Yes, I’ve known a few. I’ve also known quite a few people with tremendous mental power who didn’t even finish high school. Smarts, intelligence, and formal education aren’t necessarily linked. One of my earliest posts was one which compared Howard Dean to Pat Buchanan, and also explored the “smart vs. intelligent” conflict. I think it may be time to revisit it.
It is only natural for a college student to feel intellectually superior to someone who hasn’t been to college. The experience is such that new ideas and information fill that student’s mind. And there is reason to celebrate that newly acquired knowledge. The disconnect comes when that same college student believes that the things he has learned are things others have never before considered. And many are ideas others have considered, then rejected as wrong after learning from experience. To him, it is new knowledge and unimpeachable.
Unfortunately, many of these college students never leave academia, and continue their formal education to become professorial without ever having left the academic environment. They never get the chance to take that intellect and turn it into smarts.
Smart is not the same as intelligent. Education confers neither. Education can instill some level of smart, but it is still just a mental exercise. Smart comes from experience seasoned with education, formal or informal, and native intelligence. You don’t really get smart without all three. And there are many self-educated folks, with much in the way of life experience to put that education in perspective. A pure intellectual can never be smart because there is no practical experience to test the knowledge acquired. And without that test, there is only simple faith that what they’ve learned is valid. All they have to lean on is surveys and study of those with experience.
The whole “Bush is dumb and so are the people who voted for him” mentality is exhibited by people from the media and academia in particular. Which makes me consider, “Those who live in glass houses…”
[…] the world of al Zarqawi. His logic? Zarqawi didn’t attack us on 9/11. I know these intellectual idiots have difficulty seeing beyond their own pointy noses. But, DAMN! This war was […]
Pingback by Bunker Mulligan » War against Jihadists — November 10, 2004 @ 11:54 am
Very well said.
Comment by John Rogers — November 8, 2004 @ 7:11 pm
It is one thing to think you are smarter than someone else. It is yet another thing to think you are better than someone else. Maureen Dowd, Bill Maher, Paul Krugman, and the irrational leftist media think they are better than others (read Bush supporters) because they are (at least in their minds) smarter. It is the height of arrogance to think they are better than others just because they have more advanced degrees.
Comment by John Adams at The Commons — November 8, 2004 @ 10:15 pm