What's So Good About Being Smart?

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."

 - Abraham Joshua Heschel

I didn't even have to become old to figure this out. I almost feel like I'm stepping out of the Matrix when I ask: what's so good about smart people? Seriously. It's just such an assumption in this world that it's good to be smart. People praise smart folks. They praise them basically for their genetics and their environment. (Although to be fair, praising a person for their good looks is basically the same thing.)  

It is treated as a moral failing to be dumb in this world. Dumb people are the group that it is okay for everyone to sh*t on. How many times have you heard an atrocity or misfortune that happened to someone justified or brushed aside because they were dumb? But if being smart is overwhelmingly due to genetics and environment, then the same should be said of being dumb. I also feel the need to do a bit of a sidebar here. A lot of people seem to think, or at least they act as if they think, that environment is something a person can change at will. When I use the word environment I am talking about those early years of a child's life when their personality is most shaped by a caretaker of some sort. I don't mean a 30 year old (or even an 18 year old) jumping up one day and deciding that they are going to turn their life around. Despite what society tells them, it's most likely too late for these people; their most formative environmental experiences have already taken place. All that to say, that for me, environment ≈ genetics. People are who are adopted are a different but minority case. The vast majority of people around the world are raised by their parents or other family members.

Being smart is not an unrivaled good. The same intelligence that created antibiotics also created the atomic bomb and continues to creates drones. Being intelligent is more of a boon for that particular person than a good for humanity in general. It allows one to be more effective exploiter in our rather exploitative world. And I guess that's why people truly worship smart people.