smarts and intelligence and wisdom oh my! as defined by the good book, "wisdom describes a character's willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition, whereas intelligence represents the ability to analyze information." in addition, intelligence also determines how well your character learns and reasons. and then there's smarts. where does that fit in? for me, i always thought that someone smart was someone intelligent. but a new definition of smart that i like was put forth by victor: smart people get what they want. but more on smart people later.



intelligence is pretty easy to identify and measure. school is all about intelligence. you get tested on how well you can cram things into your brain in an orderly fashion. but where does wisdom come from? experience? good genes? innate maturity? funny how wisdom equates to maturity, which is pretty right i suppose. i guess you can acquire wisdom, in the same way that you can become street smart. but at a deeper level, i feel like you either have wisdom or you don't. and so, it seems like intelligence and wisdom are both really god-given talents. you can improve on them and refine them, but some people just have more to start out with. i think someone smart has to have both intelligence and wisdom. some very intelligent people are just plain dumb. and some very wise people are straight stupid. so to be smart, you have to be able to combine those two things in a way to achieve what you want. be it happiness, a new toy, whatever.



the dictionary says that smart and intelligent are synonyms and that's very true. we tend to use them interchangeably. we know lots of intelligent people obviously. you can look around and loads and loads of people are extraordinarily intelligent. how many of them are wise though? is that something we can't achieve yet because we're all so young? the dictionary defines wisdom as, "the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight. common sense. good judgement." people can do that at any age though. what is interesting to me is how some people seem to never gain wisdom at all. they don't make flash cards for common sense. although that seems like it would be a valuable product. common sense crash courses with practice tests on saturdays.



do you think it's conceited to believe that nobody is smarter than you? more intelligent for sure. wise, probably. but overall smarter. is that just wrong? to assume that you are as smart as everyone you know? not smart-er. as smart. then again, taking the definition set forth before--where smart equates to getting what you want--it suddenly alters who is smart and who is not. one common sense thing that i realize but try not to think about too much: regardless of how smart, intelligent or wise you are, you get nowhere without hard work. this point seems obvious. except to the twenty four year old undergrad. there will always be people smarter than you. there will always be people more intelligent than you. there is always some common sense sneaking in the back door. the only way to truly differentiate yourself and become a "success" is through hard work. one example of a dumb person is one who tries to find ways around this hard work rule. they occupy themselves by using all their mental might to go around the mountain. only realizing later that climbing it would have been much faster.



nobody wins without hard work. well, except maybe anna nicole smith. but she has giant breasts. i don't. i've decided that while smart is nice, it's vastly overrated. it'll get you some round about respect, but in the end, it's like a big diamond that just sits there, gleaming away, totally useless except for aesthetic purposes. i'd rather be "healthy, wealthy and wise." like b franklin said. so all you people who are more intelligent than me, doing your intelligent thingies.....spread the wealth man.