Multiple dumbnesses

[marsden_online]

Quoted in toto from Seth Godin, because I think this insight is directly applicable to more than one of my friends.

About twenty five years ago, Howard Gardner taught us his theory of multiple intelligences. He described the fact that there's not just one kind of intelligence, in fact there are at least seven (1 Bodily-kinesthetic, 2 Interpersonal, 3 Verbal-linguistic, 4 Logical-mathematical, 5 Intrapersonal, 6 Visual-spatial, 7 Musical, 8 Naturalistic). This makes perfect sense—people are good at different things.

The flip side of this occurred to me the other day, as I was busy judging someone for being really dumb. Of course, no one is really dumb. And certainly no one deserves to be judged as such. If we're good at different things, we're also bad at different things, right?

The story people tell about you (and the one you tell about yourself in the way you act) may be broadcasting one of your weaknesses louder than you deserve. We often fail to hire or trust or work with someone merely because one of their attributes stands out as below par. That's our loss.

(I need to go read up on these and figure out which ones I'm dumb at.)

Comments

[slothphil.livejournal.com]

I always felt the "multiple intelligences" thing was silly, or more accurately, stretching an element of truth to a nonsensical extreme. "This word means something positive. We must ensure it applies to everyone!"

Obviously people can be, and are, intelligent in different ways, but when you start having "bodily-kinesthetic intelligence" it's simply a case of mangling the English language. Further, intelligence differences don't really fit into neat little categories -- I kinda get the impression that Gardner is sometimes going "This thing is important to me, and some people seem attuned to it...aha, another type of intelligence!" Naturalistic and Existential certainly have that feel (yes, he's added a ninth one). Maybe an artist would argue for an intelligence of colour perception.

[marsden-online.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Wikipedia article covers the complete lack of substantiation to his theory pretty well.

The point that just because you (think you) are poor at something doesn't mean you're not good at something else is worthwhile though.

I guess the piece appealed to me because I always try to add 'does x well' at one end or the other whenever I'm having issues with someone's ability to do something.