I was thinking a bit this morning as I was having my shower. I like to do some early thinking in the shower, in the water... in the mist. There’s a womb-like wisdom there, as the gentle warmth clears away the fog that the night’s dreamings may have left; perhaps I am still half-enchanted. Anyway, I was thinking about intelligence: my own, that of my species... and I realized with a bit of chagrin that I didn’t have a lot of faith in either: mine nor that of my species. I realized that I wasn’t so much an »intelligent animal as I was a representational one. An animal fascinated by models, projections... literally re-presentations. The dead remains of once-living senses, experiences, beings and wonder. This really kind of bothered me, because I place a lot of value on either being intelligent, or ‘working’ (basically paying close attention with interest) to get more intelligent. And I realized that, overall, I am not as great at that game as I like to suppose, and that some of my motivation for it is due to insecurities, rather than raw excellence as I might prefer to imagine. This, strangely enough, becomes ironic... because this was beginning to seem at once a little more playful and... you guessed it... more intelligent. Yet I knew I had discovered something important just by realizing that our kind of animal is not necessarily the intelligent animal; we really are deeply representational, and this seems to tie in with what a friend later pointed out: that we are animals with a deep need to play—games and roles. Gaining some insight into these matters takes time and care, but having a good starting place makes a vast difference in how far you can travel. Recognizing that we are not so much intelligent as we are model-makers is an interesting correction. Over time, I think I will be able to make more use of it than ‘we are potentially intelligent idiots’ which was a bit closer to my previous formulation...
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 02:07:55 +0000
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