In Awe of the Slow

As a kid I read about a 19th century autopsy revealing an abnormally small brain slightly larger than a walnut. The doctors asked around, and the deceased's social circles were surprised by the news. The guy wasn't particularly bright, they all conceded, but he'd been perfectly functional and cogent. They never suspected any such thing.

It doesn't take much to follow the path and do the things - hold down a normal job, keep a conversational ball rolling, and learn the basic tasks that get us through our day - so long as we're not actively working against ourselves with substances, drama, posing and the many other familiar channels of self-defeat.

In my twenties, a musician friend confessed to having a 70 IQ. He was a good player, and a perfectly functional, cogent guy. You'd never have suspected! He wasn't particularly bright - I remembered lots of conversations where I'd say something and he'd steer his reply to some tangentially related topic where he had something to offer. I couldn't remember him ever fluently tackling a topic head-on, except to inject a familiar cliché or sound bite.

But that's what everybody does! Smart and well-educated people do a smidge better. They can offer a more or less salient reply to an unscripted question or statement. In 2024, this is a super power. But even then, it's seldom anything insightful, surprising, or delightful. Even the intellectual elite traffics in clichés and sound bites, but they know more of them, covering a broader set of realms. They'll parse a reference to Hippocrates or Rousseau. That's what a fancy education and beaucoup brain cells buys you.

Color me unimpressed by all that. And this is why I never feel pity or superiority around those lacking such stale toast. My friend couldn't calculate swiftly; he could be a bit bleary/syrupy. But I have my bleary/syrupy moments, too. And when my brainy friends contribute to subtle discussion with blunt banality, I know they're covering for their own bleary syrup. Intelligence is the ability to convincingly bluff past one's essential incoherence.

See my best-received Quora reply, to the question "How do people know who is intelligent?"

So when I find myself needing to explain something several times to someone, I never feel pity or patronization, because we're all slow in myriad ways....though some go to great lengths to pose otherwise. In fact, I much prefer laborious re-explanation to receiving a brusquely perfunctory "yeah, yeah, I get it" from someone (i.e. everyone) unable to concede missing chunks in their weighty omniscience. Walnut brain might actually listen and ponder. Walnut brain has a shred of a chance of eventually comprehending. Ich bin ein walnut brain.

The end of this posting about intelligence recounts a short tale from the Hindu Vedas about the power of sincerely striving to understand, regardless of social cost.

With those two anecdotes planted in my mind, I've become oh-so-slightly better aware when a given person works under unusually narrow hard limits. And my reaction is contrarian: I'm awed.

Walnut-brain guy and 70-IQ guy out there getting it done means they've cleverly avoided the stupid channels of self-defeat in which more blessed people squander their blessings. That's a smart move! That's something smart people can't pull off! For having sidestepped myriad perils (both internal and external) and for having endured to integrate into a complex world, I find them smart. Superior. I look up to them.


I often refer to myself as a yogi here, but I'm also a Taoist. I spring to surprising conclusions not out of eccentricity, but out of consideration from multiple viewing angles (aka framings). Mysteries most often confound because people look through the wrong end of the telescope. I'm dopey enough to playfully try both views. And I often find that a 180° pivot - a flip! - bears fruit (which is a loopy corollary of the essential Taoist proposition). Remember the parable of The Iron!