Essay: Why is Intelligence So Offensive?

I recently un-subscribed from the popular subreddit, r/iamverysmart. For the uninitiated, this subreddit specializes in posting the comments, social media posts, and other online musings of those who have a rather exalted idea of their intelligence. The subjects of ridicule are often working to impress others, especially teachers and classmates, with their cranial abilities and pursuits.

However, while this isn’t remarkable on it’s own, what I found interesting was that people enjoy, on a daily basis, making fun of those who are using their academic or natural intelligence for social currency. That lead me to a question, Why is it, that when people display or talk about their own intelligence, people are offended and consider that person to be an arrogant asshole, while if someone displays talent through athletic ability or even artistic ability, they are more accepted?

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I don’t think you could find any one who would tell a football team to play poorly or a runner to run more slowly because their ability to win a  football game or win a track meet somehow made them an asshole or arrogant.
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It’s a funny idea, almost absurd, in a way. But when someone posts online about something they have learned or that their intelligence precludes them from understanding certain things and people, that makes them a bad person and they should either not say anything, pretend to understand or simply conform. And I think that is what is at stake here: group conformity. When everyone in a group performs about average, that can be reassuring to people. If someone of greater intelligence or ability enters the group that can be intimidating as it plays into people’s unrealized insecurity in their own abilities. While unfair, this is simply the case within group dynamics.

You Must Conform

Group conformity has its place. Civilization is a giant testament to humanities ability to form a group and work together for the common good or at least for the good of the tribe, family and clan. To make the human group effective, there are certain rules you have to abide by. These rules form a foundation of group conformity, success is achieved when the group conforms to the rules, followed them, and reaches its goal as a result. It takes a good group of hunters to kill the proverbial wooly mammoth. Without being able to work as a team, you can’t take on large prey. Extend that forward to modern civilization and it becomes clear that average mediocrity is what keeps the world going.

The reason this phenomena interests me is because as I read the posts of the poor victims of “Iaverysmart” ridicule, I identified often-times with the people being ridiculed. While everyone else was making fun of them, I was agreeing with the people being made fun of in the first place. This left me with a very interesting feeling. Was I one of these poor souls gating pilloried online?

Like many people who get thousands of comments written about their social density, my issues with my self, talking about my brain, and others started as a child. It didn’t get much better until I was in college and I was in a sufficient environment where people seemed to enjoy and appreciate intelligence. I also learned to show my abilities rather than merely talking about them. However, I have found that people just dont like someone who is over-smart. Trying to fit in with people I would do my best not to stand out. However, despite my efforts it would usually pop out like a dirty secret. I would use a multi-syllabic word or quote a fact and it would become obvious that I was different. Perhaps not really more than a bit above average but different none the less.

What was I to do? Being smart is a rather important part of my personality, not in a way to make people feel bad but I’m simply an educated person who has spent time studying a variety of subjects. It’s my hobby, it’s my thing, but why does my thing have to be the subject of an entire online community who takes pleasure in tearing it down? Everyone has certain abilities and talents. Like Tyrion Lannister, knowing things is just part of being me. All sorts of people have taken the time to be well-read and increase their intelligence (like reading my book list!). Why is this something worth ridicule? In our age of ever-plummeting averages, aren’t people who actually take time to improve themselves something or worth or note?

This phenomena is something I think is unique to American culture. We just don’t take education seriously. While countries like Japan and South Korea invest heavily in their children through education, we celebrate sports achievement and we celebrate feats of physicality but we don’t celebrate the winner of the spelling bee with the same fervor. I think it says something really profound about our priorities. What could we change in this country if we actually took education seriously? How many great inventions, breakthroughs, and other wonderful things are locked up in the minds of people who don’t even know that they can achieve something revolutionary because they are strained through out lackluster US education system?

Right now I’m working on a new essay on education to completely an essay collection that I’m calling, “What the Fuck is Going On?” I’m ready to get to the bottom of why we can’t seem to get education right in America.