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Intelligent People tend to be Unhappy


Soy

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Ignorance is bliss...remember?

There are alot of depressing things in this world and the more you know of them, the less you smile. Intellectuals have a keener sense of the world and its issues I would presume and they also tend to be dissatisfied knowing that there is more to life...

As simple as I can put it

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One point the article makes is that intelligent people do not fit into a society because of their lack of social skills. However, if a person is intelligent enough, they should be able to understand the psychology necessary for good social skills.

Don't you think that the fact that intelligent people understand the 'psychology' of it is the number one sign of lack of social skills? Understanding why certain social things are invoked or happen isn't quite the same thing as having the skill itself. After all, small talk can't really be generated from psychological principles. I think it's perhaps this sort of over thinking which often stunts social skills of intelligent people.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Ignorance is bliss...remember?

There are alot of depressing things in this world and the more you know of them, the less you smile. Intellectuals have a keener sense of the world and its issues I would presume and they also tend to be dissatisfied knowing that there is more to life...

As simple as I can put it

First off, anecdotal evidence can be misleading, as in this case. The ability to put away problems that you cannot fix is something that is shared equally among the intelligent and the unintelligent, and ignorance itself is not necessarily a product of either. It is undoubtable that the intelligent and ignorant seek to remedy their ignorance, and that as such, the overcoming of ignorance is a product of a better understanding, essentially a better qualification to make decisions; the natural state of a powerful human mind is to seek knowledge. This, juxtaposed with the fact that in general, humans seek happiness, creates a connection between the pursuit of knowledge and happiness. It is not in a hedonistic sense, as some knowledge can hurt us, but it is through understanding that we give ourselves meaning, which is, to the intelligent thinker, fulfilling in itself. Comparing the happiness of ignorance and the happiness of fulfillment is difficult, but I would propose that since the latter is what a capable person undoubtedly seeks, it is the closest state to true psychological happiness that we can achieve.

In a psychological sense, considering Mazlow's heirarchy of needs we see that self-actualization is on top, and that physical and less educated pleasures are on the bottom, since these are all exhaustible and lead to greater desire, when met acceptably. In a more philosophical sense, if life has a meaning, it probably can't be achieved without human expression in some sense, and an ignorant, blissful human, which is close to animalistic in nature, cannot express humanity to its fullest, due to lack thereof. Essentially, a human who acts like an ignorant and blissful cow is, by my interpretation, less human than someone who is educated and not ignorant. That's why objectification of a person is often termed to be dehumanization.

Anyways, my main point is that bliss is misleading, because bliss is not the happiest state in which a human can be. A truly intelligent person will know that although their intelligence burdens them with worries, it allows them to excel, to express and to learn new things, which in itself is a greater reason for true happiness than mindless bliss will ever be. To take on your last point, knowing that there is more to life puts it within reach, giving meaning and a greater sense of fulfillment. Although one could argue that not knowing of this greater sense of life may be blissful, it is nevertheless true that they miss out on happiness, even though they do not know it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
In a psychological sense, considering Mazlow's heirarchy of needs we see that self-actualization is on top, and that physical and less educated pleasures are on the bottom, since these are all exhaustible and lead to greater desire, when met acceptably. In a more philosophical sense, if life has a meaning, it probably can't be achieved without human expression in some sense, and an ignorant, blissful human, which is close to animalistic in nature, cannot express humanity to its fullest, due to lack thereof. Essentially, a human who acts like an ignorant and blissful cow is, by my interpretation, less human than someone who is educated and not ignorant. That's why objectification of a person is often termed to be dehumanization.

Anyways, my main point is that bliss is misleading, because bliss is not the happiest state in which a human can be. A truly intelligent person will know that although their intelligence burdens them with worries, it allows them to excel, to express and to learn new things, which in itself is a greater reason for true happiness than mindless bliss will ever be. To take on your last point, knowing that there is more to life puts it within reach, giving meaning and a greater sense of fulfillment. Although one could argue that not knowing of this greater sense of life may be blissful, it is nevertheless true that they miss out on happiness, even though they do not know it.

Sharkspider, whenever I come upon your posts, it takes me half an hour to actually understand what you're trying to say. :)

The question, I believe, was whether or not intelligent people tend to be unhappy, as stated in the topic title. By your reasoning, the happiness of someone who is ignorant will always be lower in amount than the happiness of someone who is "intelligent." But your reasoning is faulty. You claim that people who are intelligent experience a higher level of happiness through excelling or learning new things. One, while your emphasis on these activities is admirable, there is no evidence that these activities actually allow individuals to reach a higher level of happiness. While for you these activities might give you a greater amount of happiness than other activities, they might not for other people. Two, the way you state this fact implies that people who are "ignorant" cannot "excel" or "learn new things." Not only is this blatantly false, it also smells faintly of elitism.

My main point is that while for some, learning may give you the greatest satisfaction, for others, other activities such as being with family and friends, or playing a musical instrument, will provide the greatest satisfaction. In this way, even someone who is "ignorant" can achieve high levels of happiness. Note that this argument can also be reversed, in that different events can provide for different levels of "unhappiness" in different people, and so everyone has the ability to experience the pits of depression, whether or not they are intelligent.

But that doesn't really broach the topic of whether or not intelligent people tend to be unhappy.

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I think the way people deal with knowledge is the most important thing. if they take in knowledge and shift through, allowing the postive and valuable to influence their lives and action more than their negatives, then there is no reason to be unhappy

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It's really tough to make the generalization that intelligent people are unhappy. Just because they develop slowly socially may not necessarily mean they're unhappy, just unbalanced. I think it's not only that others classify brainiacs as nerds, but the brainiacs also do it to themselves. They don't seem to make much of an effort to change their situation if they are unhappy, they are more willing to accept it.

I find the statement made about jobs particularly interesting. Take, for example, the Forbes Celebrity 100, President Barack Obama is the guy with the most press, but is the lowest earning one on the list (with 2.5 million, but that's because of his books). President is obviously a job that requires high intellect. Would we really want our president to be paid millions of dollars? No. Because that would probably attract some people who are more interested in the money than the job, and people with high intelligence tend to hold jobs with high impact.

In short, I reiterate, intelligent people are not necessarily unhappy, just unbalanced. Although some of their jobs are not well paying monetarily, they are rich beyond means in contribution and impact. Who else would we want educating the minds of tomorrow? Only the best.

Also, it's important to remember that jobs are not solely based on intellect, being a CEO of a company may also call on good social networking skills. If you have 100 in intelligence but 0 in other skills, the "average" becomes a 50. A person who has a 90 in miscellaneous skills and a 70 in intellect still averages to an 80. So maybe the brainiacs are perfectly qualified and wonderful just where they are XD

Edited by Feist
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Also, it's important to remember that jobs are not solely based on intellect, being a CEO of a company may also call on good social networking skills. If you have 100 in intelligence but 0 in other skills, the "average" becomes a 50. A person who has a 90 in miscellaneous skills and a 70 in intellect still averages to an 80. So maybe the brainiacs are perfectly qualified and wonderful just where they are XD

Would you say that intelligence and intellect really have much to do with being happy, though? Happiness, for most people, is actually extremely dependent on levels and quality of social interaction. All that "money can't buy you love" stuff is very true. After you hit a particular limit, happiness plateaus out in terms of money. Adding additional money to what you already have has no significant impact on your overall happiness. I'm not sure, therefore, that being in a well-paid job is of much relevance to happiness. Provided you're in a decent job, most people are quite satisfied, and the majority of intelligent people are in decent jobs. Teaching is a decent job, too. It's not amazingly well paid, but it's well paid enough to sustain a pretty good level of happiness. Lack of money isn't really detrimental to happiness, anyway.

The imbalance of being socially inept is precisely what can cause great unhappiness, so I don't think it can really be dismissed as simple being "unbalanced" - purely because it does have a very tight correlation with happiness. If people interact with you well, love you, appreciate you, are friendly, talk to you etc. that's a really, really big thing in terms of happiness. Isolation, feeling 'different', failing to fit in and so on all cause unhappiness in nearly every personality type. Unless high intelligence is combined with a total lack of social understanding (e.g. in many high-performance autistics), people are well aware of what they're lacking and therefore what they're missing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

As far as I'm concerned, this statement is true. I've been a high-achiever at studies all my life, but the social interactions came much better for even the stupidest people. I definitely know the reason for that. The cause of all that is that I see the stupidity of others and I don't want to be a sequel to that. As a consequence, I tend to have much less in common with them and even if I am with them, I can't stop criticizing them for unhealthy lifestyle, stupid interactions with each other and abuse of girls. They often get insulted by my criticism and that's the way I lose the bigger mass of people. Despite that, I still manage to find some people of my own level, but they're rare these days, because even intelligent people tend to live unhealthy lifestyles and do things that i consider hazardous. Thus, I want to say that every person needs to find a match. If you're average, you have a lot of right matches for yourself, but when you are intelligent, you meet much less people of your level and it's very difficult to find friends from that hand-full of people. Two options to get out of that are: 1) become average 2) get into a serious university and socialize. I chose the latter and I'm happy with it.

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  • 5 weeks later...

At my school, the normal kids don't seem to even know that IB exsists. We just go around in our little bubble, happy as can be, and they go around as the masses.

It's true that society isn't very rewarding of intelligence, but screw society I'm going to be as happy as I want to :D

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The correctness of this statement depends on the individual circumstances. Some people who are intelligent are incredibly happy. Some are not. I believe that the notion that smart people are usually unhappy is a misconception due to the fact that the more intellectual individual will usually strive to do better more than the non-intellectual individual. The harder someone works to achieve greatness, the more stress they will have. Thus, it can be inferred that they would appear to be unhappy.

Edited by Astrophysics
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~Ignorance is Bliss~

At my school, the people who even considered taking the IB were shunned from the majority. Honestly, it was fun and games in the beginning, but right now I think some people are taking it a little too far. Some people are becoming just a little too rude.

From the people that I know, and this may be a bit of a random observation, but the more intelligent people look far more glum than the less intelligent.

Irrelevance is irrelevant.

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I dont think is true. The harder you work in life the more you will be happy in your future.

Although this does rather assume that for your effort you reap proportional (or even better) rewards... Plenty of people put the effort in without getting anything near the equivalent back, and they're probably going to be more unhappy than anyone else!

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I think happiness as related to intelligence depends on the individual, the circumstances, the environment, etc. etc.

Really, it's very individualized.

At my school, it's all very cliquish. Almost everyone who is in the IB at my school was either at Academies for the Sciences, Lyceums, or Cambridge programs for Middle school. So the cliques from then just carried on into high school. There is a LOT of social isolation, bickering, bragging, putting people down, etc. but there are some nice people as well. This might be my view because I'm one of those social outcasts (thanks to my intelligence lol)...but I guess it is very individualized.

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In my school, intelligent people are no different in terms of social status to the average students. There are the popular ones, the normal ones, and the distinctively unpopular ones. The characteristics which lead to these labels are the same for the intelligent students as they are for the average students. Sometimes, intelligent people are even revered and much sought after for help on homework etc. This is probably because being smart in my school is something to be proud of, and lots of people aspire to be so. Instead of being looked down upon, intelligent students are (if they are nice as well) quite well-connected within the social circles.

However, unhappiness doesn't stem completely from the way society treats the person. Intelligent people tend to over-complicate things and think a bit too much, and sometimes this can lead to unhappiness too. Also, they are more stressed with grades and expect more of themselves. As a result, they are hard to please academically. In addition, because of their seriousness (with studies), they tend to be less inclined to do 'silly' and 'risky' things, and miss a lot of the joy those things can create.

But of course, there are exceptions to everything.

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In my school, intelligent people are no different in terms of social status to the average students. There are the popular ones, the normal ones, and the distinctively unpopular ones. The characteristics which lead to these labels are the same for the intelligent students as they are for the average students. Sometimes, intelligent people are even revered and much sought after for help on homework etc. This is probably because being smart in my school is something to be proud of, and lots of people aspire to be so. Instead of being looked down upon, intelligent students are (if they are nice as well) quite well-connected within the social circles.

However, unhappiness doesn't stem completely from the way society treats the person. Intelligent people tend to over-complicate things and think a bit too much, and sometimes this can lead to unhappiness too. Also, they are more stressed with grades and expect more of themselves. As a result, they are hard to please academically. In addition, because of their seriousness (with studies), they tend to be less inclined to do 'silly' and 'risky' things, and miss a lot of the joy those things can create.

But of course, there are exceptions to everything.

I have to revise what I said before. I agree with you when you say that it does indeed depend on how nice or not you are, as well as how willing you are to try new and sometimes risky things. I only recently realized that I am actually well connected socially, which surprised me very much because I have a few very close friends that I am nearly always with, and a few less close but still good friends that I am also around. But apparently my definition of a friend is very stringent because many people view me as their friend (this discovery completely blew me away).

So, I agree with you, at least partially, in that your acceptance does in part depend upon how nice you are, but I maintain that it is still very highly individualized--people originally, when looking at you for the first time and deciding whether they wish to invest the effort required to truly get to know you, look at what they might gain socially and academically from such an investment-and based on this as well as many other aspects which are very specific to the situation and the people involved, decide to be your friend. THis is, in my view, the essential indicator of your social standing, or at least one of the main components.

Again, it is very HIGHLY INDIVIDUALIZED and SPECIFIC TO THE SITUATION.

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