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 'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict
Too Smart By Half
What do we mean when we say that someone is ‘smart’? My idea is someone with a high IQ, or who is dexterous with words, like a lawyer, a politician or perhaps a talented estate agent.
When I was at school there were two boys in my class who were light years ahead of the rest of us in our grades. One of them was the type you would expect to be ‘smart’. He was intensely keen to learn and whatever the attraction was (mystifying to the rest of us) he applied his energies wholeheartedly to that cause. What must have been truly upsetting to him was that his smart compatriot looked outwardly more like the village idiot; a big, slow spoken, shambolic boy in ill-fitting clothes, with bulging jacket pockets so full of stuff that he could never find what he was looking for. He had no more interest in learning than the rest of us, but one glance at the pages of a textbook and he would know its contents, not having memorised it as say a speed-reader, but actually having understood the ideas it contained. On the other hand, he was one of the least well-equipped people to deal with everyday life that I have ever met.
Today, people talk of a person’s qualifications and of their capacity to deal with a given workload. The terrible thing is that all too often these well qualified, high work-load people are placed in a position of authority, when in reality the very quality that makes them such strong performers stops them from seeing beyond the detail.
I recently reviewed a book written by an autistic lady who has become an authority on the handling of livestock. She is regarded as an authority, simply because her techniques have worked, her message being that the key to good administration is simplicity, which is why half the meatpacking plants in North America use her ten-point welfare audit, rather than a one hundred point paper audit system. She tellingly says, ‘They also do better on the smaller details because the smaller details are part of the big ones.’
We have often seen ‘smart’ lawyers become politicians. They are good with words and understand how laws are structured, so it is easy to see why this works. But once they are in office they get to spend our money, and you have to ask what business experience does such a person have? To me, this does not seem to be ‘smart’ at all.
We confuse ‘smart’ with someone who has a handle on reality, who clearly sees the dynamics of the situation, which just does not follow. This has been rubber stamped by the educational system and by smart people themselves. I suppose that it is simply the way of the world, but it is a pity when there are those we never hear from who actually do have a handle on this or that, but aren’t what you would call ‘smart’ at all.
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