I often feel that if was more successful, I would be unbearably conceited. That is if I wasn't an isolated grad student working in a marginalized economics tradition at a second-tier university. Back in India, I had ruminated on the question of arrogance and come to the conclusion that it is the result of defining yourself by and clinging to that aspect of your personhood which you feel is most acceptable to the world. In the process, you deny yourself the possibility that there could be more to you and close yourself off to new ideas, experiences and people.
I am not so sure anymore. I find myself reverting to my habit of judging people as intelligent or stupid based on something they said. Maybe it is a consequence of not being a part of a community of grad students. In isolation, one starts feeling either too smart or too stupid. With me it is usually the former and I suppose that's the case for most privileged males (although I am not that privileged in this country). What makes me uncomfortable is the possibility that conceit will further increase my isolation. The more you think that most people you come across are not that bright, the less you socialize. Isolation reinforces your conceit thereby breeding further isolation, until you become disconnected from the world and start living a parallel existence.
I read something this morning that made me return to the question of conceit. The author said that any sustained interaction requires members of the group to stoop to a lower level of intellect. People are smart in unique ways and to interact fruitfully they need to descend to a common level of intellectual discourse which is comprehensible to everyone in the group, who might be equally smart but in different ways. The lowest common denominator, so to speak. Being a part of the group invariably involves this sacrifice. The question of conceit becomes muddled because if you are smart in a unique way, how can you compare your intelligence to someone else's? It is like comparing apples and origins. Also, even if a person said something stupid, it is impossible to know why they said it unless you put literally put yourself in the other person's shoes. The dumb utterance may have some perfectly smart justification which they failed to articulate.
Of course, the lesser you have to mutually stoop, the closer you are likely to be to that person. You can understand each other without the need for long winded explanations. Humour and camaraderie blossom in such relationships.
I am not so sure anymore. I find myself reverting to my habit of judging people as intelligent or stupid based on something they said. Maybe it is a consequence of not being a part of a community of grad students. In isolation, one starts feeling either too smart or too stupid. With me it is usually the former and I suppose that's the case for most privileged males (although I am not that privileged in this country). What makes me uncomfortable is the possibility that conceit will further increase my isolation. The more you think that most people you come across are not that bright, the less you socialize. Isolation reinforces your conceit thereby breeding further isolation, until you become disconnected from the world and start living a parallel existence.
I read something this morning that made me return to the question of conceit. The author said that any sustained interaction requires members of the group to stoop to a lower level of intellect. People are smart in unique ways and to interact fruitfully they need to descend to a common level of intellectual discourse which is comprehensible to everyone in the group, who might be equally smart but in different ways. The lowest common denominator, so to speak. Being a part of the group invariably involves this sacrifice. The question of conceit becomes muddled because if you are smart in a unique way, how can you compare your intelligence to someone else's? It is like comparing apples and origins. Also, even if a person said something stupid, it is impossible to know why they said it unless you put literally put yourself in the other person's shoes. The dumb utterance may have some perfectly smart justification which they failed to articulate.
Of course, the lesser you have to mutually stoop, the closer you are likely to be to that person. You can understand each other without the need for long winded explanations. Humour and camaraderie blossom in such relationships.
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