An acquaintance of mine was recently complaining about his intelligence. He said that every day was a learning experience for him because he knows so little. He equated memorization of facts with intelligence.
The conversation really annoyed me because I know he has the potential for true intelligence. And the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear to me that the difference is in attitude.
Yeah, I could memorize a library's worth of facts, but if I don't know how to use or apply that knowledge, I'm still dumb. And if I don't know how to find more information when I desire it, I'm still lost.
My friend's attitude is that if there is information he doesn't have, he must be stupid. My attitude is that there will always be information I don't have, but if I continue to try to learn and increase my knowledge, I'm intelligent.
What is your opinion?
I like to think of myself as a lifelong-learner. There are always new things to learn. The real trick is learning to put the knowledge to good use in your life -- that's wisdom.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with you that it's more important to know how to get information, to be able to seek it out. However, I also get very frustrated with myself for not being able to figure things out on my own and I get frustrated that things seem to slip out of my head more and more quickly. There are so many things I wish I did know and when I set out to learn something, it usually just goes poof! unless I make active effort to keep it there. For that, I get very angry with myself and wind up feeling very dumb. The one thing that bothers me, though, is the people who embrace their stupidity so everyone can do stuff for them. Take insurance, for example. Every time I deal with something insurance-ish, I have to ask a million questions and I want things explained to me as dumbed down as possible because I DO want to know, to understand. What irritates me most is people who don't even bother to try.
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