This is a blog I should have written weeks ago so excuse me if it’s a little scattered. For just as important as thinking about time shapes my perspective, the eternal struggle between what I’d call “smart” and “stupid” rages on. I would love to be able to draw a strict demarcation between the two. As far as I can tell, everyone is both smart and stupid given a specific context, so how do we get to the “meta-smart or “meta-stupid” person?
Theoretically, we want to “grow” as individuals. If we look at a child, it’s generally preferred that we want them to learn the ABCs and how to count and how to walk and maybe one day look both ways before crossing the street. These are “smart” if not practical, life affirming, intelligence expressing ideas. They are growing. As adults we hope to find people who can share in another’s perspective. Hopefully they’ll accept people despite their color or sexual orientation. They grow to understand that these are not things which threaten them or account for the morality of the individual.
Surely, this growth caps at a certain point academically. We don’t really go around arguing about who is more PH.D.’d or fiercely debate the merit and number of books each of us has read. So we must be expecting, hoping, that people are growing “emotionally” or “spiritually.” What’s odd, is that we consider these areas to be “too personal” to really be discussed intelligently. We don’t get smart, as far as I can tell, about how or why you grow to accept different people, or how life works, and on what basis you should do so.
It’s this kind of emotional stupidity that we somehow match against intelligence. It takes work to get informed, but anyone can feel. In my experience, my feelings only bring me back to a point where I need to explain something intelligently. If I get super pissed, I need to talk out the details for why I’m not going to burn a place down. If I’m getting close to someone, I need to venture down what it means to be emotionally manipulative. Huh, I kinda have two settings, pissed or tepid.
It’s emotional stupidity that prevents me from having too many meaningful conversations about religion. If you weren't afraid to lose something, afraid of change, or even if you don’t feel afraid still unable or unwilling to take any and every question as far as they can go, it has something to do with stupid emotions, because I’m convinced your brain works. It’s like an overbearing mom speculating about all the crazy things that can happen if you stay out too late; you know you’re just wandering around Wal-Mart or bullshitting at Steak N Shake. Even if she knows this logically, she won’t accept it. Sooner or later she’s picking you up from jail or taking you to rehab, she just knows it.
The folk knowledge is that all teenagers are crazy. They destroy, can’t be trusted, and upon reflection of your adventures as a kid, you know all you need to. Even if 98% of the time you spent it on the couch playing Halo, you remember that one fire you lit that got a little out of control and ignore you had the foresight to bring the hose around. You remember trying cigarettes, but forget not liking them. Hanging onto these ideas is problematic, much as believing in anything BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS it to be true, because the idea is incomplete. Much as my time in school, it’s too easy. Easily offered and accepted.
Emotional stupidity I see as a hindrance; it’s anything that prevents you from growing into accepting more about the world. It’s when you could apply your “reasoning by way of feeling” to the world and see a measurable decline in the reliability of information. It’s believing in a god to the point of campaigning against science or to justify some atrocity of nature or personal depravity. It’s believing in love or a relationship to bring a kid into an unstable situation because you’re searching to be complete. It’s placating a person’s entire history by one act or what they look like. It’s being ruled by the fear of the unknown or of where the thoughts might take you.
Therefore, smart should be the opposite of that. It’s learning enough about yourself and place in the world to adopt a stake worth having in it. Understanding how small or big your decisions may impact the people in your life. Holding yourself accountable for how you feel and still managing to consistently go with what makes the most sense, if only at the time. To me, if I’m to be considered smart anymore, it’s not because I read and write, it needs to come from being personally responsible and accountable. It’s not to say I won’t do stupid things or allow a twinge of emotionality to creep in, but I’m capable of recognizing when it does.
Stupid follows a pattern of avoidance while smart explores. Stupid is afraid and smart perseveres. Stupid sums things up, smart is in the details. Stupid makes excuses, smart offers different theories. Most importantly, stupid is empty and smart is a kind of fulfilling that I've never been able to experience another way. Yes, I consider myself smart. Yes, I can do stupid things. There’s a mental happy place I reach when I’m doing something smart. It’s almost like a lifestyle, where shit just makes sense, even when you can’t tell why.
This might speak to why I have two settings. Either things “are” or are going well-enough, or there’s a threat. I can react so viscerally because if I’m threatened it has to be at a very fundamental level. Luckily, that’s usually only coming from myself and over-thinking I suppose.
But as to why I don’t think we’ll make it as a species and call most people stupid, it just seems smart given everything they say or do. Given the stress and drama presented to me, given their non-productive, emotionally driven squawking, their inability to answer anything or change anything without so much undue hassle. The smart thing to do just seems to be “get by” primarily and espouse a personal set of ideals about exploring the potential extent of an intellect. If that, by happenstance, tends to help people, then yay I guess, but to truly care that much would beget me being emotionally stupid about their judgments from the onset.
Funny how the exact same words can mean completely different things.
