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I have a friend who’s a sales manager for a technology company. They have a small staff that designs technologically complex products that only geeks understand. But those products get sold to ordinary humans – small business owners mostly – so they have her to sell them.

She says, “They’re all smarter than me!”

They say, “She’s kind of slow.”

I have another friend who coaches college basketball. He says, “Some of these kids are really talented. We may even make the tournament this season!”

But you’ve all heard what some of the other college people say, “They’re dumb jocks. It’s the science guys who are smart!”

Conversations like that lead me to wonder . . . what attributes does one need in our society to be called smart?

If you have an exceptional command of language, and you’re a gifted speaker, people will listen and say . . . “You know, that fellow is really smart!”

If your mathematical abilities far exceed the abilities of those around you, they will say, “What a geek! But he’s smart.” They’ll also say that if you have an aptitude for computer programming, electronics, particle physics, or biology.

In Western society, those are the attributes that get you called smart.

Aren’t we missing something here? I’ve been hanging around with neuroscientists for a while now, on this TMS project, and I’ve gotten a better understanding of what smart means, and the truth is quite different from the popular perception. This is how most people define smart in America: A smart person is someone who has remarkable command of language, or above average speaking ability, or really exceptional and cerebral mathematical, engineering, or scientific ability.

There is a fundamental flaw in that thinking, which I’ll begin to illustrate by a few attributes that do not get you called smart in our society.

A biologist who works to develop a vaccine is smart. The person who knows how to see into the mind of a frightened animal to soothe it and administer the vaccine isn't smart, though. He's just kind of strange, talking to animals like that.

Artists are not generally described as smart, despite the fact that their creations come entirely from the mind. Photographers are smart, either, and they’re actually dismissed entirely with the comment, “If I spent $10,000 on a camera, I’m sure my pictures would be just as good as yours!”

The top real estate salesperson in your city isn’t smart either. She’s just good looking, or she has a great ability to schmooze people and she’s pushy.

The financial analyst who makes millions by finding and betting on subtle patterns in the securities market isn’t smart. He’s greedy and avaricious.

And we can’t forget book authors. They aren’t generally described as smart either, because after all . . . we just write down what happened. Anyone can do that.

And popular musicians must be dumb . . . just look at the stuff they do. It’s in People and EW every week!

So what wisdom can we draw from that?

Every one of those things is really a kind of smart. For each of those people, it is brain power that makes them the successes they are. The brain is what gives Larry Bird or Michael Jordan the coordination to be the best in the world. It’s the brain that gives the real estate champ the emotional intelligence to connect with all those people and make a favorable impression. And it’s raw mathematical insight – reasoning power - that makes the stock analyst a success. All different kinds of brainpower.

You could almost say . . . if it’s esoteric or entertaining, we’ll call it smart. But if it makes millions, or wins public acclaim, it’s something less.

This definition of smart is really worth thinking about. Everything we do is controlled by the brain. Countless brain parts, controlling countless functions. Even something as basic as our digestion may be “smart.”

You and I may have exactly the same guts. But you can’t tolerate milk, and I can. You get sick all the time, and I don’t. Why? Perhaps the part of the brain that runs the intestines is smarter in me than it is in you. I know . . . that sounds nutty. But science is proving it true.

So what kinds of smart do you see in the people around you?

Can a person be smart in one way and not others? Certainly . . . that, in essence, is what autism is about. What will happen if we learn to rebalance or change these different intelligences?(c) 2007 John Elder Robison


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