I'm a smart guy. IQ in the mid-150s. A few quality sheepskins on the wall. A long and profitable real life career based on the fruits of a laborious mind. I don't say any of this to brag. It just is.
What I have learned along the way is that even though I am statistically likely to be smarter than 99% of the people in any room I walk into I am no better than anyone else there. I am not intellectual royalty. The ignorant plebeians should not be required to bow down in fealty to me, their omniscient feudal lord.
They say that I am a genius by rote measure.
Genius is a term concocted by modernists hoping to categorize and prioritize some to the exclusion of others. It is not a reason to lash out with the whip of the tongue against those who can't comprehend 14 dimensional space.
I have learned this and as with much wisdom I have learned it the hard way.
The whip serves as an instrument of fear against those who have already succumbed to it. To those who feel inferior, dumb, or stupid it simply reinforces a conditioned response. Shy away and resent the wielder.
This creates a three-fold response. The resentment is then often transferred either to the less powerful creating regimes, castes, and systems of further oppression or it is transferred to the fruits of intellect itself thus creating ignorance and fundamentalism.
Or...and we'll come to this in a moment...rebellion.
White towers. Intellectual elitism. These are our residences or our prisons. Take your pick. We create them for ourselves each time we look down an artificial distance created to impress upon our fragile egos a sense of superiority.
The truth is that we're just clamoring along the same rock everyone else is hoping for the light of the sun to rise on us each morning.
What do I know? A little more trivia to make me sound interesting? How to game the economic system we've created for ourselves to have a nicer car? The easiest way to manipulate people into my bed?
I know these things.
There is so much that I don't know.
That is the deepest, darkest secret of genius. As smart as we are: we aren't that smart.
But we'll crack the whip as long as it works. We'll look down on the bullies and the fundamentalists with disdain and convert the world to our own system of oppression and our fundamentalism of the mind.
Until someone grabs a rock and realizes that it's stronger than the whip.
Rebellion.
That is the way of the world as we jockey for power and turn our gifts towards selfish gain. The mind. The arm. The struggle for dominance.
The pendulum swings.
I have learned this.
I have also learned to serve. This is the true calling of the mind and of the arm. Not to bow in fear to one another but to honour with hospitality.
When a person willingly sets aside their need to dominate and embraces the good of another. When a person takes the gift of intellect and combines it with the strength of the hand in mutual submission. When I walk into a room and realize the diversity of talents and experiences in the other 99% of the other brilliant and amazing people there.
Then amazing, beautiful, marvelous, world-changing, life-giving, wonderful and magical things can happen.
I have learned this: set aside the whip and embrace the hand of others. It is better to walk together than to shake your fist in rage when the rebellion passes you by.
This is the responsibility of intellect.
No comments:
Post a Comment