When Smart Is Dumb

From a chapter of the same name in Emotional Intelligence:

And that is the problem: academic intelligence offers virtually no preparation for the turmoil–or opportunity–life’s vicissitudes bring. Yet even though a high IQ is no guarantee of prosperity, prestige, or happiness in life, our schools and our culture fixate on academic abilities, ignoring emotional intelligence, a set of traits–some might call it character–that also matters immensely for our personal destiny.

I think I am more self-aware than most, but that just means I get to have the biggest dumbshit mistakes explained to me when they fly by my radar. You can ask anyone who knew me when I was young: I was the dumbest smart kid on the planet. Ever since I realized and accepted that, I’ve tried to leverage raw intellect into common sense and emotional intelligence. I usually did this either by fucking up, or modeling the behavior of others, and then fucking up. Right now, my blog is really the only physical ledger of this, but if you could somehow stretch it back a couple decades to look at the whole process, you’d be baffled first, and falling off your chair laughing second.

That’s on purpose. I’m doing everything I can to accelerate the process, not “huddle under the blankets and stay warm.” If that means the process is more violent and unpredictable, that’s fine–it can only help me.