What is smart? Might sound like a silly question to some of you, but honestly think about it. What is, smart? Is it the ability to retain large amounts of information? How about the ability to problem solve? The ability to come up with new ideas? Truth is as a culture we're all mixed up on what exactly this word means.
Einstien gave my all time favorite quote on the subject. "Everyone is born a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it's going to spend it's life thinking it's retarded." To me this speaks to the many facets of intelligence. To the fact that there isn't just one form of "smart." For instance I have always been good a math. To me it's easy. Because of this I have been judged as "the smart kid" in many situations. But if you asked me which two colors go together in an outfit I would stare at you blankly. Smoke would come out of my ears. I'd start to shut down. Hell, if it weren't for my wife I would think all colors are just light and dark versions of the primary ones.
Your sitting there saying, but writer-guy (in my head you're a surfer...I have no idea why) you like totally can't say that color differentiation is the same-like thing as like math, dude. (yeah I'm sorry for that) Well...yes, and no. Math is a high abstraction task. It requires the ability to think about things as concepts instead of as realities. Colors on the other hand are real, and right there in front of you. Let me ask you this stranded on a deserted island which is more useful the ability to calculate how tall the hill is with trigonometry, or the ability to tell which berries are ripe enough to eat without getting sick? You said the berries right? I'm concerned about you if you didn't.
So let's say you have a guy who recently wrote a piece on, oh I don't know...quantum mechanics. Does this make him smart? Nope. It makes him good at science, smart in science. Or at least it allows him to appear as such. We have all been conditioned to see the skinny nerd as the symbol of smart. You know the type: sits in the corner with books, talks incessantly about math, or science, or computers (or anime...the list goes on). I'm here to tell you though, that's only one type of smart. That nerdy guy in the corner reading probably isn't that good at social situations (hence the alone time with books). The meathead at the gym, probably knows more about muscular metabolism than some doctors. The carpenter knows wood, like things you wouldn't think someone could know about wood (fun fact: carpenters are the reason trees don't run for political office). My point is that people are all smart in individual ways, and not to let yourself fall into the trap of thinking there is only one kind of smart because that severely limits you. And as a society, we really can't afford to have people setting limits on themselves.
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