Why Being Too Clever Is Not So Smart

I was sitting on the floor in the bedroom of my friend, Debra Lewis at the Cheney Hall of Residence in Brookes University one fine rainy day in Oxford late in the last century.

We were listening to Tom Waits growling something meaningful on a record player. (This was back when record players were the norm, not some cute retro fad.) We had just returned from vacation and had stories to tell about home. Debra's story struck me in a way that made me uncomfortable. It went like this:

"I shared my philosophy essay with my parents and they didn't understand a word of it!"

I need to interpret the exclamation mark. It wasn't shock or alarm or dismay; it was delight. Like me, Debra was the first in her family to go to university. She was also on a government grant. Unlike me, that she possessed an elitist form of knowledge that put her above and beyond the comprehension of her doting parents uplifted her.

We all have to outgrow our parents. We have to make our own way in a world that is beyond them. We can't expect them to know what we know or care about, in the same way that older generations can't expect younger ones to resonate with the same forces that shaped their weird worldviews. But even at the time I thought Debra should have tried to share what she had learned with her captivated audience.

If she'd worked at it, Debra could have broken down the complexities of Karl Popper's arguments and the position of the Logical Positivists to have been illuminating and even interesting to her parents. She could have created a bridge, forged a link, opened a door that would have connect their very different worlds. We can break anything complex or complicated down into language clear enough to engage the imagination of an interested person. All it takes is an effort, humility, and a generosity of spirit. These are not attributes that are not typically high on the list of first-year students, but they are innate instincts that are worth recognising and developing.

P.S. The smartest thing I learned from Karl Popper: it is pointless attacking the weakness of another person's argument - (they know the weakness) - you need to tackle the strengths of what they believe to make any impact.