“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.”,
— attributed to Albert Einstein
We break down intelligence into intellect and emotion and most discussions stop there, but there must be at least two more aspects to it. Memory is certainly one, not just what but how you remember. Memory is presumed to be impersonal and objective, which it is not. It very much depends on your situation. There is still a large fourth part which I’ll call intuition.
I’m frustrated with all the natural and accepted ignorance around me. I see it in social behavior and I work to address it in my clients and myself. I’m largely successful so I know we can learn to think better.
My purpose here is to direct your attention to what needs to be fortified because you will not improve anything unless you distinguish it as something you can focus on. To make this clear let’s explore these first aspects of intelligence starting with memory.
Memory
Memory is crucial but it’s not what you think. You don’t remember facts, you remember associations. Even the words you remember, and often don’t remember, have a context. The wider the context and the more associations you have, the better your memory.
As we age and context fades, our memories fade too. I am often (too often) reminded of a word I cannot remember. There was one yesterday, it started with the letter “b.” I eventually recalled it but now I can’t remember. There is no context.
Much of who you are, what you do, and feel yourself to be relies on memory. Life experience changes your personality only to the extent that you can form associations that reside in your subconscious. You have subconscious memories too. Managing your memory defines your relationships with everything.
Do you work at improving your memory? Are you even aware of how wide or sharp it is? Do you learn new things? If your answer to these questions is no, then I suspect the adage “use it or lose it” applies. Nowhere in our adult lives are we specifically asked to pay attention to our memories. At the same time everything in our adult lives relies on our memories. For something so central is it not amazing that we have so little direct appreciation of it?
Narrow Focus
Most of what we spend our days doing is problem solving. Problem solving is more complicated than we recognize. It involves recognizing, stating, organizing, breaking down, creating a plan, acting, rearranging priorities, establishing continuity, reflection, feedback, and learning.
We normally approach all of these things intellectually, or at least we think we do. But all of these steps involve memory, varying degrees of emotion, and a dash of intuition.
Some people think more widely than others, and some people could be said to be shallow thinkers. You may solve your problems using a variety of approaches and there will be great differences in the amount you learn.
Most solutions apply to more than one problem, yet you’ll only appreciate those aspects of the solution relevant to you. Schooling that teaches you how to regurgitate information teaches you only that. You may know what the Gettysburg Address was, but you won’t know why.
What Understanding Is
I want readers to consider how much more involved they could be with their thinking. To go beyond solving the immediate problems of the moment, how could you solve future problems if you thought more deeply, built more associations, and were more sensitive?
We decry the materialist lifestyle, though we also celebrate it in our comfort and appearance. We do not recognize that we have become habituated to something we might call “conceptual materialism.”
Conceptual materialism is thinking only in terms of material problems and their solutions. The conceptual materialist considers each issue as a problem to be solved and largely wipes their slate clean after each solution. Such a person does not see a bigger picture, and does not engage a larger context unless it presents itself as a material problem.
There are certain problems that are not material, relationships being one example, and finding a sense of comfort, calm, and fulfillment is another. Addressing these issues requires thinking more broadly, remembering more extensively, and interacting more deeply.
For problems that are not materially defined you must collect more than the obvious resources, expend more energy than is immediately rewarded, and entertain doubts that you cannot immediately allay. And you must do these things effectively, that is to say without pain, prejudice, resentment, or anxiety.
And here is where our limitations arise: most people cannot avoid some degree of pain, prejudice, resentment, or anxiety when dealing with issues they cannot materially or immediately resolve. This prevents people from learning. It prevents people from exercising their intelligence in order to evolve themselves. Without exercise, practice, reflection, and self-criticism, limited thinking begets more limited thinking.
What Emotion Can Be
Humans exercise great intellectual skill compared to other animals, but our emotional control is undistinguished. The reason we bond so closely with our pets is because we have equal levels of emotional control and reaction.
Our schools teach intellectual skills relegating emotional skills to demonstration, performance, and persuasion. We confuse emotion with instinct although the two are entirely different. Despite all the talk of emotional intelligence we don’t treat or train emotion as a source of insight.
A full understanding of emotion recognizes it as a broad appraisal, a summation of facts, history, circumstances, and objectives. You do not choose between intellect and emotion, you integrate intellect into emotion.
Refined emotional thinking is the next step in our cognitive evolution. Our current level of awareness is measured both individually and socially. You may be a particularly intelligent person, but in few cases will a person be able to improve the intelligence of those around them.
The typical definition of emotion conflates instinct, lust, need, hunger, and dependent behavior.
Currently high global levels of violence, inequity, poverty, disease, indifference, and xenophobia indicate how far we have yet to go before we can consider ourselves emotionally intelligent.
What We Accept as Normal
The only fair definition of intelligence is one that is comprehensive. Without being comprehensive we fail to recognize different paths, general solutions, and insightful behavior. To be comprehensive requires intellect, emotion, visual, mathematical, kinesthetic, and spiritual channels of perception. As a culture, and often as individuals, we lack these comprehensive skills and instead rely on what’s normal, which is to say what’s average. This forms a very low bar.
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