The columnist Arthur C. Brooks recently quoted Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Garden of Eden in which a character notes, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
This is, he notes, a fair corollary to the common saying, “ignorance is bliss.”
This raises an important question: can smarter people use their brains to simply be happier? Or does knowing and understanding more about the world doom us to melancholy?
My hope, aspiration, and much of my work over the last 20 years points toward saying “yes” to the first question and a definite “no” toward the second.
Eight Types of Intelligence
The fact of the matter is, intelligence is not a black/white, on/off, trait. There are, according to Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor at Harvard University, 8 distinct types of intelligence. This idea derives from his book “Frames of Mind,” written in 1983, so you will have no-doubt heard of this and other views that there are 4 types of intelligence, 7 types of intelligence, and so on.
For Gardner, the 8 types of intelligence are:
- Spatial Intelligence
- Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
- Musical Intelligence
- Linguistic Intelligence
- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
- Interpersonal Intelligence
- Intrapersonal Intelligence
- Naturalistic Intelligence
Each type of intelligence offers a unique set of strengths that can be utilized in a person’s day-to-day life. For instance, someone with great amounts of spatial intelligence might be drawn (pun intended) to a career in art or architecture. I have always been a mediocre drawer, but a moderate amount of spatial intelligence has often left me in charge of navigation when traveling with family and friends. Here I realize that if you’re under 30, you might not have traveled at all in your adult life without a smartphone to guide you each step of the way. But before 2007, we all had to use paper maps to get us places and that can be very hard for someone with poor spatial skills.
A person with great bodily-kinesthetic intelligence might be a natural athlete. At the other end of the spectrum might be a person who bumps into things a lot or trips and falls on even mildly uneven surfaces.
Being Flexible with our Complex Selves
The other kinds of intelligence are similar. Broken out this way, it can free us from value judgements about being “smart.” Instead, we can see that each of us is smart in different ways. Plumbers need to be very smart with spatial intelligence and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence as they reach around and add or remove pipes and valves by touch under our sinks and behind our toilets.
Therapists require a great deal of interpersonal intelligence, the ability to empathize, understand, and relate well with other people. But therapists also need a great amount of intrapersonal intelligence if they are going to last long at their jobs, as it can be easy to forget about thinking about and taking care of oneself when one’s whole job requires an outward focus. Compassion fatigue and empathy fatigue are powerful drains on everyone caring for the health of others.
When I was in grade-school some 30 years ago, I was talented in the logical-mathematical category. At the time, intelligence was largely composed of this and linguistic intelligence. If you could analyze complex problems and had a broad vocabulary, you might have been called a “genius,” regardless of your abilities anywhere else.
Interestingly, this skill of mine led me (or teachers led me) toward an interest in math and a possible career in accounting. This made sense for a while, as I enjoyed the problem-solving aspect of reconciling financial books, analyzing spreadsheets, and so on. However, very early into my college career, I began to see the whole process as painfully formulaic. The complex computations were just that: computations, and the abstract financial ideas I was drawn to initially turned out to be painfully mundane numbers that just needed to be shuffled around from place to place.
Meanwhile, in high school I did poorly in English classes and had little interest in reading. But after stumbling across philosophy, I fell in love with analyzing ideas, sentences, and language itself. Thus started my shift from business and accounting to philosophy and religious studies. I’m still relatively terrible in the linguistic intelligence category, to be honest. But tools like spell-checker and Google (for when I need to look up a word) allow me to analyze, think abstractly, write, and edit as well as many folks who are gifted with great linguistic skills.
Finding Happiness
As I found out, not only do we all possess different degrees of the different types of intelligence, our strengths might not take us in the directions we first think they will. It’s a bit like taking the Myers-Briggs survey and being given a list of careers that might suit you and you saying, “no, no way,” to all of them.
Knowing our strengths and where we might fit best in our contemporary society is just a tool that we can use to figure out our next steps.
Arthur C. Brooks, in his essay, suggests that the real path to happiness comes outside of any type of intelligence: in the way of “faith, family, friendship, and work that serves others.” This is a fine extension of the ethical tradition known as virtue ethics, in which happiness comes in cultivating and perhaps perfecting our varied virtues.
With these goals as our compass, we can let go of the habits of mind that often destroy happiness. We can utilize our strengths, account for our weaknesses, and better understand others around us. And this—especially finding our friends and support structures in this world—may be the greatest way for us to achieve happiness.
Justin Whitaker, Ph.D., holds a doctorate in Buddhist ethics from the University of London. He has given lectures, and taught Buddhist studies and Philosophy at Oxford University, the University of Hong Kong, the University of Montana, and at Antioch University’s intensive study-abroad program in India. A certified meditation teacher, he is a regular contributor to Patheos.com, and Senior Correspondent for Buddhistdoor Global. Justin is the official blog writer for Sunflower Counseling MT in Missoula, Butte, Kalispell, Billings, and surrounding areas. He lives in Missoula with his family.