True Intelligence ~ Inspiration or Perspiration?

What is the true meaning of intelligence? What is its source and where does it come from?

Is intelligence fathered by the voiced needs of a demanding populace or even via the academic pressure of one’s peers in tertiary education? Is there a pure type of intelligence(?) that only some may aspire to, let alone produce direct evidence of, in terms of the capacity to present abstract conceptualisations that are not responsive to an external call from society at large, but instead seem to arise from many complex layers of ruminating intellectual activity, exclusively mental by origin and by design.

We currently seem to have a hierarchy of intelligence where the abstract and mathematical types lead, while the more practical intelligence that involves in situ, hands on application in the trades, IT, and hospitality significantly further back in second place. Equally, there are those professions like medicine and teaching that require a relative degree of mastery of both types.

What of children and the intelligence I witness daily in lower primary schooling, where many (although certainly not all) 5 year olds can readily speak in complex sentences, ostensibly without instruction, yet then experience brain numbness when asked to think about the grammatical aspects of sentences and the types of sentence construction?

Prior to instruction, they are fluent, native speakers. Post instruction, they present as knowing absolutely nothing. From there, begins the long and oftentimes arduous process of bringing these formerly fluent speakers to a grasp of grammar so that they can write efficiently in a number of genres. Enter masses of effort, angst, frustration, resentment and resistance to elevate each child’s grade to at least a ‘C’ standard. And that’s just the teachers!

For the majority of students, parents and teachers, perspiration is most assuredly the hallmark of this particular flavour of societally endorsed, linguistic mastery.

Inspiration or Perspiration?

But does intelligence always have to be about the sweaty puffing and panting of effort?

History is peppered with many famous examples of instances where true conceptual advances in knowledge and understanding were made when people simply ‘chilled out’.  

No sweat.

Archimedes was inspired into his famous theory of the volume of displacement allegedly while sitting in the bath. Equally, the famed Isaac Newton became familiar with the effects of gravity while having a snooze under a tree.  

What do such examples offer us as indicators that inspirational intelligence and 'know-how' simply ‘drop in?’ They call on us, or so it seems.

Both men were certainly very focussed on their respective areas of interest and were both great observers of life itself. Thus both had garnered a solid foundation of extensive observation and pondering which, when the ‘big idea’ or inspiration landed, it was able to hold and sustain its veracity and then be moved into a real life applicability.

Interestingly, this quality of observation is not laden with any pre conceptualisations. This contrasts with the current model that actually demands that our observations are based on the scientific model and are founded on the work of others. There is a need to justify one’s observations (including perceptions) in terms of pre-existing knowledge.

This is significant as we may be tainting observation with a demand for social compliance.

So is a deeper intelligence based on profound interest + true observation + strong foundation = inspiration, and this then leading to real life application, or significantly adding to the global sum of useful knowledge?

Is this dis-passionate factor also a key? Namely, that we receive inspiration when our dedication is not exclusively for the aggrandisement of the ego, but to serve the entire species, aka humanity, as a whole?

Interesting examples of this are found in Nature where, when a skill appears in one group of a species that supports their efficiency in consuming or catching food, the same skill instantly becomes available to other same species groups living remotely from the originally ‘inspired’ group.  

Are we missing inspiration in today’s system of education?

The foundations of modern education can often run counter to the processes described above. Instead, perspiration, or effort, is key from prep age children all the way to the furrowed brow of the university professor. Assimilation of the knowledge of others holds precedence over observation. A one size fits all basic education may often leave little space for personal passions, and success is measured by the grades that guarantee one’s own highly personal security, with scant reference ever made to contributing to society as a whole. When any such reference is made, it is usually politicised, thereby basically nullifying any true altruistic motive.

On this basis, it is pertinent to ask, do we need to re-evaluate not only what we determine intelligence to be, but equally significantly question ~

What are the foundations and principles upon which the inception of intelligence (inspiration) is founded?

and

What conditions do we place on our amassing of intelligence? What is our underlying rationale?

Looking at the examples noted here, this would certainly seem to be the case if we would prefer to receive inspiration, rather than sweating it out under the arduousness of effort for the sake of personal promotion and self-aggrandisement when some, if not all, significant advances brought to us from the foundations of, perhaps, our true intelligence, intimate that this need not be so.