What is intelligence? How does one know how intelligent they are? What sort of intelligence is the most significant?
I have been perplexed lately by questions of this nature. Mainly, how does one know if they are intelligent? Does intelligence only occur by chance, by the situation we are in, or are some predisposed to dominate any scenario? I am certain the question to that last answer is yes, but am equally certain the individuals that fall into that category are rare. Maybe each individual has a truly great talent or affinity for some form knowledge of knowledge and in his/her lifetime may never exercise that ability. Does it take the right situation, the right people, the right job, or the right support? Or is it a matter of the right chemicals interacting with each other at the right time somewhere in our body that makes do great things? Must one be intelligent to do great things? I believe I am writing this under the assumption that great things require knowledge, surely knowledge of moral issues and justice are required to determine the right course of action.
How does this relate to intelligence? Why have I chosen intelligence as they key characteristic of inquiry? It seems to me now that intelligence may be the ability to wield and acquire knowledge. By wield I mean find the right circumstances to employ that knowledge. So perhaps intelligence is situational. I mean this beyond the obvious, of course a computer scientist will be most able to solve a problem when confronted with a programming issue and a geologist with an issue of geology, but is intelligence triggered by situations. More importantly are situations enabling of establishing intelligence. For example, if one enters the right major as an undergraduate could thay access some previously unknown capacity to think and reason. I am steeply inclined to answer this question in the affirmative.
Personally I consider the acquisition of wealth and the capacity to care for the ones I love the aforemost goal of my life. This makes sense when considering a hierarchy of human needs. Ranked closely below that is the desire for further success measured by means of recognizable, tangible accomplishments. Lastly, (for the purpose of this post) I consider being well informed and understanding of societal, political, and economic issues essential to being a responsible citizen. How I plan to specifically accomplish those goals is not initially important. Becoming more and more a basic fact of life is that in order to achieve a commonly accepted form one needs to go to a post secondary institution, in my case college. More frequently one has to do work after graduating from said institution at another institution to be considered qualified in their field. Alternatively, one needs to find a job of interest and succeed or go back and learn how to be good at telling people how to do work. Since this is my blog, let us consider my case. I am attending Northwestern University now. Supposedly, by adopting this namesake as my future alma mater that has some significance beyond a large majority of other schools I could have chosen to study at. A competive schooling atmosphere lends itself to tradeoff with other things potentially prioritizable in one’s life. *What level of success should I accept to consider myself accomplished and fit to proceed in life to meet my goals?* Unfortunately, my desires are not the entire basis for creating the answer to this question. Granted the answer is shaped by my goals because a given avenue can more appropriately provide my oppurtunities to meet said goals. With my bachelor’s degree in economics that we will assume I am going to receive in two years I do not believe that this will be a sufficient, employable document. That said, I will have to find work and possibly get an MBA, go to graduate school, or go to law school.
Increasingly, I am finding law school to be an interesting an attractive option. This goes back to my junior high mock trial days and aspirations. What elements of success are necessary in my undergraduate work to find a well respected law institution to attend and facilitate accomplishing my goals? From my understanding there are two overwhelming factors: LSAT score and GPA. All other considerations go by the wayside until either one of the two key factors is falling short. As a person there are activities that I love to do. I love spending time with Monica, spending time with my family, reading the newspaper, watching the news, socializing, and exercising. To be a good person I feel that participating in these things is absolutely essential. I say good in this circumstances meaning well-rounded and balanced. I do not believe there is a current events section on the LSAT or a section dealing with how fast I can run a mile. In fact, I am absolutely certain these sections do not exist on any aptitude test required for three avenues recommended for post-grad work. A respectable argument could be made that being a well-rounded, balanced person makes you likeable and employable. I label this a respectable argument because I personally give it weight, but in this specific case I do not believe a law school application properly reflects that and if my LSAT score and GPA are not sufficient that part of my application will not even be considered.
This part of the post is lending a little bit to some stress I have been dealing with (okay, a lot of stress). Let us continue with discussion though. Although aptitude tests do not consider things that matter to being a person, GPA should…right? One should be able to choose a major that suits them and interests them. This allows some form of personal expression and adds value to their life in a more tangible way. Succeeding in school to the point that is considered above average requires one to sacrifice things that makes their person important them.
Admittedly, I am young and have a lot of time to ahead of me to live my life, but right now it concerns me and I think is worth talking about.
On the issue of trade offs, someone I have the utmost respect for told me today that everything in life has trade offs. This has been the focus of my study in economics, in fact, it is the science of scarcity. I have studied math equations that predict how one should respond to a bundle of economic decisions. I have been taught that rarely do real people think in terms of economics, but frequently economists make models that correctly predict the actions they do take. So obviously, trade offs do exist in life. I do not say that to belittle the person who brought this up, but to say that you do not need to study economics or to know anything about math to understand this. Trade offs exist. There is an oppurtunity cost to every decision that we make, that is to say when we make a choice we sacrifice a different possibility. It is frustrating to me that the things I immediately value do not have a tangible benefit and thus should be traded of to accomplish things in the short term that have little value to me, but lead to a long term benefit that is of great importance to me.
This does not seem so hard, does it? In fact, I can hear an authority figure talking to me: “Trade offs exist. You are in school. Deal with it.” This seems like good advice, but everyday I am confronted with distractions and things that truly interest me to a great degree. It fascinates me that the President of Russia can visit the President of Iran and create an incredible opposition to the country I live in, partcipate in, pay taxes in, and love. I find it fascinating what is happening in “the credit crunch”. Yes, reading about and understanding these things today will definetely have value later in life. Having a habit of knowing and understanding these issues would be immensely important to a good life. I am confronted with the question of whether or not I should do what I am accustomed to or I should change my lifestyle and devote it to school?
Most people have dealt with this question much earlier in their life. Granted, some wait a lot longer to confront this question. This is the basis for me inquiring about the basis of intelligence. I have not had an issue with this in the past. This poses a new set of questions. Maybe I have not been challenging myself enough in the past. Maybe I have not put myself in the right situation (read: major and institution). Maybe I am not as intelligent as I expected. I am not looking for anyone to say, “Oh yes you are Spencer, do not worry about it”. (Okay, maybe I would appreciate the do not worry part), but I am not looking for a confirmation of my intelligence. Rather I pose these questions in general do understand a somewhat objective view of life and what is important. From here I want to consider what matters to me.
On another level it is frustrating because it seems premature to consider my intelligence because as stated I have not entered a state of life where I can attempt to accomplish my goals. What role does my final intelligence play in laying the foundation. It seems on the surface of this particular question that the answer is that it plays a large role. On the other hand, I frequently hear that schooling and working have little correllation. Perhaps, actual skills are what this statement refers to and intelligence is the one aspect that is important.
The initial conclusion of this post is that it probably is not important to access some arbitrary value of what my intelligence is, especially now, but rather it is more important to consider what is important in my life and balance those options carefully. I think as always school is an important part of my life and it would make sense as I progress that it will become more challenging. I do not think I need to let post-grad worry me to the point of becoming a person that only praises grades.
I think the final point is that life is confusing and hard – that is why it is interesting. I would love to keep this post going and relate it to my current reading of The Brothers Karamazov because it deals a lot with freedom in the way that I value freedom. I think that is the great part of life, especially at this point, is that we have the oppurtunity to make choices that shape the rest of our life and there will always be a shred of doubt (at least) that we have made an error or chose the wrong side of a trade off. Is it not great that we have the ability to choose in these trade offs? The fact that a trade off exists means we exercise our various faculties and conquer the doubt that enabled us to be free to make a choice. Without doubt there would not be choice and without choice, would we be free?
Worry less, live more.
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