"What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unus’d. Now, whe’r it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought, which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;’
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do ’t"
Hamlet (Act IV, Scene IV)
Culture is the earth within which language festers or flourishes. But what tills this soil and shapes our language and indeed all our relationships and experiences is how we we see, how we hear and how we feel. People who know how to manipulate these more basic of human attributes are rewarded the most in society. They are the high priests of culture - the people we yearn to see ourselves through, the people we yearn to be or at least be with. Beyond our intimate (true) relationships, these idols are more often than not "our" (ah hum!) actors, politicians, priests, teachers, game show hosts, sales people and fashion icons. In reality they are less ours than our lives are theirs?
If we peer quietly and reflect patiently into the bowl of own life, what do we see? For all the joy we entrust in them, was it the slow witted or the clever who have made our life a living hell? This is a trick question, because it is easy to confuse cleverness with intelligence. The term 'clever' derives from the source cliver - which means "expert at siezing". Lo how we are siezed!
When we are intelligent we are able to see without being invested in what is before us, we are able to see and feel without fear of losing face or justifying our own position or existence. When we are intelligent we do not vest ourselves in a position or an argument, we are aware of ourselves in our own drama, concious of our context, open to new ways of seeing, welcome uncertainty and surprise because we know we can and will make the most of it.
Being clever is about using words, knowledge and facial expressions to trick others into getting ones own way. Clever sales people are everywhere, they are the politicians and celebrities and thier publicists, the high priests of culture that we never see. Clever people win hearts and minds, gather and move crowds, they alter the fate of nations, write our history books, and more often than not do all this without personal consequence. But being 'experts in siezing' - being clever is the same as tooth rot, hyperglycemia and heart disease, we do not see the consequences of our sugary consumption of cleverness but it will come soon enough and when it does, will do so with devestating permanance.
"O dear discretion, how his words are suited!
The fool hath planted in his memory
An army of good words: and I do know
A many fools, that stand in better place,
Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word
Defy the matter!"
The Merchant of Venice (Act III, Scene V).
These conditions play themselves out every day in families, sales conversations, management-reviews, coaching discussions, supplier-customer contracts, across communities, across nations, cultures and generations.
It was never the stupid people who created the violence and blood-shed. It was always the clever people. There are clever boys and girls at school. They will be tuaght to be well read, to articulate themselves and influence the world. To what end?
"Why, look you now, how unworthy
a thing you make of me.
You would play upon me; you
would seem to know my stops;
you would pluck out the heart
of my mystery; you would
sound me from my lowest note
to the top of my compass;
and there is much music, excellent voice,
in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak.
’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played
on than a pipe? Call me what instrument
you will, though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me"
Hamlet (Act III, Scene II)
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