What makes people smart? Back in grade school, the smart kids were the ones who memorized the material the best. In college, they were the ones who took on extra activities and made the most of their time in procuring a job. When school gets finished, the smart ones are the ones who produce the best ideas. I’ve always been fond of this quote, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” With 7 billion people on this planet, a lot of ideas are produced an only a miniscule amount of them are any good. So what makes a good idea?
Good ideas makes people think. Sam wrote this tweet:
Just realized “Trust Sleepy’s for the rest of your life” was a pun. Genius marketing!
— Sam Stortz (@SamStortz_SODMG) April 7, 2014
This is smart thinking because it’s a play on words. The bed could act as a casket and also a nice place to sleep. When your brain has to produce thoughts to understand what is happening, that is good. Smart people like having to think to understand something.
Another example is a song lyric that says “I feel so alone when I’m without you.” This is a normal feeling that when you are not with someone, you feel alone. Now change the word without to with, “I feel so alone when I’m with you.” Now this lyric has developed into something deeper and requiring more thought. This lyric says more about a relationship that isn’t working out and the person feels alone even when they are together. The contradicting nature of being alone when you are together makes for a thoughtful phrase.
Girl in the back is the hottest girl in the show
The same logic applies to why people get so hung up on Game of Thrones. The writing makes it so that there is nothing obvious. Anyone can be killed off and all plot lines twist and turn. This makes people ponder what is going to happen next and this creates a big buzz. True Detective, Twin Peaks, and all of the other best series have this same feeling. Everyone was guessing what was going to happen. This is a huge metric when deciding whether something is considered “good”. It’s why I know Twilight is bad. The more thought that something provides, the better it is.
So how is this concept applied to the real world? I’ve found that most people don’t like to think. The majority of people are happy living their life and being told what to do. Thinking isn’t something that seems important. For me this blog is my thinking. It’s my outlet to what goes on through my mind and I like sharing it with others. I don’t even consider myself all that smart. I’m just a guy who has learned how to put his ideas into WordPress. Out of the box thinking is crucial because the limits to this world are unknown. Anything can happen and the mind is a powerful tool.
Very odd that you bring up the lyric thing of ‘I feel so alone without you’ versus with you. I’m sure you saw, but I tweeted about Brick by Ben Folds Five.
Specifically the part “Driving back, to her apartment, and for the moment, we’re alone. She’s alone, I’m alone, now I know it.” struck me and I thought it was really smart.
I guess that just shows we agree on what we think smart is.