A Matter of Intelligence

First, a disclaimer: you can tell this issue matters to me because I’ve managed to get myself sufficiently interested to blog about it by remembering an episode of House that aired way back in November (“Ignorance is Bliss”, to be precise). On the other hand, I did just have a cup of coffee for the first time this year, and I’m this close to spending the rest of the day beating the remaining levels I need in order to get the Golden Sunflower Trophy in Plants vs. Zombies. So take this as you will.

There’s a recurring theme in popular media that I find insultingly simple: that you can’t be both intelligent and happy. (It’s also closely related to, but not entirely identical with, the theme that you can’t be both intelligent and nice. But I’ll get to that a little later.)

This usually manifests itself in a character who is smart but unhappy, supposedly because of his* intelligence (like House) or a character whose intelligence changes over the course of the story, but who is unhappy when he’s smart and happy when he’s dumb (like House’s patient in the aforementioned episode).

One great work that explores this theme is Daniel Keyes’s classic short story, “Flowers for Algernon”. The story is told in the form of the journal of a mentally challenged janitor who’s been enrolled in an experimental intellect-increasing study. When the story starts out, he’s not very bright, so the cruelty of his smarter coworkers goes over his head. As the plot progresses, he becomes aware not only aware of the nastiness of the actions of the people around him, but also of his probable fate: his genius will wear off, taking away all his newfound pleasure at amassing knowledge and understanding the world. When he’s smart, he’s concerned about his own future; by the end of the story, once his intelligence has worn off, he can no longer angst over his situation because he can no longer understand it. His biggest goal is to put flowers of the grave of Algernon, the lab mouse that died after undergoing the same procedure he did.

I’m going into so much detail about this story because I think it’s a good example of how this theme can be tackled with depth and sensitivity. Keyes isn’t necessarily implying that intelligence makes people unhappy or selfish on its own. He’s not suggesting that the janitor, Charlie, is better off stupid; Charlie still isn’t happy when his intelligence returns to its original level. Keyes is making a more complex social commentary on the way people treat others who are less intelligent than they are, and on how perceived intelligence and the lack thereof both make people uncomfortable. The plot is not so much about how Charlie’s changes in intelligence affect him but about how they make the people around him behave.

On the other hand, stories like “Ignorance is Bliss” deal with this theme in a way I can’t get behind. Intelligence, they suggest, makes geniuses unhappy because it ruins their social lives. Since most “normal” people are pretty dumb, this version of the plot seems to propose,  really smart people can’t relate to anyone.

To be fair, this idea appeals in part because there’s a grain of truth in it. We’ve all known (or maybe been) people who are book-smart but can’t quite navigate ordinary social situations, and many of us have met or heard stories of people diagnosed with autism-spectrum conditions who are brilliant at difficult intellectual tasks but have trouble interacting with others. It seems like the existence of these sorts of people meshes with the idea that being smart makes you unable to relate to others.

Also, of course, there are times when it works the other way around: sometimes people feel nervous or jealous around someone they perceive to be really smart (especially if there’s another issue tangled up in the dynamic, like gender or racial politics), and that makes them not inclined to be sociable toward him or her. The jealousy part points to one reason why this fictional trope may be popular: if a character’s going to be super-smart and super-suave, the audience veers closer to resenting rather than sympathizing with him or her. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus for us, thanks!

Finally, sure, there are times when each of us has been unable to have a good discussion on something we really want to talk about simply because the other person doesn’t understand what we’re saying. I’m fascinated by transfinite cardinals; I don’t expect people who haven’t studied math or related subjects to be familiar with the ideas. Small children are fun to hang out with, but after a while, an adult, teenager, or older child needs to talk to someone who has a deeper understanding of more mature issues than “Doggy and pony want to play together”.

But the careful way in which I’ve phrased the above gives away my problem with the simple idea of intelligence leading to social alienation: everybody feels that way sometimes. We all have different experiences and interests, and it can be difficult to find others who share and interpret those experiences or interests on the same level we do. But most of us still manage to communicate and enjoy the time we spend with others. To blame social dysfunction on intelligence without suggesting that the problem could be mediated at least in part by effort is, well, pardon my language, arrogant bullshit.

So you’re a superstar genius who’s the guest-start character on House this week, and you’re sad because your wife is average and can’t understand you as you really are. Has it occurred to you that maybe you don’t understand her as she really is, either? After all, your very complaint shows that you don’t respect the things she’s interested in, though they obviously have meaning for her. Maybe she’s just as unhappy as you are. Maybe, instead of taking the lazy way out and deciding that your problem is that you’re too smart for everyone, you could try deciding your problem is that you’re too conceited to make an effort to connect with people whose intelligence you consider to be below yours.

This is where we start to get into the twin theme of the conflict between being smart and being nice. What it boils down to is the suggestion that acting morally or socially is irrational: there’s no good reason for, say, thanking someone for holding the door for you – or, for that matter, holding the door for someone. Smart people see how they can get ahead with less effort by ignoring the ethical or interpersonal intuitions most of us share but fail to question.

Again, there’s a grain of truth here: it may very well be that intelligent people are more stimulated to question the rules around them. And debates over whether morality is (or should be) rational have been around for centuries. However, I take issue with the automatic assumption that it’s irrational to behave “nicely”. Why shouldn’t it be the case, as Mr. Dowd says, that it is ultimately more beneficial to be pleasant? One can’t get away from value judgments based on arbitrary principles; choosing logical intuitions over ethical intuitions is still a choice between intuitions. To paraphrase David Hume horrendously out of context, no one can derive an “ought” from an “is”; values cannot be derived from facts – at least, not if you’re operating within the bounds of accepted logic.

So why should it be such a horrible, un-intellectual thing to make compromises? To listen to other people and try to see their point of view even if they couldn’t design the Large Hadron Collider, or to try to explain your own high-falutin’ ideas in language they understand? Sure, there’s a case to be made that you may wind up misrepresenting ideas that are important to you, and, okay, maybe you won’t be able to talk to everyone about everything, but this idea that the only “real” relationships are ones based on never ever compromising and forming ties only with people who always act exactly the way you want without you having to do anything? Well, to each his or her own, but that sounds like a fantasy to me – one that I’m surprised otherwise intelligent writers keep having their otherwise intelligent characters fall for in a non-ironic way.

As if the arrogance alone weren’t bad enough, the whole thematic mess is tied to ugly tropes that have been around for centuries: the Noble Savage, who may not be as sophisticated as Superior White People, but whose natural state of ignorance brings him closer to true goodness of spirit (*cough*Avatar*cough*). The Good Woman, whose childlike intellect is paired with an affinity for emotional and moral truths. This is especially worrying when so many Smart!Mean!Unhappy characters are white men, and so often the character used to illustrate their unhappiness is a female romantic interest or a “simple” peasant-type character who is far more often depicted as a person of colour than Mr. Smart!Mean!Unhappy.

So, take your pick: there are many reasons why I’m uncomfortable with “IF smart THEN mean AND unhappy”, but most of them have to do with the way in which this theme, poorly handled, becomes “let’s all feel sorry for intelligent, privileged people, because their lives are SUCH TRAGEDIES, and there’s NOTHING they can do about it, never, because the world just HATES intelligence, and it’s not like everyone else EVER has to TRY to be happy or sociable”. In other words… yeah, I may have just spend 1600 words saying what one webcomic [warning: f-bomb in alt-text] can do in six panels**.

* Usually “his”. I’ll get to that, too.
** And alt text.