First, yes, I recognize intelligence is a vast and varied thing. But, I know that YOU know what I’m asking. Second, this could be answered any way you want. Third and finally, if you’re going to tell me to read more, recommend specific literature.
First, yes, I recognize intelligence is a vast and varied thing. But, I know that YOU know what I’m asking. Second, this could be answered any way you want. Third and finally, if you’re going to tell me to read more, recommend specific literature.
‘Intelligence’ means something along the line of ‘ability to pick, to understand’. So, I would say behaving intelligently would be a good starting point.
Showing an ability to recognize and to appreciate differences, to be able to accept people having conflicting ideas, for example, or being of different origins and cultures, believing in different values or morals. To realize those differences are a strength and not a weakness, an opportunity more than it is a threat. Also, not feeling any need to always ‘be right’ would come close second for me.
Read more about what ? Intelligence? That’s a bit too… broad, I’m afraid.
But if I was to suggest any young person (which I suppose you are, which I’m not anymore) showing a desire to get acquainted with some of the brightest and most intelligent people our species have ever created, I would tell them to start reading. Books. And not any books, mind you. Read classics.
Yeah, I know, boring. Save that they are not. They’re just different than what most readers are used to read. Here again: being open to differences, welcoming them, is a sure sign of intelligence ;)
Read literature, and poetry, and essays, plays,… Read as much of them and read them as regularly as possible. But why classics, why not the latest ‘XYZ series about some amazingadventuressomewhere’?
Too many people consider books a mere ‘fantasy’, an escape door from the sad reality they’re trapped in, we’re all. And a lot of books are indeed just that, and they’re doing a great job at being that. No issue with that. But books and literature is so much more.
Books, the written word, is the way through which mankind have shared ideas and reflections through time. It’s how we have maintained on ongoing dialogue between some of our smartest people for thousand of years. Reading them is taking part in their conversation! That is why I can read Homer to this day, almost 3000 thousand years after his death, like if he was sitting here with me like if it was him that was singing his amazing stories, just for me!
So, be it by reading Homer, or Ovid, Shakespeare (and my dear Molière), or by reading the Bible or the Upanishads. Or some philosophical work. Or by reading novels by Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, Flaubert. Stories by Borges or Kafka. Or by reading the essays of Montesquieu and those of Montaigne, or by reading Diderot (so undervalued, nowadays!) or this poor Rousseau whose ideas have so often been caricatured and misunderstood (not always by accident), read ‘The Social contract’ and the ‘Discourse on Inequality’ and read it in French if at all possible because their writing is so fine tuned, every single word matters (yes, I’m French).
Poetry is another great way to get familiar with (another form of) intelligence, through rhythms and attention. But that would deserve a threat of its own.
If you’re from the USA, there was a time this once great and inspiring country had to offer the world more than angry buffoons. Go read Henry David Thoreau, Emerson, or the poetess Emily Dickinson to name just three that I think of right now.
Heck! If you want to read an old (but still alive) amazing and very critical US thinker, and a poet, and a fiction writer, and a man that lives his life in accordance with his personal values, look no further than to your unique Wendell Berry. Mister Berry deserves more Nobel Prize than anyone else, and not just in literature. Being able to meet him and to discuss with him, even for a few minutes, is the only reason I would agree to travel to the USA. Edit: but since I’ve refused to travel by plane since the early 00s, it probably will never happen but would I like to be able to meet him? Yes.
I typically add the “read more, suggest literature” to my questions because in the first few questions I asked here I noticed people liked saying things like “you clearly havent read about the subject” or “why dont you read a book sometime”. So now I add the disclaimer. I appreciate your thorough answer!
I love this comment and I’ll look into Wendell Berry since I haven’t heard of him before.
To add on, I’ve met a lot of otherwise smart people (smart as in curious and skeptical to not accept things at face value) who frustratingly have no interest in literature to flesh out their own philosophies about the world.
They’ll go on a rant about this or that and I’ll chime in to say, for example, “oh are you talking about prisoners dilemma?” or “you’re basically describing nihilism” or “well, that person likely disagreed with you because you are using different definitions of the same word/concept” and they’ll look at me with an expression of ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care.’ I’d be so happy to explain things or recommend what to research to engage with topics they’re clearly passionate about, but it’s sad to see the curiosity end so soon when so many people have collectively devoted lifetimes on expanding the ideas they think they just invented.
So I won’t comment on what makes someone intelligent (because you’ll never find me calling the people I described unintelligent), but if you want to improve your own, I emphatically agree on reading literature, even fantasy like Tolkien, whatever you enjoy.