"Intelligence is not personal, is not the outcome of argument, belief, opinion, or reason. Intelligence comes into being when the brain discovers its fallibility, when it discovers what it is capable of and what it is not."
There's a lot to be said about this. Intelligence – which is mostly viewed as the amount of "stuff you know" – has a new parameter to consider: fallibility.
Fallibility is the liability to err. For a brain to realize its fallibility is for it to accept that it may have been wrong about some of the beliefs it once held. Even that is not enough. Once the wrong beliefs are sorted, they must be discarded, no matter how valuable they once were.
The recognition of fallibility is a huge and difficult step. It is akin to winning a war and then looking at the destruction and havoc you have wrought to get where you are. It is the realization of how awful you must have been to those around you back when you had not been aware of your fallibility.
To be sure: being incognizant of one's fallibility is seldom a crime. And recognizing fallibility does not lead to freedom from fallibility.
The truly "intelligent" thing about realizing fallibility is the weight it puts on your shoulders, so that you are constantly aware of it. It is a far cry from freedom from fallibility, but paradoxically, the two have a lot in common.
With this constant weight on your shoulders, you develop the habit of approaching the world with questions instead of answers, with an open mind embracing all the possibilities which are obscured to a closed mind. In a way, it is a necessary step in reducing conflict and putting your ego aside. You get a new perspective on the world, and the "stuff you know" increases. It then follows that intelligence also increases. That's always a good thing.
There's a lot to be said about this. Intelligence – which is mostly viewed as the amount of "stuff you know" – has a new parameter to consider: fallibility.
Fallibility is the liability to err. For a brain to realize its fallibility is for it to accept that it may have been wrong about some of the beliefs it once held. Even that is not enough. Once the wrong beliefs are sorted, they must be discarded, no matter how valuable they once were.
The recognition of fallibility is a huge and difficult step. It is akin to winning a war and then looking at the destruction and havoc you have wrought to get where you are. It is the realization of how awful you must have been to those around you back when you had not been aware of your fallibility.
To be sure: being incognizant of one's fallibility is seldom a crime. And recognizing fallibility does not lead to freedom from fallibility.
The truly "intelligent" thing about realizing fallibility is the weight it puts on your shoulders, so that you are constantly aware of it. It is a far cry from freedom from fallibility, but paradoxically, the two have a lot in common.
With this constant weight on your shoulders, you develop the habit of approaching the world with questions instead of answers, with an open mind embracing all the possibilities which are obscured to a closed mind. In a way, it is a necessary step in reducing conflict and putting your ego aside. You get a new perspective on the world, and the "stuff you know" increases. It then follows that intelligence also increases. That's always a good thing.
