Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Boston
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:44 pm
Yes, I unabashedly state that this is the seat of intellectual power in the United States, for better or worse. Therefore it is also the focus of a great deal of hostility from those who need to disparage the use of intelligence to help solve problems. I am just off Harvard Square in Cambridge and will be visiting a sister to watch the debate tonight.
Once upon a time I dreamed of going to Harvard. I got accepted into a sister Ivy League school, Vassar, in 1977, and during the smallest of bitchy whiny moments, I wonder what would have happened had I attended. Well, I would have had a Vassar decal in the back window of my BMW, and I might have been thoroughly ruined by early academic notice or conventional successes.
Intelligence, for all you stupid people, is not all that it is cracked up to be. Indeed, it can be abused horribly, it can be wielded like racism. Intelligent people can be as lonely as anyone else, they can be as wrong as anyone else, they often keep a special secret little place where they can look down their nose at you stupid people if you challenge or annoy them. But nothing an intelligent person can do will ever make up for their own insecurities, nothing. All the withering well-executed sarcasm in the world will not make them feel better about themselves.
I possess a pretty good intelligence that, like a BMW in the snow, rarely gains enough traction to get out of its own way. Here in Cambridge Massachusetts, I can see the failures of my life with startling clarity in this badly needed fall sunshine. I escaped U.C.L.A. with a straight A Honors Collegium transcript and NO DEGREE, because I had to take another path. . .
. . . this one. It is MY path. And though I still plague myself with what-ifs and if-onlys, I am serenely cognizant of an important fact. This is me. I have not fallen behind my peers in any understanding. If my fellow Massachusetts prep-schooled snot-nosed peer, Elliot Spitzer, and I ever sat down to dinner, I would have no problem speaking with him authoritatively about issues that were germaine to us both. And I would be able to take my leave of his chandeliered dining hall, and I could go to the local Dunkin Donuts and laugh it up with the cashier.
We all have to OWN our paths. And for God's sake, none of us can lord it over another's path, really, what do we know of another's journey? I used to think, coming from my intelligent family, that it was the sum of our works that made for a "productive" "meaningful" life. Ha.
It is the experience of our experience that makes it a lived life. And we may have to suffer, so what? Look around and see those who suffer with so much grace. Join them. It is what it is. . . about. If you happen to have a side-splitting laugh today. . . that too is what it is. . . . about.
If the stupid moron behind the parts counter stares at you dumbly, pray that he/she goes home to a loving family and has great weekends. If the murderer wakes up in year 24 of his sentence and helps the new scared inductees survive the prison culture, who are we to judge the guy when he was a stupid hothead in his stupid youth? Yes he should serve every day of his sentence, yesyesyes, but judge him? Here's today, he and any one of us, might just get it together.
As for the rest of the country, how 'bout them smart people, huh? Guess what? We need them. Badly. Talk respectfully of intelligence even if you have no idea what it is, we need it. I love a number of intelligent people. Not because they are better than stupid people, but because I can talk with them and feel that I was understood. I have laughed deeply with stupid people and loved sharing the truths that care not a whit about what we were accidentally blessed with at birth. I despise a number of intelligent people. They have no heart, and I fear their effectiveness at hurting others with fancy justifications. I also hate some stupid people who hurt others stupidly.
A toast to Cambridge and Harvard Law School. May intelligence have a rennaisance in the next administration, God Willing. May the intelligence of all peoples and cultures and the human family enjoy ascendance so we can fix some problems in this world that need fixing. And may my own intelligence gain some traction. Lord knows I need it.
Colin
Once upon a time I dreamed of going to Harvard. I got accepted into a sister Ivy League school, Vassar, in 1977, and during the smallest of bitchy whiny moments, I wonder what would have happened had I attended. Well, I would have had a Vassar decal in the back window of my BMW, and I might have been thoroughly ruined by early academic notice or conventional successes.
Intelligence, for all you stupid people, is not all that it is cracked up to be. Indeed, it can be abused horribly, it can be wielded like racism. Intelligent people can be as lonely as anyone else, they can be as wrong as anyone else, they often keep a special secret little place where they can look down their nose at you stupid people if you challenge or annoy them. But nothing an intelligent person can do will ever make up for their own insecurities, nothing. All the withering well-executed sarcasm in the world will not make them feel better about themselves.
I possess a pretty good intelligence that, like a BMW in the snow, rarely gains enough traction to get out of its own way. Here in Cambridge Massachusetts, I can see the failures of my life with startling clarity in this badly needed fall sunshine. I escaped U.C.L.A. with a straight A Honors Collegium transcript and NO DEGREE, because I had to take another path. . .
. . . this one. It is MY path. And though I still plague myself with what-ifs and if-onlys, I am serenely cognizant of an important fact. This is me. I have not fallen behind my peers in any understanding. If my fellow Massachusetts prep-schooled snot-nosed peer, Elliot Spitzer, and I ever sat down to dinner, I would have no problem speaking with him authoritatively about issues that were germaine to us both. And I would be able to take my leave of his chandeliered dining hall, and I could go to the local Dunkin Donuts and laugh it up with the cashier.
We all have to OWN our paths. And for God's sake, none of us can lord it over another's path, really, what do we know of another's journey? I used to think, coming from my intelligent family, that it was the sum of our works that made for a "productive" "meaningful" life. Ha.
It is the experience of our experience that makes it a lived life. And we may have to suffer, so what? Look around and see those who suffer with so much grace. Join them. It is what it is. . . about. If you happen to have a side-splitting laugh today. . . that too is what it is. . . . about.
If the stupid moron behind the parts counter stares at you dumbly, pray that he/she goes home to a loving family and has great weekends. If the murderer wakes up in year 24 of his sentence and helps the new scared inductees survive the prison culture, who are we to judge the guy when he was a stupid hothead in his stupid youth? Yes he should serve every day of his sentence, yesyesyes, but judge him? Here's today, he and any one of us, might just get it together.
As for the rest of the country, how 'bout them smart people, huh? Guess what? We need them. Badly. Talk respectfully of intelligence even if you have no idea what it is, we need it. I love a number of intelligent people. Not because they are better than stupid people, but because I can talk with them and feel that I was understood. I have laughed deeply with stupid people and loved sharing the truths that care not a whit about what we were accidentally blessed with at birth. I despise a number of intelligent people. They have no heart, and I fear their effectiveness at hurting others with fancy justifications. I also hate some stupid people who hurt others stupidly.
A toast to Cambridge and Harvard Law School. May intelligence have a rennaisance in the next administration, God Willing. May the intelligence of all peoples and cultures and the human family enjoy ascendance so we can fix some problems in this world that need fixing. And may my own intelligence gain some traction. Lord knows I need it.
Colin