Everyone Is Smarter Than You

My father instructed me and my brothers to smile in our mugshots, move to Florida if homeless, and buy land, among other valuable insights. Throw in some casual quotes from ancient philosophers and Ronald Reagan about the necessity of preserving republics, an occasional paraphrase from Rudyard Kipling’s If poem, and a line about the healing powers of the ocean, and you have a fair understanding of the values he instilled in us.

Of all the things my father taught me, likely the most important is this:

“Everyone is smarter than you.”

There’s this “southern” restaurant in Boston called Buttermilk and Bourbon. This Saint Patrick’s Day I ate there with two of my “southern” friends who I hadn’t seen since we graduated college ten months ago. We sat outside despite it being cold as hell.

Koshy is an Indian-Chinese American from Nashville who is accidentally gentrifying Dorchester by his presence. (“Dude, you can’t fault me for living in the cheapest place I could find.” Fair point.) He’s reflective, an excellent host, takes the responsibility of friendship very seriously, and slams Guinnesses.

Anna Scott describes herself as an emotional indie girl; she’s easygoing and thoughtful, has a characteristically Carolinian double-first-name, reads extensively, and pyscho-analyzes well.

What is your most controversial opinion? is what I asked the table before the warm honey-glazed biscuits arrived. Why that question? Not sure, but I knew I could expect good answers from these two, and perhaps I sought reassurance in my own controversial opinions. 

I don’t remember what Koshy’s was, but it was good, something sweeping, thought-provoking about American individualism or the like. Anna Scott’s wasn’t all that controversial, and truthfully, the discussion wasn’t as exciting or inflammatory as I imagined. But the resulting spin-off conversations? Those were strong I tell ya. A passionate dialogue developed, and grew, and exploded into anger at some pretentious public figure who I had never heard of and can’t remember, and Anna Scott demanded the answer to the following:

“Everyone thinks they’re smarter than everyone else! But we all think the same amount as everyone else, right? Like - what does he think makes him smarter?!” 

This may sound like a simple question, but upon its expression, I was bewildered by the thought. Though the inquiry invited us to wonder where arrogance comes from, I interpreted it conversely.

Damn. She’s right. We all do think the same amount. What does make someone smarter? Maybe what my father said was untrue? Maybe, I am, in fact, as smart as everyone else?

Wondering if I was equal in intelligence to others for thinking the same number of thoughts as them is the exact reason I was taught that I’m not.

My dad telling his four sons that everyone is smarter than us was not to demean us, relegate us to idiots, or even to highlight our youthful ignorance. It was his method of telling us to respect everybody we meet. Within every person is a wealth of knowledge, most of which you don’t know, and much of which you could benefit from. You just have to keep sifting through the dirt and shaking the pan until you find it.

“Everyone is smarter than you” really means three things:

1. Respect strangers and those with different interests. Be open-minded.

2. Listen when others speak.

3. We are all ignorant to some degree; try to learn as much as you can.

Every man is a library of what he cares about. Perhaps you meet a man who lives sloppily and sheepishly in his mother’s basement. His knowledge is not of interest to you, yet he is smarter and more skillful in areas that you don’t care about. He’s really good at CoD Zombies or knows the final score of every World Series or can cook an exotic dish that you think is gross. He can speak a dead language or name every bone in a bird.

The basement-dweller is always a cliche example, but you get the point. People are interesting, and diversity of thought and interests is what makes each of us unique.

Alright, so my boy knows the dating history of every Iranian shah in order. Does that really make him smarter than me? What does it mean to be smart anyway? That’s a question for another time, but the moral is this: don’t discount another person’s intelligence. There is something to be learned from everyone.

What’s useless to you is someone’s passion, and your deepest, strongest, most sincere passion is junky, boring, and uninspiring to someone else.

It’s a fact of life that the world values some interests more than others. Certain skills have more practical application or direct economic benefit than others. For instance, being really interested in investing will likely have more physical, worldly utility than intensely scrutinizing and studying caterpillar eating habits. Being a vigorous reader will likely have more upside than being a vigorous social media roamer.

That doesn’t mean that less valuable interests are not worth exploring. Though Theodore Roosevelt is noted for his passion for life, being our youngest President, and getting shot in the chest and finishing his speech, he also played a major role in establishing the Museum of Natural History - by preserving small animal carcasses in his childhood bedroom.

If you were a schoolyard bully, you’d probably pick on young Teddy for this, and prefer he stick to his other, more tolerable interests, such as bodybuilding, hunting, and boxing. But of course, now we know his dead animal collection turned out rewarding in the long-run. The Museum of Natural History now sees over five million visitors per year.

Trite as it sounds, you only care about what you care about. Intentionally or not, we mentally rank certain topics as more important than others and therefore dedicate more time and mental energy to them. Everyone does this.

If you talk only about what you want to talk about, you won’t get too far. If you ask people about themselves and their passions, they’ll like you more, even if you don’t give a shit. Listen anyway. Also, you might learn something.

If you’re with like-minded people your whole life, no one will challenge your beliefs, and therefore you’ll never grow. A good conversation with a stranger or disagreeing friend is like making progress along a treasure map. You have no idea what the prize might be, but you know there’s treasure at the end of the journey, and all sorts of glories and stories on the road to get there.

Everyone has their area of expertise. What is yours? What comes natural to you? You are smarter than everyone else in one hyper-specific area, find a way to use that positively. Just don’t get a big head about it; everyone is smarter than you.