Intelligence, Intellect and Guile

Thursday 11th August

I was considered an intelligent child, mind you have you ever heard a parent say that their sprogs are stupid – no, they always say how intelligent they are.  And actually all of us are, it is just that most of don’t get to develop that intelligence.  Either poor parenting or weak schooling or some innate laziness makes most of us underachieve massively.  But in ways we are all intelligent; almost all of us can read or use a mobile phone or at least the TV controller and get by in an increasingly competitive world.  When I was young and went for a job there were no CVs, they simply asked what you had done before and could you do the job, or someone gave you the nod and you were hired with few questions asked.  Intelligence rarely came into it.  But intelligent or not we are mostly a stupid lot, constantly making silly mistakes and yet somehow still surviving.

Intellect is something a bit different, but maybe not really.  I consider myself an intellectual, though that and modesty are my only faults….hahaha.  I am interested in everything (except popular celebrity culture), I love politics, current affairs, philosophy and talking about Art, Science and Religion; in fact as you have probably realised I have an opinion about everything.  But this ‘intellect’ has served me badly.  At least two long-term partners have ridiculed my ‘knowledge’ and said I was trying to belittle them because of their perceived lack of it.  At work having an opinion is considered dangerous, and expressing it will get you nowhere.  In fact for many the word ‘intellectual’ is a term of derision; I can remember John Lennon (an intellectual if there ever was one) attacking intellectuals for misunderstanding him.  Complicated isn’t it.

Guile is the best.  That, sly almost, form of intelligence whereby advantage is gained by being not quite honest and open.  There are those who seem to come out of every situation smelling of roses but who you suspect had been stirring up the manure quietly while everyone else was looking the other way.  I have never perfected guile, I was always hopeless at ‘Office Politics’, I am too much of a blabber-mouth to keep secrets and I am hopeless at poker with an amazing ability to misread every situation.

Still, I would rather be what I am than anything else.  So what if no-one else has read the books I have or can talk for hours on any subject – I can and do.  Intelligence, if I had any, has been wasted on me; guile was never a skill I learnt, and I may well not even be a real Intellectual…but I keep trying, or am I just very trying?