Intelligence is a Curse
I am not joking. This may seem a snobbish little rant but it must be said. Intelligence is truly the bane of one’s life, especially when you can see through the garbage when most cannot.
I have, as an individual, always prided myself on my above average intelligence (no I have not measured it officially but pfft I definitely am). It is the one thing I would love to be remembered for – to hell with looks, tits and ass – intelligence trumps them all. Or so I thought until I realised what a true burden it is to be intelligent.
It’s not even the part where you are expected to spend your time trying to hone those intelligence enhancing skills – like playing chess and bridge for strategy and learning music and languages for brain development. No, it’s not that. It’s when you deal – daily – with the average Sriyani and Sarath that you realise how painful it is to be intelligent, how much you can see the bigger picture, how you can almost prophesise what will happen, and they don’t. They live in deluded bliss and look at you like you’re some slug when you dare tell them what you can see will happen. They never listen of course and they don’t seem to care for the repercussions either. And they continue viewing the world through their rose tinted glasses, assuming that holding hands and singing Kumbaya will bring world peace, that Santa Claus and Sugar Daddies and Mommies come from the same place and that doing things as they have been done for centuries is the way to go. Woe betide you ever break that delusion because to be that ignorant needs a special kind of jam. And you don’t have it.
Another group is the so called intelligentsia who allow ego to supersede all. I was recently reminded of this when a friend mentioned how – a resolution I had brought in for an association 2 years previously was famously shot down by the so called senior pundits of the brood – would have been beneficial had it been passed. The pundits’ argument was that the President is accountable and knows what they are doing. The resolution was to do with guidelines for the roles of the people in the ExCo. Not even a year later, the President of the association was subverting the constitution, playing pucks and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. Where are those deluded fools of yore who argued against reason? Nowhere in sight now – no accountability. Only a big mouth instigated by a bigger ego. The country is no different to this scenario.
On another occasion I listened to a bunch of old men who are directors of companies, rant against controls, systems and accountability because they apparently “know” that they must follow good agricultural practices so why do we need controls? I wanted to ask – then why do we need laws? After all, we know we must live by the law right? Another old dog literally said, ‘we have been doing this for a 100 years, so why change?’ Sha. What an argument. Must ask him, 100 years ago what his ancestors were doing – whether they were ploughing fields and riding thirikkaleys and if he would like to continue to do so.
Every day I hear more and more horror stories of how companies are run, how people take decisions and how dysfunctional systems thrive in the midst of chaos. It’s truly remarkable that anything gets done.
Scar’s famous line in Lion King is truly apt – “I am surrounded by idiots”. And so I have decided that I will now selectively use my intelligence and not waste it on the mundane mutts I happen upon. But it’s not easy.
This burden of intelligence has over the years, always been the trump card of those who are posthumously referred to as visionary and ahead of their time. And that is no use while one is alive. To be ahead of one’s time should be encouraged so that we can get to wherever the devil we are supposed to go but with the average lag and lack of intelligence, it is proving itself very hard to do.
