Smarts

I’ve always made it a point to never think about intelligence, never incite it, make distinction nor invite it. It even feels dirty to bring it up today. Because smartness is best measured by action: any discussion of it feels crude. You should always measure one’s smarts by how content they are. How they spend their time.

And I do truly think you can learn something from everyone you meet. At least a reminder. So let’s not preemptively sort out all the humble lessons.

And smartness is far more multifaceted beyond book-sense. Not only beyond, but also something that is won everyday. You aren’t inherently smart, you’re acting smart today. You aren’t permanently dumb, you’re acting dumb today. So one can never claim a label of “Smart” innate.

Maybe that’s what makes it feel so dirty: people think smarts is some stain of character, something static and permanent. But smartness is action, not an implicit quality. You act smart, act dumb; you’re always shifting character. The bell curve may be ascended despite it feeling rigid stone. Have you been acting smart lately? I agree, it’s comfortable to never label, though one confronts it inevitable.

I guess I’m writing this as a gesturing, or a tomb to close, or a stake in the sand: I have surely condemned myself from ever discussing smarts, ever officially throwing darts on bell curves, but how smart you act sure as hell matters in this life, and I’m tired of the misplaced silence because it’s important and something to value and it’s something you can change.

That’s what ultimately bothers me. This self-censoring, or censor-writ-large, makes that lie persist. That if you’re dumb you’re dumb forever. Or smart then smart as the ruler. But this censoring makes it so we all just sludge around at our assumed competence and it’s repulsive. One resigns from any attempt to try to be a little smarter. Same presentation and undone shoe laces and it’s depressing, it’s repulsive — because intuitively you know if you keep acting this way you’re sentenced to hell. You’re just done for life.

You are not dumb forever! Stand tall! Leaning smart improves almost every metric of one’s life, so try! Try to act smarter! If I’m not going to try, you should immediately cease all communication and thought of me. If you aren’t going to try, then I want nothing to do with you.

No one is an expert day-one on whatever they want to act smart about. It’s showing up everyday. The more you act smart the easier it is to act smart; same as any other skill. But there in lies the real tragedy of smarts: if you stop acting smart, every day, eventually you become some sap. You live and die for something convinced to you, and those who benefit stay in the shadows.

We are free to do whatever we want, including destroying ourselves, and the architects of society don’t bother with you, or they leave it to Calvinism to sort you out. Because of this silence I struggle to believe in discussions, in making a point about anything, partly because who am I to say, but partly because if the real consistently smart-acting ones aren’t bothering, isn’t that a clue?

But I think the biggest tragedy is how we can’t talk about it. We can’t even begin the discussion. But I get a revulsion, honestly, when people start discussing IQ or whatever other metrics. It always feels like a forest-for-trees conversation. It falls into that same tiring implicit that your intelligence attribute is permanent.

So we don’t talk about it, we don’t have any expectations or goals, and the pointlessness corrodes. How can you act smarter if you don’t even acknowledge it? It’s a weird sin. The same way of shame when people begin to make fun of things you can’t seem to change.

But I’ll dare and state you can change your smarts. That’s all I’m saying here. After all, if you spent the last year offline totally reading and researching you’d be acting smarter. It’s a false grounds — we are all equal in our capability to act smarter, beyond some rounding errors, maybe.

For if one is condemned to flop about in their pre-ordained existence, resigned to nothingness… well, I’ve thought that.

I wouldn’t recommend it.