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I started thinking about who I knew that was the most intelligent. Which of course, my mind went straight to all the amazing scholars I know, but then I asked myself, would they be able to make 300 food hampers appear out of thin air like some of the amazing community organizers
And then I wondered, who could create a whole assed novel out or their mind, or paint a beautiful picture? Who could multitask like a demon at work and home and volunteer? Who could make sense of all the data? Who can walk into a room and pick up on a mood?
Is it someone who can save a life and understand the millions of processes a body needs to stay alive, and how about the person who knows the millions of processes to keep a hospital sterile.
What about the person has a lifetime of knowledge and experience in the bush but no high school diploma? Maybe its someone who always asks the right questions, or can listen to someone for days and find the recurring theme to help bring peace.
Maybe its someone who has learned to survive this Hunger Games of a system, or the person who has managed to work around it, hats off to the person who has managed to scam it. That's thousands of people and policies they've out witted!
Hell, maybe its this dog who has learned the language and patterns of another species and still manages to outsmart the collective efforts of 5 humans trying to keep their socks away from him.
I've missed so much, but that kind of is my point. Who or what we find intelligent is based on what we value and reflective of our experiences and worldviews. Conventionally what we've been told is scientific or academic or logical has been defined by old white men...
...what we know as academia, literature, science and math has largely been determined by what they see is valuable. Money, "progress" "results" conquering...these values have lead to an unjust & unkind world. Its not a lens I want to participate in using, sometimes I'm forced
So the next time I am asked to determine what I see as smart or successful or driven, I will try hard to remember all the lenses ignored by the dominant voices and use that to influence my thinking around this.
