“The Information Age.”  We now live in a time when the average individual has the world’s largest library of information in their pocket and at their fingertips.  We should be brilliant, yet the world seems no smarter, if anything it seems dumber – information misused far more than properly used.  Traditionally, the person that had mastered the most information has been considered the smartest person, but in a time when everybody can know, with minimal effort, almost everything, I wonder if that is true?

This post is the first of an occasional series in which I will attempt to examine what it means to be “smart.”

We have lots of terms that we use to describe smart people – well-informed – knowledgeable – quick witted – bright – eloquent – glib….  All of them and more seem to apply, and yet all of them have somewhat different meanings and implications.  “Smart” it seems is a whole bunch of stuff.  Let’s consider some examples.

Dr. Anthony Fauci knows more about infectious disease than virtually anyone else in the world.  Truly he is one of, if not the most, knowledgeable person in the world on the subject.  And yet the events of 2020 to pretty much the present would indicate he falls far short of the mark of “smart.”  Many attribute evil intent to the man, I do not.  Rather I see the ultimate nerd – a man so overwhelmingly knowledgeable in his field that all other considerations have left his mind.  His advice to the world in the face of covid considered the disease and the disease only – completely ignoring other issues that needed to be weighed in the balance.  Those in media that carried his expertise as if it were divine writ demonstrated stunning levels of ignorance.  Those in power that took his advice and turned it into policy and law also showed a remarkable lack of smartness.  Fauci’s job is to be expert, but leadership’s job is to weigh various expertise – no issue, even one of life and death, resides in a vacuum.

Again, we see “smart” is about more than simply the acquisition of knowledge and information.  In point of fact, we live in an age of so much information that high levels of educational attainment require very narrow focus.  There is no longer an expert in chemistry, the subject is too broad.  Now one carrying a PhD in the subject has studied something quite specialized and detailed so it is possible that a PhD chemist might know more about the reactions of actinium and fluoride than anyone else in the world and yet have no more knowledge of organic chemistry than the average undergraduate.  Are they an expert in chemistry generally? (Let alone “smart.”)  Similarly, a person well versed in the works of Shakespeare, even to the point of having done post-graduate work on those works, may never have read John Irving.  Can such an individual be called an “expert” in literature?  And again, can an expert in literature be called “smart?”

In my life I have known Nobel prize winning scientists that required the assistance of one of their research fellows to find their way home in the evening.  I think we can conclude that expertise, knowledgeability, mastery of information alone is insufficient to constitute “smart.”  There must be something more to it.

I once was a part of a church wherein the preacher was the most eloquent I have ever heard – to this day.  But I quickly discovered how misleading eloquence can be.  In teaching situations, if questioned beyond the direct context of the information he had so eloquently presented he was often flummoxed.  When I was elected to ruling board of this particular church I quickly discovered the man put so much time into preparing his eloquence that the rest of his duties, as head-of-staff, were almost entirely ignored.  The man was a performer and a researcher, but he never mastered the information he researched and presented.  Behind the eloquence there was a void.

My grandfather on my father’s side was functionally illiterate.  Raised speaking German in southern rural Minnesota, his conversational English was fine and pretty much unaccented, but reading and writing were simply not in the cards.  Yet I still marvel at his skill.  I have many of his tools in my woodshop and cannot do with them what he did almost without thought – even with much practice.  Poor his entire life he held his house together with his own skill and labor.  Skills that most people lack today.  Can you fix a leaky faucet?  Repair the damage the leak caused?  When the mixer in the kitchen breaks, do you try to repair it or just run down to the store and buy a new one?  Can you slaughter and butcher a lamb?  How about can green beans or corn – that you grew?  The man was illiterate, but he was smarter about keeping a home/garden/workshop than I will ever be.

And so we can conclude that “smart” is about more than eloquence and education.

“Smart” is elusive and hard to define.  But I think we need to put in the effort because we live in a world that needs smart.  We don’t need the most expert or the most well-spoken, but we do need the smartest.  More thoughts to come on the topic as I gather them.