Korean Job Discussion Forums

[beercanman]

I come from a very smart family, not bragging, it's a fact. My best friends are extremely intelligent guys, yet they are not happy or well off, nor am I. I sometimes wonder, does having a good brain interrupt happiness, just a bit? It is easy to see through all the crap that people, politics, life entails. Too easy really for any of us who are not dead on brains...poor expression.

Odd question I guess. Maybe I shouldn't drink so much.

[warren pease]

Hemingway once said, "happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

He also drank too much.

However, by your age he was an established, successful writer.

[shapeshifter]

[Chet Wautlands]

[VanIslander]

[flakfizer]

It's impossible to be too smart. However, it is very possible for people to pretend to be too smart. Simple people may be happy because they just don't see the problem. Moderately intelligent people might be unhappy because they do see the problem. More intelligent people are happy because they can fix the problem or adjust accordingly. Moderately intelligent people often assume happy people to be simple. Seeing happy simpletons doesn't bother them because they take solace in the "fact" that while they are less happy, they are smarter. But the idea that there are people out there who are smarter than they and happier is not one they can accept.

[AmericanExile]

Voltaire's "Story Of The Good Brahmin" is about this exactly.

[beercanman]

[beercanman]

[quote="shapeshifter"]

[blurgalurgalurga]

I think it's pretty much a truism that some people are too smart for their own good. Also, as far as teaching goes, I've had lots of kids who are pretty lazy, and do well enough, but don't put in the effort to really excel. They figure they don't need to. Maybe they're right, I dunno.

[MollyBloom]

[ChopChaeJoe]

Sounds like a question to ponder with drinking buddies. Nature has a way of figuring everything out. For an intelligent person with a will to create beyond him/herself, the challenge will spur higher order challenges that will eventually become unsurmountable. For others, vices will eventually level the playing field.

In any case, emotional intelligence is just as important as figuring out the next in a sequence of numbers, or what a collection of shapes form when put together, or knowing what the opposite of niggardly is.

[tomato]

Are you familiar with the term "Asperger syndrome"?
A victim of this bug is intelligent in some ways but not so intelligent in other ways.
Sounds like the gene is running through your family too.

It seems like it affected both my father and me.
I wish I found out about it while my father was alive.
It would have done him a lot of good if I told him about it.

If you're not already familiar with this term, look it up.

[beercanman]

nah, no Asperger's (ass burgers?) in my clan, just a bunch of other crap, more than enough actually. I reckoned you had that going on.

Heard of it long ago. I believe David Byrne from Talking Heads is a famous person with that.

Mild insanity and cleverness, not a rare combo.

[tfunk]

OP, are you intelligent? How do you know you are intelligent? Is it a belief or do you have tangible proof? Make a list of the evidence you have that you are intelligent. What have you produced? Feeling sorry for 'your kind' is egotistical pampering, the same pampering every mother gives her child's hand-drawn painting.

Spending a lot of time thinking is not evidence that you are intelligent, particularly if you do not produce anything substantial from your thinking. As another poster suggested, it could be symptomatic of psychological dis-ease or condition.

Thinking about the negative aspects of the world is generally seen as more intellectual than smiling and whistling but I'm not of the opinion that thinking and intelligence are synonymous.

Wisdom is organized life. If you are intelligent, then you have a tool by which to define and approach the issues of life.