Intelligence.

People often confuse studiousness, smartness and intelligence.

Studiousness is a talent. Anyone with half a brain can be studious - it doesn't make them smart or intelligent. It just means they can stare at a book longer than the rest of us, and get more out of it than most.

Smartness comes in two forms. There's the bookie smartness, which means that instead of just staring at a book and learning how to pass an exam, you can think about it. You can ask the basics. Who, what, when, where...and why? Why? The second kind of smartness is a social smartness. If the only thing you are accustomed to is a book, then you're not going to get very far in life. People smartness. Wit, charisma. It's a form of smart. It saves your neck.

Intelligence is something else. Intelligence is not something you're born with, but it's not something you can acquire or gain or manufacture. It's just there, or it's not. It's a higher level of thinking. When you talk to someone who is intelligent, they have substance, they're bursting with things to say. They can relate to things you present to them, compare it to things they know, take from it what they didn't know before. Everything in the world poses a question to an intelligent person, everyone in the world is completely different in the eyes of someone intelligent.

Intelligence is a double-edged sword. The world is sharp, defined, clear, beautiful, but it's like an artist trying to explain the simple beauty and majesty of his work to a blind person. It doesn't work. With intelligence, seeing is believing.

I admire people who can study well, I really do. I wish I had it in me to sit down, shut up, and actually do something productive. I have my spurts, my grand moments of massive industriousness, but it's not like I can sit down for three hours every day and look at the same books over and over and actually consider it a good use of my time. But studious people tend to be rather dull, rather one-dimentional. I love the written word, but it's only one means of learning - and I truly detest people who go through life with the mantra of 'if it's not in the book, I don't know it'. These days we have to write books and web pages about everything. The more how-tos you read, the more common sense drips away.

I think I'm a tolerably smart person. I don't understand people but I know how to hold my ground against them - which is quite another thing from charisma, but I get by well enough on it. When it comes to learning, 'why' is the thing in my head. I want to know how the world works. I think numbers and formulas oversimplify our intricately imperfect world - there are anomalies in everything that maths and science just can't account for. The kind of understanding I look for is a true knowledge of why, and why it didn't happen.

Perhaps we all think we are intelligent. I certainly think so. I'm not going to pretend that I don't think I've got anything good to say, because I do. I've got plenty to say, and just because you may not agree with it all doesn't mean it doesn't come from an intelligent mind.

Intelligence is something I prize in myself above all. It's not about school marks, or success. It's about a connection, one intelligent person to another. It's something I value the most in friends - because intelligence is a deeper connection, a blood tie. I get you, you get me. It's not about agreeing - I rarely agree with the intelligent and the more intelligent than me. But it's...it just is.

There's a spark in an intelligent person's eye. I can tell if someone has got something good to say by the look in their eye. An intelligent person is never bored of the world around them. They may be infuriated, frustrated, complacent, but there is always something to fascinate. Anyone genuinely bored not just with what is in the passing, but with life in general, lacks intelligence in my opinion.

But sometimes they have this spark, but they just haven't got it. They've got nothing good to say. It's like arguing a case in court with no evidence. A trapdoor does not stay shut unless it's been bolted. Otherwise you fall straight through your own trap.

What do you think? Do you think you're intelligent? Do you think I am?