Intelligence As a Double-Edged Sword

 

I remember a group therapist I saw in high school said that "intelligence is a double-edged sword."  What is meant by that, exactly?  I think I just recently figured it out.  It's not that intelligence mysteriously makes you "unappealing" for no reason, other than human nature.  Rather, it's that intelligence is an "electric wheelchair" that gets you to stop using your legs.  In other words, intelligence helps you solve problems and analyze things quickly and effortlessly in some cases, causing you not to do the full work of analyzing something.


People can try to manipulate you based on your intelligence.  I feel that many people have an "impression" of me and how I think, and which thought experiments or other cognitive expeditions I see as "harmless" even when they have an impact that someone else might be trying to control.


Remember my post where I said, "est Brutum feci?"  "He is the dictator-killer I have been making."  I saw a woman the other day, after I had made that post, touch her nose at 7:52 p.m., I believe.  TEN GB.  The CIA had said, FGB.  So it comes out to:  JF, FJ.  I knew someone in college with initials JF who seems, as an adult in the working world, to be humble, wealthy, successful, and hard-working.  Perhaps FJ stands for "Forsythe's Jackal."  Was this woman trying to get me to contemplate that like a psychological dichotomy challenge?  "Philip, do you want to be more like Frederick Forsythe's Jackal character, or more like JF from college?"  I think it was believed that I would "intelligently," but dimly, delve into this challenge, and either, most likely, try to be more humble, and thus act less like a top-tier intellectual, or, try to be more like Elon Musk--wild, eccentric, arrogant, good at something, but generally clearly off my rocker and unpopular and socially undesirable.


I think that was her plan.  The key is, if I see through the plan, I can tell myself, "I can try to be an intellectual without being arrogant or having an inappropriate, assassin-related self-concept."  Basically, I can behave myself, be relatively humble, but still give myself credit for the great things I have done and am capable of.  The "Brutus" comment was a little bit out there, but for some reason, although the CIA and DOD cannot seem to forgive me (...) for being mentally ill or having said strange things in the past while under the influence of brain health problems, I can totally forgive myself for past eccentricities and strive to be more normal, "elite," excellent, generous, and kind in the future.  I don't need to take that "alternate Myers-Briggs test" and decide whether I want to be humble or eccentric.  I can be smart, neither humble nor eccentric, and also analytical enough to try to see through what might be rather simplistic efforts to manipulate me, by who knows what organization.


I had been trying to guess where the woman who touched her nose was from.  She was in a house that has had a lot of strange activity lately--people who show up and disappear from the house very quickly.  Some sort of Air BNB thing?  Anyway, my guesses are:  the NRA, the Republican Party, the CIA, or a pro-life organization.  An organization that doesn't want me to be seen as an intellectual.  That's my best analysis, given the uncertainties and mysteriousness of the things that are going on.


If you can't tell, I decided to dive into this blog post--and I'm not over-using the internet today--with an eye towards trying to present myself as both smart *and* analytical.  I'm trying to push back against impressions of me that might claim that I'm just some sort of ignorant ditz with a little bit of math talent.  That was true when I was younger, but I'm showing that I'm doing my best to be analytical and understand social and even espionage situations more excellently than I used to.  It could be that I read the gesture all wrong, but the point is, *under the assumption* that my analysis is correct, I'm doing a very good job of analyzing what the gesture might have meant and responding to it in a way that is all of these:  making a good choice, smart, and analytical.


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