Are Humans Intelligent?

by Madeleine Kando

At this moment I am spending a few gorgeous weeks in one of the most beautiful places on earth: Kauai. For the reader who has not had the privilege of visiting paradise, I will just describe it as an orgy of scents, sights and sounds. The smell of hundreds of types of plants, the blue sky and the red earth, the continuous lulling sound of the ocean mixed with the soft breeze caressing your body day and night.. Trust me, this description is not an exaggeration to make this story more interesting.

You might wonder by now what all this has to do with intelligence. Bear with me and I will tell you. As I am taking an early morning walk to watch the sun rise out of the vast blue ocean I am rudely torn away from my bliss by a powerwalker talking loudly on a cellphone. What on earth possesses someone to do this? By a seemingly innocent act this woman has ripped a hole in the fabric of my paradise.. gone are the scents, the sights, the feel of the breeze. She has not only removed herself from being in Kauai and the morning dew that creates rainbows above the glistening grass, but has managed to affect her environment by her incessant and annyoing chatter.

Howard Gardner, the famous Harvard Professor, who has developed the ‘multiple intelligence’ theory has identified different types of intelligences. He is of course giving a new name to what we call ‘talent’. If you have a gift for music, he says, you have ‘musical intelligence’. If you are good at building things you have ‘spatial intelligence’ etc. Which is nice. Being talented means you either have it or you don’t. It is so final. Whereas if you have ‘musical intelligence’ or ‘spatial intelligence’ it means you can develop those intelligences by studying music, architecture etc. He has identified 6 types of intelligences: verbal, spatial, kinesthetic, visual, mathematical, interpersonal and intrapersonal.

So I wonder about this woman on her cell phone.. She probably scores very high on the verbal scale, considering her obsession with the cell phone. But shouldn’t we add one more type of intelligence to the list? ‘The ability to live in the moment’ intelligence? Where would she score on that?

As I hurry to create some distance between her far reaching voice and myself I see a flock of myna birds strutting about pulling their breakfast out of the wet grass. Their yellow encircled eyes make them look like intellectuals with bifocals on. I cannot help but notice the vast difference in IQ between the woman and these native creatures enjoying this glorious morning.

Couldn’t we open schools to develop our ‘how to be happy’ intelligence, our ‘live in the moment’ intelligence? And you would only be allowed to visit Kauai if you score high enough on your ‘be happy’ intelligence test. Otherwise stay out of paradise!!leave comment here