Unhelpful

I’m currently reading A. J. Jacob’s book “The Know-It-All : One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, which details the author’s quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. The project is the main narrative through which other stories are told, as relates to various entries in the encyclopedia itself, and is as one would expect, crammed with non-sequiturs. It’s also a project I’d considered undertaking myself, which is additionally frightening to me since I would be prone to the historical bias and limitations inherent in my own inherited 1968 edition.

One of the recurring themes is that of Jacob’s childhood belief that he was, in fact, the “smartest boy in the world”, a concept fostered by a supportive family and educational system. On the face of it, one has to laugh: the smartest boy in the world ending up being the editor-at-large of Esquire magazine just doesn’t seem like a logical progression. This isn’t to say anything against Jacobs or Esquire, and in fact, it’s a point the author makes himself. The reason I find it so amusing, however, is that I can relate to it personally. [continued...]Growing up, I constantly heard about how much “potential” I had. This isn’t a word generally applied by teachers to children who constantly get top grades and the like; “potential” is the boogeyman a child is hounded with only when he exhibits high intelligence with problematic achievement. He has great potential, but he gets bored with routine assignments and neglects them. He has great potential, but he procrastinates on tasks that don’t interest him. This translates into “tests extremely well, but grades are only mediocre due to homework neglect”. Due in part to this, I was burdened by the conception that I was, in all fairness, a misunderstood genius. I hadn’t written a novel by age twelve, and I certainly hadn’t composed any symphonies. Hell, I hadn’t even bothered discovering a new mathematic principle. In life, sometimes you have to take genius as it comes, I suppose.

Don’t get the impression that I was one of these thoroughly annoying children who correct the grammar of others, or who engage in pedantic explanations about the difference between two equally inscrutable theories of universal causation or whatnot. I’m sure I was merely somewhat annoying, and only from time to time. To my credit, I had consoled myself to being merely “rather intelligent” by the time I hit my teens.

The following anecdote I relate can sound a little morose, resentful or self-pitying. I think it’s important to state that it is not any of these things and that I always have a great laugh at my own expense whenever I tell it.

One time, while I was serving in the Air Force, I was having a conversation with my roommate at the time, Warren. Warren was one of these people that, when he’d ask you a question that sounded merely rhetorical, would leave you with the impression that it wasn’t necessarily so. After pontificating about some subject or another, he once gave me one of these wryly amused looks that were amplified by his caterpillar-like mustache.

“I bet you think you’re the smartest person you know.”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if he was irritated at me, amused, or just trying to rile me up to see which way I’d take it. Sometimes, when I would be pretty sure he was just riling me up, I’d deliberately take the bait anyway just for our amusement, and rail on until I was out of breath. This wasn’t one of those times, so I considered the question as if it were serious.

“No,” I replied, “I’m not. In fact, I’m pretty sure my wife is smarter than me. Not in some of the things that interest me the most, as our interests don’t overlap to a huge extent, but generally speaking, I’d say she had the edge on me. And I know other people who are smarter than I am, too.” She proved me right, many years later, by divorcing me.

To be honest, I doubt there’s any connection, but I can’t resist a punch line like that, it’s just too funny to not use.

Sometimes, I still make a joke about self-congratulatory assurances of intelligence. When a co-worker was telling me about her husband’s know-it-all attitude, I feigned a very resigned look and commiserated thusly:

“Men can get into this mode where it’s worse to admit not knowing something than it is to state a false opinion. As the quotation goes, ‘sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always certain.’ This attitude that some men have that they know everything is just annoying affront to, well, those of us who do, and let me assure you, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a goddamn burden.”

This was only amusing to her because I am actually really easy to get along with and not prone to fits of bombast. If, of course, religious topics come up, such as typography or Linux-as-the-answer-to-everything or 18th century philosophy or Apologism and Pascal’s Wager, or would-be successor audio formats to mp3, then all bets are off. I think it’s a good idea to have a few trivial issues you feel strongly about that really aren’t that important. It makes one a better person. It’s akin to the way a dog marks its territory: Sometimes you just have to dry hump Garamond so it knows you love it.

Warren was interesting in that he exhibited some of my own neurosis in ways different than I did. To get back an earlier point, Warren was all about unlocking his inner genius potential. The way he did this was, around 1991, to buy an Apple Macintosh IIci, which was at the time nearly the top of the line, and then as now, rudely expensive. He suffered under the delusion that if he only had a better computer, one without the limitations imposed on him by lesser systems, he would somehow be inevitably drawn to follow his Muse and do the art he was intended to do. I don’t remember the details, but I believe the art Warren was meant to do was either write the Great American Novel or create meaningful expressive art in the digital realm. Warren would let me use his computer, which was certainly a step up from mine, as I think I still had a then-venerable Commodore 64, though I may have had the Commodore Amiga 500 by that time. Either way, he had me solidly beat in the productivity department.

As I didn’t have exclusive access to Warren’s computer, I wasn’t going to use it for anything that I would get too attached to like writing at length or making music. I did experiment with Photoshop 1.0 and 2.0, which was pretty engaging. I would also play Warren’s games. One of the best, incidentally, was “3 in Three”, a clever puzzle game with an actual plot of sorts.

The problem, though, is that the issue wasn’t with the tool, it was with the toolmaker. Warren’s new computer didn’t motivate him to do the things with it he thought he should be doing. His new Mac didn’t make him happy; if anything, it made him less happy. Before the new Mac came, he could console himself that the reason he wasn’t writing his novel was that he didn’t have a real word processor, or that he wasn’t composing his music because he didn’t have real audio software, or that he wasn’t programming his hit game because he didn’t have access to a powerful enough programming language and hardware. After the IIci, he had to deal with the fact that his block was something personal, and not just a technology issue. There are many people I know who could learn something from this, including me.

Potential can be a harsh mistress. I’ve seen people chase their latest consuming whims in order to get the car that will finally make them feel successful, the outfit that will finally make them look how they feel inside, the computer upgrade that will finally make them able to unleash their inner artist, the girlfriend that will finally make them happy, the new camera which will allow them to engage their photography without a handicap, some new gadget or possession or finished collection that will finally release them from their chains that keep them from achieving their potential.

This line of reasoning can be maddeningly seductive, and I’m reminded of how poor it is when I consider the specific example of photography. The professional photography magazines are awash in reviews and ads for equipment, cameras, and software that would boggle my mind almost as much as my wallet. I think to myself that I would do more photography if I had better tools. Let me deflate myself for you without hesitation: I’m not suggesting that I’m a $10,000 camera away from becoming the next Robert Mapplethorpe or Kevin Carter. I’m merely good enough to amuse myself, and that’s about it. I do, however, have a modest digital camera, and I look at these pricier models and start to convince myself that if I only had one of these especially sweet higher-end prosumer cameras, it would allow me to do more of what I want. Then I remind myself there are people using truly retro devices including old Polaroid instant cameras, the Fisher Price PXL-2000 toy video camera, clunky security cameras, and ridiculously cheaply mass-produced cameras from the heyday of Soviet and early Chinese manufacturing and using them to produce art which is breathtaking. Clearly, equipment is not a limiting factor. Art is what artists do, not what artists do when they finally have the latest and greatest.

Maybe the key to feeling smart isn’t to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and the key to being a photographer isn’t a Nikon D200, and the key to writing the Great American Novel isn’t a brand new Apple computer and the key to feeling successful isn’t showing up to a party in a new Porsche 911. Maybe the key to all of these has something to do with figuring out how to push what you’ve got as far as you can, and realizing that you own your own limitations. What a fucking relief.

But then again, maybe a new set of Brittanica and a Canon EOS 350D and an Athlon 64 might make me a little more sure about all of this…