07.+What+is+Intelligence+(February+2006) - Get a Free Blog

What is Intelligence? 65
We are scared to ask an “awkward question” even if it's something we
desperately want to know. We don’t want to upset anyone – we don’t
want them to howl at us, and make our security feel threatened.
So we may even go through a period, as is typical, of being called stupid
by our parents, teachers, brothers or sisters, or school friends.
Or we just get ignored. Maybe we are a girl, and our parents make an
incredible fuss of our younger or older brother, and act like we don’t
count, and don’t really have any right to exist.
So then our little mind warps, and we have got an agenda – we think to
ourselves – “I will show them.”
Like in “The Birdman of Alcatraz” with Burt Lancaster as a murderer,
who eventually becomes an acknowledged expert on birds and gets books
published.
But in the early days, when he adopts a little bird with a broken wing, the
bullying prison guard says (approximately) “that boyd is just a punk like
you, that won’t never fly.”
So the bullies (teachers, parents, brothers, sisters, schoolmates, etc.) say
we too are a little bird that won’t fly. You count for nothing, and are
worthy of no praise.
Then with that burning desire to right their wrong judgment on us, that
spirit of “I will show them”, we study hard at some subject – it hardly
matters what – and study and study and study until we pass those exams,
and get that certificate, and then that degree, so they will say:
“Hey – maybe he or she is not such a bad, stupid kid after all. My kid just
got a degree. I must be smart too somewhere down there. I am proud. He
or she is ‘a chip off the old block’ after all. Let’s celebrate over a drink
and remind each other how great we all are.”
And then we feel proud too, and feel a little grudging love towards us, a
little twinkle to us from that judgmental eye that has punished us and
ignored us for so long.
But as our reputation grows, and the accolades pile up, we think ourselves
far better than our parents ever were, and as we get the approval of the
wider world, what our parents think no longer matters much any more.