Am I Smart Or What?
I’m a big boy; I can take it!
If you ever felt stupid before (something tells me you did), do not despair. Didn’t you hear the latest news? Apparently, there are multiple types of intelligence out there.
We might be dumb in one regard, but we are F-ing geniuses in a completely different field. That’s more or less what one cheeky psychologist claims (since 1983). I have a hunch that regular citizens were one step ahead of him, though. For example, the concept of being “street smart” is as old as human settlements, in one form or another.
Modern crooks aren’t the first guys to have a brain freeze when it comes to doing something good with their lives, yet get all sorts of clever ideas only when it comes to breaking the law. Okay, that might not be the exact definition, but I knew a few guys like that back in my old neighborhood. Pardon my self-mocking subjectivity.
You can guess by my tone that I’m one of the critics of the multiple intelligences theory. I find it a good excuse for people to claim to be smart just because they’re very good at something. Nobody wants to be dumb anymore.
The truth is that, like everything else, intelligence is relative. If everyone was walking around with a 500 IQ, then all of us would be considered dumb. Or at least average. Only by comparing the lowest…
