence at a young age, our interactions and lives would be much more graceful. |
