18 November 1999, 806 words
It is quite possible to be intellectual without being intelligent. In fact, when you consider some of this country's leading academics, it even seems likely.
Being intellectual is not the same thing as being intelligent. Intellectual ability requires skill at manipulating formal symbols, such as numbers, words, shapes and other formal symbols. That is all it is. Intelligence, on the other hand, is far more complicated. Intelligence can be divided into three broad categories: analytical, creative and social. Analytical intelligence requires an ability to solve problems by considering all relevant evidence (including data that contradicts your hypothesis) and drawing logical conclusions. Creative intelligence calls for an ability to make, or find, connections between seemingly disparate data. Social intelligence is the ability to perceive, empathize, and influence other people's feelings and behaviour.
Every normal human being has these different kinds of intelligence. However, only a minority of people in any society are intellectual. This may seem contradictory, given that intelligence is enormously more complicated than intellectual ability. But it isn't really. Intelligence is crucial to our normal functioning as human beings. But even a modern society can function quite effectively with only a small percentage of intellectuals. At the same time, no modern society can progress, or even remain stable, unless that already small cadre has within it intellectuals who are also intelligent - i.e. people able to manipulate their technical knowledge in analytical, social and creative ways.
The vast majority of academics do not do this. Instead, they absorb ready-made paradigms, theories, ideas, then spend the rest of their lives regurgitating. Although these professors may appear intelligent, there is no significant process of thought going on within their skulls. Their intellectual ability impresses only because of the sophistication and/or technicality of the ideas they so glibly parrot.
In my opinion, the crucial difference between intellectual thought and intelligent thought seems to be one of temperament rather than cognition. ("Cognition" is a general term covering all the various modes of knowing - sensory perception, memory, imagination, reason, judgement.) The seed of this view was first planted when I went to UWI. There I met people who were studying the most wonderful things in literature and sociology and history yet, amazingly, remaining narrow-minded and ignorant. It was only then I realized that, unlike myself, not everyone's opinions and attitudes were actually affected by books. (I should say that I always knew this, but I didn't know that a person could be academically superior and not be shaped by ideas.)
In recent years, I have come across highly educated people with wide knowledge and a capacity for formal logic, who use these advantages to defend the most outlandish and foolish ideas. I have read the prose of writers who, though capable of clarity or even eloquence, are trite and limited in thought. I have met religious people who read great novels and books of science, yet still believe their Holy Books are the literal word of God.
I have also read about the world's greatest minds and I notice that, although intelligence appears to be heritable, genius clearly is not. I know of no genius who ever had children who were also geniuses. (It must be noted, however, that most geniuses have come from families with an artistic or intellectual bent.) Moreover, when we consider most of the great discoveries of past centuries, it becomes clear that boldness or rebelliousness was as - or more - important than intellectual ability.
I have therefore concluded that intellectual thought is nothing but a mechanical activity that is as far removed from true intelligence as the instinct by which a spider spins its web. And perhaps this is why intellectuals are so often mistrusted by the average, non-intellectual person. Because the latter intuitively understands why ideas are dangerous. Not because ideas change the world but because, strange as it may seem, ideas more often stop people from thinking than otherwise.
When a man is convinced of the absolute rightness of his ideas, he feels he doesn't need to think any more. And a man who does not think is a man who cannot be reasoned with. And no man is so utterly beyond reason as an intellectual who feels his ideas are supported, usually by limited logic applied to selective evidence, but mostly by moral rightness.
The worst atrocities of history have always had such ideas fueling them - the Nazi Holocaust, Stalinist purges, South Africa's apartheid. That, to my mind, is the real danger in the war of words between religious fundamentalists - Hindu, Christian, Muslim - in this country. Such pseudo-intellectual ignorance can be counteracted only if a society has a core of people who are both intellectual and intelligent. But in this place, in any field, you can count the number of such persons on your fingers. On one hand.
Copyright ©1999 Kevin Baldeosingh