The Dripping Sarcasm Voice
raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com
raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com
Culture is hard. I thought it was just me at first, but I've been meeting more and more people who just don't "fit in", and I think it's because they never really "got" the culture around them.
And now I'm seeing it more and more in my children, the fact that some people don't just naturally pick up the culture around them like others do. For some it's harder to learn than others and takes more effort.
As I grow older I realize more and more of this was caused by me being an arrogant kid. That arrogance stopped me from learning from around me because I would be too focused on the thoughts inside my own head, believing them to be more worthwhile than anything externally.
So I never picked up learning from the world around me during the time I was supposed to, and I was decades late to the party. Case in point, I'm 31 and only gave beer a real chance for the first time this year (conclusion: I like it!).
And I've accidentally passed that on to my own children, the arrogance and the cultural internalization. I just wish I had spent more time being quiet and listening to the world around me than thinking too much.
Half the time I wasn't actually "smarter" than anyone around me even though I thought I was, and the other half when I actually was, my intelligence did more harm than good to myself.
Some of the people I look up to the very most are "ignorant" by the standards I held myself to growing up (and maybe society did too). They're "uneducated fools". But they're kind, patient, quiet and thoughtful, good listeners, meek and humble, compassionate and understanding, forgiving. I find myself wanting to be around them just because they're them, and wishing I was more like them.
To anyone nodding along to the post, because you are so special that you don't have friends: "smart" people everywhere have gone through feeling isolated from their age peers. Smarter people figure out how to navigate the shortfall rather than increasing it. Feynman anyone?
As an aside, I have a kid starting kindergarten this year who's been reading/writing for 2 years now. At home (and at pre-school by request) we make it a point not to over-praise this.
Because I don't want one innate attribute warping his whole identity.
This is what /s is for.
I agree with the comments saying that this is quite self-congratulatory and does not have must useful substance.
> With that incident in my past and still weighing heavily on my mind, in high school, I was painfully aware that many of my classmates simply did not have the background knowledge I had and this gap in knowledge about the world was growing with every single passing day as I continued to take yet more advanced classes.
I think that by the author's metric I would be considered "very smart". I've taken and done well in many fancy classes. However the type of "smart" that comes from classes is worth a lot less than one would think, and I think that a lot of us learn that lesson much later in life than we would like.
There is a great scene in the movie "Captain Fantastic" where the eldest in a homeschooled family lashes out and says "I don't know anything! If it doesn't come from a book I don't know it at all!" This character was accepted to all of the best universities, had a strong grasp of physics and philosophy, etc. But, after a series of awkward social encounters, realized that they had some deficiencies.
this sounds like the most upvoted /r/iamverysmart post of all time
My theory of why this is is that most Reddittors have a bit of an inferiority complex and when someone says they're intelligent they feel a need to prove that they are better than that person somehow. This is just a theory mind you. I'm not trying to analyze your behavior.
In any case, I hope we can do better than Reddit when discussing people who claim to be more intelligent than most. Saying "iamverysmart" shuts down the conversation completely without adding anything meaningful. Even if OP is bragging (a sense I did not get), there are still things to learn from the post.
I think that this is because intelligence is usually self evident. It is similar to wealth; the people that tell you that they are rich are typically not the wealthiest people you know. On Reddit, perhaps mentioning a relevant professional qualification (e.g. being a lawyer).