Superficial Intelligence

In even the most intelligent communities, the glue that holds communities together isn't the essential but the superficial and weak ties.  I continue to underestimate the importance of the superficial in our lives, and this is a blindspot I need to be more insightful about.  I will be sucked into conversations about what is wrong with our society and in particular what is BS about society, but at the same time the glue that holds is sometimes made of that very stuff.

Until now I had formulated ten intelligences which I continue to play with and morph and change as I evolve and grow.  When people complain about stuff which belongs on Facebook, they are actually being far more elitist than they would care to admit and yet we also engage the superficial.  We have to because it is a part and part parcel of life.   My daughters wedding over the weekend was not constructed as a speech to the United Nations but full of enjoyment, fun and celebration and in that construction I discover superficial intelligence.

Superficial intelligence is no more the 11th intelligence as is Spinal Tap making 11 louder.

So this is not the 11th intelligence, there is only 1 superficial intelligence, for all the other intelligences are non-superficial.  If I don't pay respect to superficial intelligence, then I focus on alienation, I am veering towards elitism and I am merely standing on a pedestal, that itself is a superficial construction.  Once I embrace superficial intelligence, I able to focus more rather than less on the value of non-superficial intelligence.

What is superficial but not intelligent is to simply label things as BS.  There are plenty of people who go around pointing out what is wrong with the world and the flaws and faults of our system, but there are a few whose contribution leads to enlightening transformation, but this transformation is not BS free, it simply reframes existence between that is about value and that which is waste.   Waste is a natural part of existence even though we do not often acknowledge it as.  The Eagles number "Wasted Time" expresses this reality of existence :

Non-superficial is a life-choice but it is the road less traveled but it is no guarantee of finding personal transformation, or a social evolution or even the meaning of life.  Though I have used the colour brown to denote "Superficial Intelligence" and have created a hive to that effect, brown does not necessarily denote BS.  For sure it is a great thing if our focus involves mixing the palette of existence as if life is artform, and there is breathtaking possibilities down this road but I also realize that muddy brown is also a part of that mix, no matter how fine brush the goal is not to end up with muddy brown.

For me the way to muddy brown is when people follow rather than experiment for themselves and in so doing explore what emanates from within them, rather that what it is that emanates from me.  Arnold Schwarzenegger has an adonis body because of the life choices he made but that does not make him more supreme than any of us and in the course of life, those life choices will come up against the process of aging.  I met a great-grand mother at the home of my daughters new family and she is 102, just because Arnold pumps iron and is a statue of fitness does not provide him any guarantee that he will age as well as this particular woman has.  Since there is no guarantees in the quality of life we live therein is my homage to superficial intelligence.

The shoe is the sign of superficial intelligence - so I walk only in my own shoes and make sure that the footsteps I leave are simply an example of one existence, but if my shoe is the sign, then I certainly hope that people will get to know or understand the value of superficial intelligence and fertile value of all things brown.

"