We live in a society obsessed with the elite. Whether it’s athletes, musicians, or painters, we look upon them with awe, and wonder how it would feel to break the shackles of being average.
When it comes to intelligence, this obsession is ever the case, especially in university. We are thrown into an environment where it feels as if our intelligence is constantly being evaluated and compared. But is there any way that we can accurately measure intelligence? And even if there is, does it have any real worth?
Intelligence is not an abstract concept beyond the range of common understanding, but the definition remains vague. The Oxford English Dictionary defines intelligence as an individual’s “ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills,” but there are many ways this can be interpreted.
For example, an individual may be skilled in the traditional senses of intelligence — amazing at writing and analyzing texts, or at manipulating complex mathematical equations. But in a broader sense, intelligence can also describe skills, such as being an effective communicator, or having the bodily awareness necessary to be a dancer or rock climber.
We must look beyond the classic IQ test to determine intelligence. In all simplicity, the test only measures your ability to perform on that specific test; it doesn’t measure whether you will be the next Steve Jobs, Margaret Atwood, or Aristotle.
An IQ test doesn’t measure whether you’ll be the next Steve Jobs, Margaret Atwood, or Aristotle.
In high school, I had my IQ evaluated because I had had some academic difficulties. At first, it was sort of fun to have my skills categorized and quantified, but after a while the numbers began to weigh on my mind, making me more insecure than ever.
I soon became obsessed with my score, and found that my mind would wander off and calculate how many people in my graduating class were statistically more or less intelligent than me. I would aimlessly search the web to get an idea of what kinds of jobs people with my IQ usually had.
It became a toxic pursuit; and I felt limited in ways I hadn’t before. If I didn’t excel in a field I was told I was gifted in, I felt ashamed and angry. For this reason, I still do not discuss my test scores with friends, regardless of the fact that this all happened half a decade ago.
I failed to realize that other kinds of intelligence are just as important as the skills measured by an IQ score, and that no one skill can determine our future successes or failures. Emotional, intrapersonal, musical, and naturalist are just a few types of intelligence that aren’t commonly discussed, yet in combination they are what constitute a unique set of abilities that grow and shift as we navigate through life.
Intelligence is more complex than what is commonly assumed. It is not a simple, quantifiable value, and it is not something stagnant that cannot be developed and improved upon. Instead of focusing on the elite and the skills we lack, we should appreciate our own abilities, as well as others’, and what they can contribute to the world.
