To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the disconnect between perceived intelligence and true self-awareness, particularly in young individuals who excel academically.
Walter Kirn’s quote delves into the societal definition of intelligence as agility and quick thinking, often celebrated in academic settings like the SAT. However, he highlights a more profound challenge—true self-knowledge—which many intelligent individuals, despite their abilities to excel in external challenges, struggle to achieve. This suggests that being intellectually adept does not automatically equate to knowing oneself deeply and navigating the complexities of personal identity.
In practice
In a commencement speech to inspire graduates to seek more than just academic success.
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.
Mine Enemy is growing old -- I have at last Revenge -- The Palate of the Hate departs -- If any would avenge Let him be quick -- the Viand flits -- It is a faded Meat -- Anger as soon as fed is dead -- 'Tis starving makes it fat
Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place.
Whenever you meditate, there are glimpses. Then the mind comes in and says, 'Be happy! Look, I have done it.' And immediately the contact is lost.
One of the things I learned, the easiest of lessons, was that the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be.
One ship drives east and other drives west by the same winds that blow. It's the set of the sails and not the gales that determines the way they go.
Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.
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