Blog readers have decided to agree that Bob is very, very smart.
If I say I am not very, very smart it is like a man who is seven feet tall saying that he is really short. If a seven foot tall man says that, he is not being modest, he is being absurd.
So when I say something, it usually means a bit more than I say.
When I say I am a Bible Belter, people naturally think I am trying to be just a guy like everybody else. When I tell you that I am from Pontiac, South Carolina, I am happy if it gives you a smile. Ole Bob is just showing he’s a country boy.
That’s nice, but you’re missing the point.
Your smile when I say I am from Pontiac makes me feel a bit lonely, because you don’t understand that there is something profound here that I am trying to say.
A good friend of mine, who through no fault of his own is now a professor, came into the graduate economics program at the University of Virginia a year after I did. He first met me at the cocktail party for new students. The first thing he heard about me was, “Whitaker is cutting everybody down again.”
Whitaker was this unapologetic South Carolina racist who only took two or three sentences to make all the anti-racists look like fools. One after another the people who had qualified to enter one of the best graduate programs in America went up to use their devastating anti-racist arguments against Whitaker.
Whitaker cut every one of them to pieces, quickly, with common-sense arguments. My friend was kind enough to say that that was the first thing he heard about me.
I remember when I was at another party and a liberal Jewish professor decided to take me on. One of my economics professors stopped him by saying,
“He’ll beat you, you know. He’ll make you look like a fool.”
They ARE fools. And I AM a very smart man.
So when I say I am a Bible Belter I am not being modest. When I say I am from Pontiac, South Carolina, I am not trying to be Just Folks.
When I say I am from Pontiac, South Carolina, I am not just saying that I have my feet on the ground. I am saying I have roots a mile deep.
When I say I am a Bible Belter I am not saying that I am a Good Old Boy. What I mean is that I could sit down with any of our forefathers who spoke in terms of the Old Testament or, before them, those who spoke in terms of the Wodenist Faith, and they would understand me perfectly and I would understand them perfectly.
I am from the Bible Belt. I am in sync with thousands of years of my people’s history.
The so-called intellectuals follow “the literature,” the latest articles, in their field of study. To me, they are weeds. My roots are a mile deep.
The friend I mentioned above made a very profound remark to me. I kept telling people I was a Bible Belter and from Pontiac, SC and I made fun of myself.
But one day he said to me, “Bob, you are the most conceited person I have ever met.” I was astonished. How could Good Ole Bob be conceited?
He said, “You REALLY don’t give a damn what people think of you. A lot of people say they don’t but you REALLY don’t. You are dead sure you are right, and I agree with you, you ARE right. But you can’t get more conceited than that.”
That sent my mind reeling. He really understood me.
I am conceited beyond the imagination of most people. I consider all the “intellectuals” to be pretentious morons.
That is an understatement. I consider them less than that.
I stand above them like a tower. I am a genius man with roots a mile deep.
How could anybody get more conceited than that?
#1 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 11:25 am
Admitting one is smart can cut two ways. It can remove all silly self-doubt or it can, sometimes, make one lazy. If one knows he is very smart and seldom wrong, he can overlook things here and there and so lose his edge. Be smart about being smart.
Just a reminder for those of us who haven’t reached Bob’s level of experience yet.
By the way, it’s funny to make mistakes when one seldom makes them. “Why did I say that? I know better. How odd.” And it makes a smart guy feel like he can relate to other people a little better.
#2 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 11:27 am
By the way, to shed silly self-doubt is to grasp a more firm faith in God.
Untrue self-doubt is a kind of faithlessness.
Besides, if it is untrue, it a lie. Don’t forget the Ten Commandments.
These are little things I tell myself when I am bored.
#3 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 12:12 pm
Alright Bob, here is one for you about smartness.
Q: Why do smart holistic-creative people seem to have trouble learning to do math that particular-analytical people don’t?
A: Shortcuts.
Smart people take mental shortcuts all the time. Creative minds make SEMANTIC (“ideal”) shortcuts. So, in math, that means that, depending on his system’s particulars, a creative type could compare plus and multiplication as analogous, and minus and division as analogous. These are shortcuts. Depending on his system, negatives could be hierarchically secondary to the number itself and occasionally left out.
The more pure analytical type, takes shortcuts, not on ideas, but on FORMS. Since math is really all about bookkeeping, this is advantageous. A student can be excellent in math, but not know what any of it means. The creative type may know what it all means, but be sloppy in working it out.
The reason for the difference is that semantics (or ideas) come before forms. By the time the creative mind comes to the part of a math problem where he must work out some arithmetic, his semantic parallels have already kicked in. Thus, when working out a large number of problems quickly, plus is compared with multiplication, and he does the wrong operation. Exponents are a type of multiplication, so he may multiply the power times the base without realizing it.
The analytical type doesn’t have this problem, because he is not thinking what anythings MEANS; he is simply following a list of rules. His mind is more mechanical, but there is less thinking to clutter it. This type of mind is CLERICAL, which is what learning math is all about (at first).
Of course, advanced theoretical math is a different story. In this field, the best were often the worst at arithmetic as kids — and often still are. But that doesn’t matter when dealing with the severely abstract; they have computers and assistants to work out the details.
#4 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 12:21 pm
Ultimately, the clerical approach isn’t even analytical. It is just following rules, putting one foot in front of the other. It is quite mindless — but helpful in arithmetic.
#5 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 12:36 pm
I used to hear white students tell Asian students how smart Asians were because they were so efficient at math. Typically, the Asians would correct the whites and say, “No, I am just following the steps. Most of the time, I don’t even know what I’m doing.” At some point, I realized this wasn’t so much Asian modesty as Asian honesty. They were proud of being hard workers, not clever. Honor came to the family for working hard at a reliable job, no matter how menial.
#6 by Don on 04/15/2005 - 12:51 pm
The other day Bob was talking about Quantum Mechanics.
Now Peter is talking about mathematics.
This is quite interesting.
Pass the lemonade.
#7 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 12:57 pm
By the way, speaking of smart people and making mistakes,
Q: How do you deal with a career academic?
A: Make a mistake.
It is like this. If an academic says something that in all his verbiage amounts to something to stupid, you call him on it, right? No, because he will just reply with several pages of verbiage during which he completely evades you.
So, here’s how you handle him: say something stupid, and say it like you really know what you are talking about. He will go to pieces and castigate you. Then, while he is falling to pieces, you throw in your real argument that cuts him down to his knees.
He’ll be too mad to evade you coherently.
He won’t realize what you have done, but you will have won the argument.
His mistake was thinking he is always smarter than everyone else — he’s a sitting duck.
#8 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 1:02 pm
(By the way, I just did this to a well-known somewhat respectable conservative, whom I genuinely respect, but think he is a bit too respectable. He took the bait, hook, line, and sinker. Poor guy. I really do think well of him.)
#9 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 1:14 pm
No, it wasn’t Bob. Bob is not respectable.
And, the point is never to hurt people. The point is compassion through enlightenment. Or the other way around: Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor.
#10 by Bob on 04/15/2005 - 2:14 pm
“Know through sympathy, it is the pure/clean door.”
Who said that?
#11 by Bob on 04/15/2005 - 2:19 pm
Or does that Tor mean “fool?”
#12 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 6:09 pm
Yes, I hope I am a fool. Through compassion enlightened, the pure fool.
Wagner wrote that in Parsifal, the opera on the Holy Grail and Communion. It was to be played on Good Friday, the time of Christ’s passion and special compassion for us.