Day 594

I only have a couple more days of pure freedom left, then it's back to school.  :(  I'm so ready to be done with school.

Yesterday was another fantastic relaxing day.  I did laundry and dishes, but otherwise it was mainly devoted to talking with Kimmy and playing video games.  And sleeping.  Kimmy was feeling a little bit better, but still not great.  Hopefully she's done being sick today.

So I'm going to share another thing that bothers me a little bit.  I generally dislike the terms "intelligent," "professional," and "business."  Not because I find them offensive or anything like that, but I find that too often people use them in demeaning ways.  The terms get used to create a societal rift between the person who is described as intelligent and professional and the person who is not.

Everyone wants to be special, and everyone wants their specialty to be recognized by other people.  The big one I've noticed recently is that everyone wants to be "smart."  However, no one, including psychologist and other scientists, can agree on what it means to be smart or what intelligence is.  Most scientists do agree that there is not one "general intelligence."  The going theory is that you can be smart in a specific area, but maybe not others.  We talked about this in some of my education classes.  For instance, you can be really good with people, but maybe not so good with science.  That doesn't mean that you're dumb, it just means that you're not good at science.  Or maybe you're brilliant with math, but have trouble with language.  Or the other way around.  Who is to say that one school of study is more important than another?  Most intelligence tests try to focus on general critical thinking type of questions, but even those are pretty fallacious.  The stereotypical car mechanic might not be very book smart, but can fix anything that goes wrong with your car like some sort of wizard.  The mechanic is clearly smart enough to fix a very complicated machine that most of us cannot fix.

So I don't really think the term "smart" or "intelligent" are very relevant.  I think if the terms are to be used, they should be restricted to a comparison of people at the same task or in the same field, such as comparing a class of History students or comparing the people in a department at work.  But even then... why does being smart matter?  What does it do besides boost our ego?

And then the whole professional/business thing.  I saw on Facebook a couple of days ago that one of my Facebook friends was conducting an interview in which the interviewee mentioned video games during the answer to one of the questions.  My Facebook friend (the interviewer) noted (not during the interview, but later to some coworkers) that talking about video games is not appropriate for an "adult, professional interview... it's childish."  First off, I will never understand the argument that video games are childish when a) most people play some type of game on their phone or computer, whether it's Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Draw Something, or Sudoku; b) video games are just another way of relaxing... some people watch TV, others play video games.  The only difference is that video games generally have a pretty negative connotation as being childish, violent, and wasteful.  Rubbish.

Sorry, that was a tangent.  Anyhow, I think it's silly to feel like you need to separate yourself from children and things that children do.  Children are just as human as the rest of us.  I also don't understand why people feel the need to ensure that people know they're in a professional or business line of work (and attach those words to to every noun related to their work).  It just seems that too many people are needlessly trying to make themselves seem or feel better than other people by belittling others.

As I grow up, I realize more and more than "growing up" really is just tied to aging.  There is no child->adult transformation outside of: physically changing, getting a job, and paying bills.  Adults get just as confused, misunderstood, excited, hurt, and angry as children.  All people are human.

I think that's enough of a rant for today.