The subject line is a novel by “Sachinn Garg”. There is a chapter called “A Theory of Intelligence” in the novel that I feel is the sole reason for Sachinn to write this novel. I liked that chapter and following is the summary of that chapter where Narayanan (A character in the novel who is his friend) has explained knowledge, learning and intelligence.
Sometimes in life, on our way to big things, hindrances hinder us and direct us to bigger things. Most of us do not realize the range of learning capacity that the human mind can take up. Wikipedia says learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values and wisdom.
Let us compare the process of building intelligence to that of building the prowess to sing, an art in which the perished are as un-mourned as the successful ones are revered. A singer metamorphoses from a throat capable of only speaking and eating to gaining an omnipresent magical voice which can change moods in split seconds. The creator is serving a noble cause. It is all too analogous between the brain and the talker turned singer throat. Initially, the throat is just a passage of wind or food, as potent as a household pipe, ready to be worked upon by the possessor. Similarly, the brain is a piece of blank canvas, on which, inadvertently, the brush would be picked up and a drawing will be made, on its own, right from the first second after it is born. And then begins round two. A beginner pledges to car e the insides of his throat to achieve a final product which is a listener’s delight. It had started as a simple passage capable of not much pleasure to a third person. Just like a human brain is capable of fifty words as a toddler among a few other activities, with dismal dexterity. But then, the possessor spent hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades doing practice with deep concentration, working on the problems which would increase the potency of his throat at every stage. The more the time spent on the throat by the possessor, the better it became as it developed from a passage to a beautiful singer’s throat.
The analogy is obvious in humans. As a person gathers experience, dramatic or otherwise, intriguing or otherwise, stimulating or otherwise, thought provoking or otherwise, he is sharpening his intellect as a desired byproduct or otherwise. The more he thinks, the sharper he becomes.
Man is progressive by nature. Instinctively, he seeks progress and a higher goal towards which he can work. The direction of this goal can have infinite possibilities, levels, spheres, definitions, time lines. As a kid, you aim to complete two rounds of the block on your bicycle without falling off. As an adult, one aims to earn ten thousand euros per month before the age of thirty. Walking on the road, one aims to reach the destination before five thirty p.m. The definitions have no end.
A one minute old baby is dumb. Forget about walking or crawling, he cannot even sit. What an adorable but pitiable state, one might think. But then he sees, hears, observes people around him and out of nowhere develops an ability to sit up. In the process, he is exercising his brain and sharpening his intellect to the next level and keeps on doing it until the day every one of these activities settles into his subconscious and he does not need to think before doing them. These are grooming years where the demarcation between a genius and a less intelligent person has already started in a rather nondescript manner.
A genius: person with great analytical and social intelligence, whose thoughts run like France’s fastest train, TGV.
An idiot: person with highly unstructured stream of thought; that too, very few and slow.
But what sort of insights into their early years of upbringing can be made which can be generalized on a much broader scale, as broad as the whole world?
Starting at the very root, the very first school of an individual, which is common to almost everyone, is the home and in fact, the home takes up a few of the most crucial building up years of an individual. The demarcation has already started at this stage.
A hard working peasant who ploughs the field for sixteen hours a day automatically programs his son that ideal number of working hours in a day is close to sixteen. An avid reader automatically programs his son that reading is a cool thing to do. A foodaholic programs his son that eating is important in life. An alcoholic automatically kills the stigma attached to drinking. It’s a constant process. I am not saying that this is the case everywhere. But still, I truly believe this is the most general classification there can ever be. Initially parents rub off their own selves on their kids because they themselves constitute a major portion of the environment of the kids, but slowly, the term environment becomes a lot broader and several factors come in and hence the sum total of all those factors begin to contribute and the situation becomes a bit too complex to be understood.
But the bottom line remains unchanged. It is all about the mental exercise that one has to go through. The harder the brain works, the stronger it becomes.
Much has been said about the role of genes in the determination of several features like obesity, character and other personality traits like intelligence, conveniently ignoring the role of the environment in the determination of the final product, a fully functional brain.
It is the process of learning which is more important than the possession of knowledge itself. There are 3 stages of every activity namely, learning, mastering and the third is when it has entered sub-conscious.
The learning stage is when we have to concentrate the hardest, our brain grows at the maximum rate; we are sharpening it at the fastest pace in the course of learning that activity.
The mastering stage is the stage when we begin to bring in factors like efficiency and time limit and quality. We try to do better at all these factors and even though it still needs us to concentrate and think; the level is definitely a little lower than the learning stage.
The third stage is when the activity has entered our sub-conscious and we can do it when half-asleep or watching TV. We have sucked the juice off the sugarcane and nothing more is left to be had from the activity. We need not concentrate on it further for its smooth running and are doing it purely for the sake of career, philanthropy or worst of all, momentum, inertia.
Finding meaning in life is a luxury and before having this luxury we need to have the license to look for it. And before looking for the license, we need to have a desire for it. And if we have all this, we need to have the resources and the drive to move out to find the meaning. No wonder very few people manage to succeed in this arduous task.
Education is the most basic exercise that a brain can have. It makes us concentrate, think, analyze, understand, grasp, reject or accept whatever comes in front of us in an ideal manner. Thus in the process, our brain grows. It has to grow. It grows inadvertently.
Group eating now (Anil, Me, Aditya and Limasri)
Last, the gift time...
