A Useless Level of Intelligence

I’m at best brighter than average, but not so bright as to be noticeable to the casual observer. It’s kind of a useless level of intelligence - smart enough to be frequently exasperated by the morass of stupidity which surrounds us, but not smart enough to invent a new kind of rocket ship or a cure for a deadly disease.

This puts people like me (and there are many of us) in a conundrum. We’re not so dim as to be able to fly through life contentedly oblivious to all of its associated insanity, but we’re apparently too dim to figure out how to institute wholesale, positive changes. Perhaps that’s why brighter people seem more susceptible to depression and other emotional issues?

I digress. However, it does appear that intelligence levels often play large roles in our psychological and emotional personas.

I think the higher end of the intelligence bell curve experiences different types of depression and anxiety than the majority do (discounting physical reasons, like imbalanced brain chemicals). Everyone has dreams, but many of us view them as just that - dreams, likely never to be reached. So we cross our fingers when we play the lottery, and continue plugging along at inane survival activities, ignorant of alternate pathways to greater accomplishment. In a word, we settle and eventually make our peace with it.

Extremely bright individuals, however, can see numerous such pathways. They can pursue successful professional fields (law, medicine, academia, etc.), start companies with a deeper understanding of business management, or create new things that people can’t live without. Statistically, they exist at a higher end of the socioeconomic scale at a much greater percentage than lower IQ individuals do. Their pathways are blocked only by their own inhibitions and indecision.

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Seeing a range of fulfilling futures can fly in the face of natural empathy. You can achieve great success by working hard, following your innate ambitions, and capitalizing on the gifts you’ve been given, but still harbor guilt over those who were not so blessed. You might also, aware of your own blessings, hold yourself to an unrealistic standard which weighs on your soul when it hasn’t been fully reached.

We tend to scoff at statistics, but there have to be reasons for some things, regardless if they’re something we want to hear. It would seem on the surface that people of higher intellect, with their deeper understanding of things and their cognitive head start in accessing their goals, would be far less susceptible to issues like depression. Yet that’s not the case, and in more severe instances like outright mental illness, they seem to be even more susceptible. It’s sometimes attributed to psychological overexcitability, or a greater tendency toward rumination and worry.

Why do psychopaths, so frequently, seem to also be exceptionally intelligent? Why does it seem that an inordinately high percentage of serial killers are borderline geniuses? I originally thought that - maybe - the less intelligent ones simply weren’t smart enough to get away with it the first time, so they never got the opportunity to progress to “serial” killers, skewing the statistics (often referred to as survivor bias). 

Well, it turns out that much of that perception is false, a likely result of media sensationalism. Genius fictional psychopaths (like Hannibal Lecter or the killer in Se7en), as portrayed in movies, are simply more compelling to a story. Real killers are often treated the same (Ted Bundy, who acted in his own defense, wasn’t nearly as smart as the media proclaimed him to be, nor was Charles Manson as brilliant or talented). Statistics show that on average, serial killers have IQs comparable with the rest of society, with exceptions on par with those in the general public.

What about the rest of us who are sharp enough to recognize the bullshit we are being fed, but shackled from adequate resistance by the chains of our cognitive limitations? We kick and scream, but nobody of relevance notices or cares. We watch in horror as the squeakiest wheels rant with tunnel vision about a specific perceived injustice, and pandering changes get implemented without consideration for their damaging secondary effects. We hold our collective breaths as vote-chasing leaders enforce policies that are not just inconvenient or unfair, but which push us to the precipice of war.

I’ve heard people say, “I don’t get involved in politics”. For any intelligent person, that is impossible. How, with any degree of foresight and extrapolation, can anyone not feel trepidatious about where we’re headed? Quietly going about our business with blinders on is just living in straw houses - it won’t save us when the big bad wolf comes knocking. 

So I’ll go back to my earlier digression, about how intelligence levels often play large roles in our psychological and emotional personas. Depression and anxiety often arise out of frustration, when we can see the writing on the wall but feel powerless to clean it up. It’s a powerful whirlpool, from which the extraordinarily bright can find paths to escape, and the cognitively slow can just ignore in blissful ignorance.

If I could only be way brighter - or way slower. Being kind of smart is a drag.

Zephareth Ledbetter’s latest book, “A White Man’s Perspectives on Race and Racism - Rational Thoughts on an Irrational World”, is available cheap at smashwords.com/books/view/1184004   

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.