Without empathy and persistence, high IQ is just a cheap parlor trick

By David McElroy · January 9, 2015

When I was young, I believed that intelligence was more important than anything else. I saw it as a trump card that allowed a person to come out on top every time in life. And I was arrogant enough to almost always believe I was the smartest person in the room.

Nobody ever quite told me that intelligence was more important than anything, but the subtle message I got was that a high IQ was a golden ticket for life. I was praised for being smart and clever, so I wanted to be seen as intelligent. It became my identity.

As an adult, I’ve done pretty well on IQ tests. Most of the ones I’ve taken put me between 155 and 165. That’s not enough to get me into any record books, but it’s nice.

I’ve always questioned myself, though. What if I weren’t as smart as people said I was? What if I were nothing but a fraud who took tests well? And what if I suddenly quit doing well on the tests? Would I still have the same value?

Over the past 10 or 15 years, I’ve realized something scary — at least for someone who came to identify with intelligence as much as I did. Being smart — having a high IQ — is fairly meaningless. It might make someone clever. It might mean a person can figure things out — and have quick insights about other things — that other people struggle with.

But high intelligence doesn’t make someone successful. It doesn’t make him a decent person. And it definitely doesn’t make him happy.

I put too much of my hope in smarts. For years, I didn’t put nearly enough faith into things such as hard work, persistence, love and empathy. And that’s one of the biggest reasons I haven’t done many of the great things I expected to accomplish in life.

I expected to be able to show up and be called great. I expected to be recognized for my genius and praised forever for my cleverness, insight and glib tongue.

I was mistaken.

I like being bright. I really do. I didn’t do anything to create it, of course, so it’s not something I can take pride it, any more than I can take pride in being blue-eyed or right-handed.

Being smarter or less intelligent is a bit like how tall you are. It’s a combination of genetics, environmental factors and luck. It might help me with certain games or puzzles. It might help me impress people sometimes. It might give me an advantage in figuring some things out before most people do, but it also comes with heavy disadvantages.

Believing you’re the smartest person in the room promotes arrogance. It promotes behavior that others see as condescending, even if you don’t mean it that way. Maybe worst of all, it makes you lazy, because you can do better than most others without ever trying.

So you stop trying.

There’s another downside. It’s very lonely, simply because it can contribute to making you feel very different — simply because you see things quickly that others don’t see very easily. Whether you’re objectively right about all of what you see or not isn’t the issue. You feel as though you have a kind of sight where others have blindness — and that makes you feel lonely among others. It’s sort of like seeing colors where other people see just monochrome. At least, that’s what it felt like to me.

I had to learn empathy as I got older. I had to try to learn not to be condescending. (I’m humiliated now when I look at some of the ways I treated people early in my adult life.) I had to learn that nobody cares what I scored on an IQ test. I had to learn that they only care what I can produce for them — what I can give them of value. Just showing up isn’t enough.

I used to be really impressed with high intelligence, but it seems almost trivial now. I still appreciate its possibilities, but I’m even more sensitive to its dangers. Most of all, though, I’m aware that it’s never enough.

I doubt I’ll ever take an IQ test again. There’s nothing wrong with them, as long as you understand that they’re a very, very narrow measure of something pretty nebulous and hard to define. But for me, the time is long past when I valued it so much for myself. I’m weary of my former worship of it. And there’s still a part of me that fears I’m a fraud — that I’m not as bright as everyone has always told me — and if that’s true, I don’t really want to know.

I still value smart people. I enjoy smart friends in the same way that an athletic person might enjoy having athletic friends. I hope to marry a very intelligent and curious woman. I hope to have very intelligent and curious children.

But I want my children to see intelligence as a basic, normal, accepted thing — which is worth nothing without their hard work and persistence. I want them to get their value not from being smart, but from the love, care and understanding they give to others.

High IQ is nice, but love, empathy, hard work and persistence will get you further in life — and they’ll make you a person much more worthy of being loved and appreciated by others.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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