I get both mildly flattered and a touch uncomfortable when I'm told I'm smart. I'm not embarrassed about understanding things, and I certainly lord myself over the things and people I think I get better than they get themselves. It doesn't mean everything boils down to manipulation, but it's been hard to get into a flow of my social work job without receding into a kind of character I've long since stripped of its playful novelty. Whether you think there's different veins of intelligence or not, I think you need a kind of baseline.
What are things people have considered smart? We'll use the term "genius-level athlete." We like to find scientists who, by virtue of their field, are genius for even being able to pronounce certain terms, let alone manipulate them. Brilliant writers wrap us up in stories and capture imaginations of millions well-independent of personal taste or general familiarity of literature. Hell, if you thought my writing was awesome, Grammarly would punch us both in the dick and dare us to pay a premium to get rid of "incorrect" passive voice.
Across the potential domains of intelligence, there's a degree of complexity. Can you figure out the mind-games the quarterback is playing with the defense? No? He's brilliant! Can you fluently swing between keys and read the mixolydian pattern as the improviser wails? Fuck no? "I could never do that!" If you don't speak the language, and you regard the potential gibberish to translate as respect and admiration, extreme consequences can follow. This is as true for those bent on hero-worship as it is for those who believe everything they tell themselves.
We also make a distinction between being smart and being wise. Wisdom can learn from someone else's mistake, and it's merely smart to learn from your own. Wisdom watches. Often, we have a solemn respect for the person remaining calm in the storm, letting things play out, or maybe only feigning a degree of disinterest. The reactive hothead gets put in their place. The mad scientist doesn't bet on the unified heart of the world who'd revolt. The tale of ego or pride destroying in very foreseeable ways is persistent lore for a reason.
I like to say several things at once. I like to be in the middle of a dozen things. My best blog titles, to me, are when they stand for at least 4 or 5 things. Maybe a song title comes to mind that seems to capture the essence, and then happens to have killer relevant lines if you know the words. Maybe it ties itself in a nice bow to the last line. My brain automatically tends to run in different directions at once, and it gives zero shits if I'm comfortable picking one road or another. Try as I might, I'm often reacting. I'm feeling something turn or drop in my stomach. I'm persuading myself the dread is something less significant, and it's my burden, nay, “mature duty,” to combat it until the next practical reality can roll around.
Today provided some insight into that. I was getting my job done. I was making my rounds. I had a plan to write up some loose ends. I was going to be done early. I started getting afraid. It was too easy. I was playing along. I knew the tasks and just did them in a line. When I got to the end of the line, then what? So I sabotaged it. I let the last hour of my day go to some bullshitting and tying up one loose end instead of 5 or 6. What are we supposed to say about this?
I don't like the band Tool. I find their music boring, and every time I try, I just can't. Their “complexity” is often cited. Complexity for complexity's sake I've never considered compelling. Me telling you of the dozen things I'm doing half-assed isn't compelling either. It doesn't make me move on them any faster, nor does it make me proud to tell you how far I haven't gotten. I could write the 12 minute song that spends the first 4 minutes adding an extra note, instrument, or flourish. I could also attempt to write a 4 minute song that says more than “because I can.” Is there a degree of “smart” or “wisdom” in doing either? Is my inability to be brought to tears by Tool, as one reviewer I read, simply my inability to appreciate the beautiful and brilliant language?
This all would matter less to me if we didn't make terrible judgements based on our impressions of these tastes and capacities to understand. I'll never quite swallow that Trump is president. For my brain, attempting to run in every direction, the reaction to that news and fact is to so many suicidal and dark places, it's genuinely hard to spend any time reflecting without wanting to give up. What do you say to the absence of organized thought? What do you say to burned nuggets of wisdom? What's the exercise of existing when survival is predicated on both strangling as damming a selfish conception of yourself in the world as it is denying anything beyond you exists?
There's a way to describe the insanity of a chaotic mind as “it's own kind of intelligence.” I'd call this disingenuous, but we do it all the time. We don't want to believe the people we associate with don't have their niche. We prefer the polite language of “accepting differences” where the language of cutting dead weight would be better suited. This especially when it's “family.” This proclivity when we feel ashamed or are reminded of when we've slipped. To my mind, insanity comes in equal doses as opportunities to create a little order. Then we make the “wise” move to incorporate it into our language, even if in practice we have no idea if we're keeping a balance or managing to grasp the concepts of “order” or “chaos” altogether.
Order feels very tired. I got my house in order, and the loudest indicator of how to spend most of my time has been to mostly watch TV. I wish I felt worse about that. It's not like before, where that's all I really could do. Now, I'm doing it after I spend my whole day utterly subsumed by order. I don't make the rules. I barely rattle the cages for a little leeway here and there. I'm tired after work, not because it's hard, but because it's easy. Watching TV makes me tired. Doing the grunt work of scanning and organizing books does the same thing. Trying, and failing, half a dozen times to uproot a stubborn tree makes it one more.
The individual daily acts that eat up your time and disengage you are what we add up at the end to claim a form of “meaningful life.” How many rallies did you go to for your designation as “long-time activist?” How many classes do you teach before you're a cherished educator? How many times do I get to be told the work I'm doing is important before I start to believe it? Does it matter if I don't know where August went as long as a few dozen families got a slightly milder impression about the imposing nature of DCS? What if I was pretty-much dead inside the whole time they were thanking me? What if every sacrifice I made for them made me resentful for not recognizing similar ones made in service to me?
How quick and easy it would be at this point to resolve to the complex nature of being. “Everything is everything!” “It's just a ride!” “Karma, bro!” Why acknowledge and work with your own experience, especially if you can't trust it, especially when there's an infinite justification to keep it playfully light and confusing?
I continue to return to the idea that it has to be by you and for you, but to the extent that you even bother to describe yourself, and to the ability to orient and depict accurately. Trump voters have the 3-10 ego lines, and that's their existence, so burn everything else down. Radical leftists have the religious idealism that serves the same purpose. The idiot merely needs to speak and dance. The intelligent can hide behind their complex-sounding narratives or philosophies that amount to “I'm scared too, and can't be bothered.”
If you get a thousand bad reviews for your deeply personal work (and, lo, what isn't deeply personal?) should you care? Should you care if it sells like Oprah? Should you care if you're prepared to recant and be forgiven before you die? The ego-driven YouTube “celebrities” and charging bulls of housewife fables aren't slowing down. The entertainment sits ass-to-face with the news for thousands of scrolls. Where do you exist in it all? Watching? Reporting? Capitalizing? Fighting as hard as an immigrant kid with all the pizazz of a pyramid scheme pitchman? Do you know the difference between your story and struggle, and the words laid before you? Do I? Can I?
You know what I want before I'm exhausted doing whatever it is I want to do? Someone to do it with. And more than that, real individuals with their own thoughts and fights and words that when mixed with mine create a better narrative and we discover the working wisdom. I want my best conception of my friends to hold true and to believe there's more than just biding my time until the list of tasks is inevitably done, and the paycheck hits, and the options for dinner are within driving distance. Who's qualified to review you besides those who know you? And who knows you but the ones who are paying attention for your sake and for theirs? Who am I trying to impress? For how long has it been the abstraction of what I take to be people's conception of me to live up to the hype? You know who never asks me what I'm doing? Almost everyone.
So is it time to wisely move on from another mild mental crisis and get back to organizing books and reinforcing shelves? I'm certainly going to finish the last 3 episodes before I get to 450 in One Piece. Should I approach my next 3 days off of training-vacation with renewed vigor at the prospect of learning how to forensically interview children? Should I sleep a little sounder knowing I got more confusing, laughably “wise” or “smart” words out for me to read a thousand times looking for what I really said later? Does it matter? Do you care? Do I? I've watched myself over the last few weeks, months, and years, and keep seeing it manifest as words. I don't know what to make of them, or myself. I don't know that I want anymore access or luxury than I have now, as I'm almost positive I'd have so little occasion to share it. If only because I'm perfectly ignorant about what I can provide, or what it is that's really needed.
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