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It is hard to imagine that there could be any such thing as excessive intelligence.
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After all, most of the problems of the world and of individual lives clearly come down
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to a shortfall in cleverness - and a surfeit of impulsiveness, self-righteousness and cruelty.
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Yet it seems that there could still be a way of using our intelligence that cuts us off
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from necessary encounters with simple truths about us:
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with humdrum facts, with down-to-earth ideas and appetites,
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with unglamorous impulses and naive yet profound speculations.
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If we can put it another way, there might be ways of being intelligent that could - at
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points - render us distinctively stupid.
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There is a kind of person we can dub over-intellectual whose very cleverness can encourage them to
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miss key points.
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It may make them blind to evident ideas that are nevertheless significant.
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It may give them a permanent taste for what is abstruse and infinitely subtle - at the
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expense of anything that doesn’t pass an exaggerated threshold of convolution.
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They may neglect the chance of an interesting conversation with a six year old because their
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associations of intelligence are rigidly affixed to scholarliness - or they might disdain the
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offer of a walk with their aunt because she left school at sixteen and has never taken
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an interest in politics.
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Their intricate minds may end up misunderstanding reality, which comprises both Ludwig Wittgenstein
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and hot baths, Immanuel Kant and Dancing Queen, Aristotle and orange and polenta cake.
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The over-intellectual may spend hours parsing the distinction between freewill and determinism,
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they may devote themselves to interpreting Maxwell's theory of electricity and magnetism
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- and yet still be a novice when it comes to explaining their heart or avoiding a sulk.
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True cleverness means resorting to complexity when, but only when, it is called for - and
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otherwise keeping room open for ways of speaking and thinking that are appropriately basic
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and visceral.
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It may be highly fitting to use riddles and jargon when one is dealing with the operations
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of a nuclear reactor or the nature time at the edges of the universe.
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But it becomes a particular form of obtuseness to remain in such a register when unpicking
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issues in relationships or family dynamics.
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Those who are properly intelligent can accept that there are central truths about every
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life that can and should be expressed in the language of a child.
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It is an achievement enough to sound very clever.
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It may be an even greater one to know where and when to remain heart-stirringly simple.