From "Being Smart and Knowing Stuff" to Multiple Intelligences Crystallized and Fluid, to Human Rights and Sustainability

In response to the question, "What is the difference between being smart and knowing stuff?" Pegg Coo Daen 'Knowing stuff' doesn't necessarily make one smart in regards to the 'big picture.' Also, being smart doesn't necessarily mean you know anything important. I believe there is a difference between using one's physical brain with its IQ (which dies when one's physical body dies) and using one's Higher Intuitive Mind to develop one's consciousness and which lives on into eternity. 2 · Reply · Share · 17h Mark Rego Monteiro Those are pretty informal terms if you´re trying to understand things. Is someone "smart"? Do they "know stuff"? The basic idea in high school was book knowledge and memorizing, vs. street smart about the way the world works and how to get something done. Einstein had a philosophical mind and is known as a symbol of high intelligence, yet, he got some math wrong at one point that a math guy in Italy noticed. Einstein took the guy´s advice and learned his math a little better. Meanwhile, Einstein´s son Eduard was diagnosed with schizophrenia around age 20 around 1930. In 1933, a famous psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich MD wrote a book with his treatment and cure of a schizophrenic. Why didn´t Einstein hear about that? So basically, psychology has two key ideas first noted by R Cattell, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is about problem-solving strategies. Crystallized intelligence is about acquired learning, knowledge, and skills. From a different angle, a guy named Howard Gardner has had an idea called, "multiple intelligences." In a spiritual sense, Jesus taught, "go and learn...." Matt 9. And in the end, the University-based system has made "being smart" and "knowing stuff" a modern way of talking. And I would share that I was fascinated to learn that it all reflects key aspects of Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity, but that´s been widely neglected. 1 · Reply · Share · 15h · Edited A G Smit This may seem a simple query on the surface but as Peggy and Mark have already suggested there is more that can be unpacked when you start to consider what being 'smart' means and 'knowing stuff' implies. Whilst being 'smart' could (as Mark noted) relate to 'street smarts' -- having that intuitive, edgy insight to manipulating the world around you to your advantage -- implying that you might be cunning, crafty and clever ...You may not know much, but you know how to 'get what you want'... It is perhaps not so much of an extrapolation to suggest that sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists and others who have been convinced by the MSM and social media, marketing, celebrity culture, tik tok and memes that 'they are worth it'... and can 'take what they want, when they want it' (a simplified reference to what I understand is the root of basic 'Satanist' philosophy. But 'smart' can also relate to that old fashioned meaning of being 'intelligent'... someone who by dint of their ability to learn and 'know stuff' and then assimilate, integrate, synthesize and combine what they know can create a more insightful, holistic and advanced way of understanding what is going on around them... This kind of ability to 'know stuff' and put it to good use in a constructive and intelligent way was the kind of performance we would look for when trying to assessing students for grading their degrees --back-in-the-day when I was teaching. But It seems clear that there are many people around who appear to 'know' plenty of 'stuff' -- a matter of memory and ability to regurgitate... yet their inherent intelligence may not necessarily be so evident... Frequently, back in the hallowed Ivory Towers or Academe I would meet people who 'knew a lot of stuff' (about a certain aspect of a particular discipline) and were, hence, respected experts with titles such as Doctor or even Professor... YET they did not always seem particularly 'intelligent' people outside of the narrow band of expertise that had chosen to focus on... By comparison there are those who have never received what is considered systemic or traditional education, yet who have absorbed knowledge about things from the world they live in (perhaps under the tutelage of an existing 'Master') who are also empathetic, intuitive and 'emotionally intelligent' individuals who exude a natural and impressive aura of 'wisdom'... These could be, for example, be the Shaman or medicine man/woman of ancient cultures. In the west we tend to take a rather simplistic, empirical approach to determine how much people 'know', and whether they can demonstrate that 'knowledge' in (arguably) questionable and limited forms of assessment in order to be deemed 'smart enough' to be awarded a degree!... In the counter-culture people are also 'respected' if they are the 'street wise' kind of 'get what you want' kind of person, too... BUT what we have seemingly neglected is that above having absorbed a lot of stuff (let's call it knowledge) and beyond any demonstration that we are 'smart' (let's call it 'intelligent') the aspect of human potential that determines whether that knowledge and intelligence is put to good use is 'wisdom'... and THAT (imho) is what is frequently undervalued or goes unrecognized because it is less easy to evaluate... even those more traditional native culture inherently respect such individuals. So, I feel there is evidently a difference between 'knowing stuff' (a disparate collection of memorized 'general knowledge' and other facts, figures, dates and quotes that might make you a 'Pub Quiz' king, or a winner of Mastermind, or 'The Chase' - UK TV references!)... And being 'Smart' -- in terms of having 'intelligence' derived from gathering, absorbing, assimilating and connecting the dots between disparate elements of knowledge... OR being bereft of much 'knowledge' but 'Smart' in the sense of having innate survival skills in the urban Jungle! But moreover there is the difference between any of these and being 'Wise'... yet 'wisdom' is the aspect of breadth of knowledge, coherent assimilation and syntheses of that knowledge into cerebral intelligence... and the 'emotional intelligence' to have insight, intuition and instincts that allow you to perceive how everything is connected... I used to wonder why the 'Genesis myth' of the Garden of Eden involved a loving God forbidding Humans to eat from the tree of Knowledge... which would have seemed as if God's intent was to keep humans as some kind of dumbed-down, pet creations, not far different from other animalia... But it seems clear to me now that God in His Wisdom... understood that unless Man became 'wise' himself, then all the knowledge in the world would ultimately do him no good... We chose the 'harder route' -- and have consistently revealed more knowledge about this universe, but often without sufficient understanding and certainly employed that knowledge without sufficient wisdom... and we have to keep slowly learning the hard way, for example, that our incessant arrogance in believing we can defy, tame or control Nature... is folly and that our task is to employ our Wisdom, along with our acquired knowledge and potential intelligence, in 'working with Nature' and accepting our part in the whole... Until that time whether we are actually 'smart' or just 'know stuff' will mean very little! (P.S. Apologies to Pastor Bruce for my failing to be more succinct & concise 😃 ) 3 · Reply · Share · 5h · Edited 1 · Reply · Share · 4h Mark Rego Monteiro A G Smit Nice extension of the topic. Indeed, Genesis´ Garden of Eden is an interesting subject. One insight I´ve been pushed to since running into the anti-theists and caring is that what has been called a liberal arts education has no standard respected reference. If you´re a scientist, that´s big, and conveys knowledge and intelligence. That´s the foundation of the rank fallacies that the late Hitchens, Dawkins, and others have pushed. They seem "smart" and "knowledgable," but are a treacherous combination of squares pretending to fit into round holes, so to speak. They have been and are using their social status from one area to substitute for legitimate literacy in the necessary and relevant one. Fritjof Capra is different, however, and deserves mention as a physicist and Systems Theorist, whose Tao of Physics involved a survey of religions in comparison with Quantum Physics. He followed it up with a scholarly search of alternative viewpoints, including EF Schumacher´s proto-ecological social economics and O Carl Simonton MD´s psychosomatic healing that became transpersonal. The term that simply seems to fit comes from fairly common terms multidisciplinary studies, empiricism, and the pre-1850s original academic terms of natural and moral philosophy. Liberal arts formally recognized with the social sciences and sciences becomes "multidisciplinary empirical philosophy." That helps focus on the University-based components that lead back to their living and ongoing heritage in Jesus, despite various parts having been artificially, but tangibly dissociated in what people call secular and mechanical. Thus, looking at the OT´s Garden of Eden, you raise the question of the meaning of knowledge, which is specifically the moral knowledge of good and evil. With modern education, we can correlate the issue with the issues that are observed already in chimps, who kill neighboring chimps without provocation. The bio-psychological reasoning is that there are resource and reproductive advantages for tool-using and social animals. Humans began to mediate those familar impulses of violence by developing the likes of cultural gift-exchange and incest and patricide taboos that Freud found in the anthropological literature already in his time. Moses´ top 10 Commandments led to Elijah´s social justice prophetic experience for Moses and God, and with Jesus´ legacy to University-based society, developed to converge with Christian use of ancient Greek philosophy. Jesus taught, "seek first the Kingdom of Heaven," and "clean the cup on the inside where there is wickedness...." The philosophical debate is often about free will, but doesn´t seem to usually be informed about people´s growing and learning to demonstrate the ability to recognize their choices and options, and then the consequences or risks of those choices. Christianity´s own major advances include Paul´s and Peter´s spiritual experiences and choice to shift to the Gentiles, for example, and includes the recognition of learning as in Paul´s "Test all things..." and Peter´s "add to goodness, knowledge...." As Al GS pointed out about knowledge and sufficient wisdom, we might specify how University-based education has spawned some fast-growing influences in science, democratic forms, and corporate executive business, all in Jesus´ legacy to one degree or another of integrity or hypocrisy. It has been, however, social movements that embody the action that reflects levels of knowledge, as in the difference between the writing and speaking of figures like Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Day, Fannie Lou Hamer, Gloria Steinem, and Ralph Nader, and organizing that they did. They then reflect the historical resurgence of Jesus´ loving integrity in the Apostles´ legacy to Anthony of the Desert, Father of Christian monks, to the famous Francis of Assisi, to George Fox and Marg Fell, whose Quaker Friends´ integrity sustained by silent worship were sought out by a young college grad. Their legacy beyond Chomsky and Nader lives in Greenpeace, Oxfam, green co-op stores and enterprise and so on. Indeed as Al GS begin to indicate, knowing stuff and being smart, book knowledge and street smarts, education in theory and in problem-solving ability, fluid and crystallized intelligence need to mean more since the Enlightenment has lead us to the very concepts of FDR´s and Eleanor´s UN human rights and even more recently, sustainability. You can´t know stuff or be smart exploited to your soul or on a dead planet, after all. And while Peggy CD envisions the transcendental connection, it´s little comfort to perceive how the influence of the rich has alienated so many in the US and elsewhere from the action of Jesus´ heritage and legacy of loving integrity and social justice action from before Francis of Assisi to George Fox to the UN to Greenpeace and Oxfam. The transcendental gets reconnected and reawakened at new levels in Jesus´ legacy in links like Equal Exchange organic and Fair Trade foods Interfaith Network, where we see the fulfillment in action of "knowing stuff" and "being smart." I don´t like to apologize for the length of my piece done in earnest. Since people do complain at times, I´m sorry that we´re in such a state that people might feel put out, while I feel justified in expressing myself at such length. Congratulations if you can keep up! Thanks to Barbara for the post, to you for your comment, to Bruce for his concern.