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Excellent, brutal essay. You nail the essence of the service economy. Makes me think that the ennui I feel comes from knowing that at work I’ve hyper-developed my cleverness and let my intelligence atrophy. Great stuff

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My go-to is Aristotle's distinction between the merely clever and the wise in the Nicomachean Ethics.

The clever can do all sorts of intelligent things if one only looks at the surface relation of means to ends.

It takes a wise person to know which things are worth doing and worth wanting.

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Such a stellar essay! It reminded me of just this past Friday when I (pedestrian) got into an altercation with a driver who exited the car to confront me. Past me would have acted clever and sharp tongued just to get the "win," but this version of me - while still pretty hot in fury - managed to apply reasonableness and end it on a line of "well, let's both do better next time." That felt like the intelligence you discussed.

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Really enjoyed this Tom. I am finding that due to the pretty substantial output in the STSC nowadays, as well as numerous articles to enjoy on their own merits, there are at least two or three articles a week that really get me thinking more on the themes that are already swimming around in the back of my mind.

As someone who was smart, clever and intelligent at school it took me getting expelled and a few years after to really reflect on the differences myself, previously having thought that they were synonyms explaining why I found getting an A in almost any subject easy.

Obviously as a radical educator I like how you note the school system selects for this, as this was my belated conclusion as I realised I was not as special as I previously thought, which I think gets at the problem that you are getting at: if I hadn't been expelled I think I would have continued thinking I was special in some way.

I've been pondering this a lot in my work and I wonder if there are additional aspects to cultivating wisdom that the school system also gets in the way of: interpersonal relationships and common sense. After initially concluding that I was not special and therefore not intelligent I quickly realised that that was a strawman, everyone is intelligent in different ways and that what school does is takes and selects for a narrow definition of intelligence; broadly speaking being clever is having the intelligence that thrives within schooling. But being told at school that you are clever, and by implication others are not, affects how you view those others and affects your interpersonal relations/understanding, you imbue that hierarchy within by osmosis over the years and the danger is that is that you think of yourself as smart - as you note this is slightly different to clever and more a surface thing. That surface level understanding lacks the self-awareness to see clever for what it is: a narrow definition of intelligence elevated by society. Those that are the most clever run the risk of becoming the most smart, of being elevated too far by society so that that self-awareness becomes even harder to grasp at, which is where I feel politicians are at right now.

I would say a working class dropout who realises thier skills lie in their hands and goes on to be a carpenter building and renovating oak beam houses has realised where their intelligence lies. Intelligence is domain specific and mastery of your specific domain teaches you that you are inherently highly competent but also the limitations of your competence, you are only competent within that domain. Proper exploration of your intelligence should teach you these two conflicting yet complementary skills: competence and humility. I think school teaches clever/smart people they are competent without any humility. A dropout notices that limitation easily, someone who has had smoke blown up their ass throughout the whole of their schooling is going to find it hard.

The humble are going to be willing to listen to the views of others, but the internalised hierarchy of the schooling system makes it doubly hard for the smart to relate to others they see below/beneath them. Furthermore, I think the false impression that school and it's hierarchy gives is reductionist, that the world is simple for smart people to master, and hides the messy complexity of the real world, and this I would argue is where common sense comes in, this reductionist outlook tampers with common sense, which school has no interest in cultivating anyway, and creates IYIs.

I think education should be about allowing people to explore where their gifts lie, encouraging them that they are intelligent in their own way and strive to help them gain competency, whilst reflecting on their limitations, not as a negative thing, but a facet of being human. I think that knowing you are competent but that others are in different ways and that you need to relate to them because the world is messy is the start to getting anywhere near the path to wisdom.

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Superb essay, welcome distinction between all three.

However Tom, I have a problem: almost everyone would rate themselves as intelligent if asked to place themselves in a category. Yet, I believe we sneer at genuine intelligence when we see it. What can one do to be both honest with himself and welcome the truly intelligent?

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This essay is why I upgraded to paid. I’ve gotten in trouble my entire life for questioning word usage and been praised(I almost said lauded) for my precise language. My children know that words have meaning and have become expert speakers and writers.

Downside is that I feel a bit disrespected when my husband can’t be bothered to pay attention to his word choice and just reaches into his bag of big words to grab one and throw it down as if I accept his vaguely implied meaning.

Now I’ve shown my overly critical side. I bet you get me.

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Agree with your points, it's exacerbated by social media and overuse of headers and headlines. Shrinking attention spans make it worse.

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Very interesting, except that I don't actually agree with your footnote #2, that there are lots of synonyms in English. I tend towards the view, put forward by the writer Richard Nilsen that there are no synonyms at all -- see https://terryfreedman.substack.com/p/mind-your-language :-)

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Very thoughtful and true. I wish also more lawyers would be less clever and more intelligent. Our job is to work with abstract words and define them.

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deletedSep 9, 2022Liked by Thomas J Bevan
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