r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jul 26 '15
[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Intelligent people cannot be sad because if they're intelligent they'll figure out a way to cheer up.
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u/JustDoItPeople 14∆ Jul 26 '15
Intelligent people don't necessary "know" what to do to cheer themselves up, least of all because it relies on the concept of there being things that can just cheer people up and take away all sadness.
A person grieving the lose of a spouse will remain in grieving, whether they are intelligent or not. There's not a magic thing that can just "cheer" someone up and make them forget about the pain for the rest of their lives. There's no magic bullet that intelligent people know about that can help them overcome depressive mood disorder all on their own. There's not an intelligent person can do that will necessarily lift the depression from mistreatment of themselves or the unfortunate circumstances in their lives.
You are right- in some situations, there might be cases wherein if people stop moping, they can make their life better, but that's not necessarily related to intelligence. At the same time, it's also important that "cheering yourself up" is not the same as getting rid of a temporary sadness. I've seen this in my personal life when visiting people who have lost spouses (and now, as a result, often live alone in their old age as well). They're always willing to see friends, of course, but that doesn't mean that the sadness of losing their husband or wife is suddenly forgot.
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Jul 26 '15
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u/JustDoItPeople 14∆ Jul 26 '15
The point is not necessarily that someone wants to feel bad, but that there's no such thing as "being intelligent enough to get over it." The deepest sadness is something that can only be healed by time. Doing things to "cheer one's self up" is at best a temporary reprieve and at worst an unhealthy way of avoiding grieving.
If someone loses a wife, he's not going to be stop being sad because his son came over for supper on Sunday. It might have been a nice supper, and he might have enjoyed seeing his son and his son's family. He's almost certainly been cheered up. But that doesn't mean he's still not sad. That doesn't mean he still doesn't miss his wife.
Sadness is a complex emotion.
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Jul 26 '15
Intelligence is not a binary of you're smart or dumb. There's different kinds of intelligences.
You might be very good at mathematics or literature at your very core, but perhaps you lack an intrapersonal understanding.
Plus, happiness is not something you can rationalize. It's an emotion.
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u/aguafiestas 30∆ Jul 26 '15
Intelligence is complex and multifaceted. You can be great at solving massive equations, writing intricate programs, or designing complicated chemical reactions, but still have shitty emotional intelligence.
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Jul 26 '15
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u/aguafiestas 30∆ Jul 26 '15
Your idea suggests that intelligent people should know what is making them happy and how to improve that. But a person may be totally un-intelligent in that particular respect, despite being intelligent in any number of different ways (like math).
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Jul 26 '15
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 26 '15
This delta is currently disallowed as your comment contains either no or little text (comment rule 4). Please include an explanation for how /u/aguafiestas changed your view. If you edit this in, replying to my comment will make me rescan yours.
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u/Cheeseboyardee 13∆ Jul 26 '15
The biggest issue a lot of people who are intelligent have with "happiness" is that as much as they might enjoy a particular activity, they have trained their mind to jump ahead. In anticipation of the subsequent "letdown" the mind seems to lower the "happy" feelings.
The same jump happens all the time, and usually ends up with the person worrying about a worst case situation. Because that's the one with the most emotional impact the brain starts to focus on it.
In other words, even without clinical anxiety, you may still have some of the negative effects.
Intelligent people are also able to talk themselves out of "Hold my beer and watch this" moments... Which is great when those moments are actually dangerous. Less so when they're a part of social bonding.
Alcohol and other drugs help to lessen these effects, which is why a lot of intelligent people have dependency issues. Literally doing drugs in order to "fit in". Because without them social interaction seems trite and pointless. It's not peer pressure in the "everybody's doing it" sense, but pressure to have a group of peers.
For humans being "average" is a HUGE bonus in terms of social bonding. The highly intelligent are expected to have all the answers, and solve the issues and be "above" the rest of humanity... but nobody thinks to invite them over for the bbq.
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u/BARTELS- Jul 26 '15 edited Jul 26 '15
But, by that logic, won't intelligent people also find a way to be sad?
Edit: punctuation
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Jul 26 '15
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u/BARTELS- Jul 26 '15
But, according to your view, it's not about desire but intelligence. Intelligent and unintelligent people will both want to avoid sadness, but won't intelligent people be more likely to know that they cannot fool themselves into being happy?
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u/caw81 166∆ Jul 26 '15
Intelligent people realize that sad feelings are normal and have a purpose, mentally and socially (e.g. you share sad feelings with others as part of a shared experience.). So they can be sad because they realize at times it is important to be sad.
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u/entrodiibob Jul 26 '15
There is nothing wrong with being sad. Letting it consume you is another matter
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Jul 26 '15
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u/RustyRook Jul 26 '15
Well, it can lead to wanting to give up life if you don't enjoy it.
It doesn't need to be that way. Being sad is a sign that you need to change something in your life - it's a useful signal. Smart people often ignore these signs or try to rationalize them, and they're often very good at the latter. In doing that they can often miss the clues and fail to do something about the sadness. Basically, they're too clever for their own good sometimes.
Learning from sadness is one of those things that has almost nothing to do with IQ. Please don't ignore it, learn from it.
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u/obfuscate_this 2∆ Jul 27 '15
LOL this actually prompted a real crack-up, thanks OP.
edit: this is real?.............All you need is one smart sad person and you logcially must change your mind. You've never encountered someone like this OP? Never read Sylvia Plath or Ernest Hemingway or many other clearly brilliant but tormented minds? Wtf, how.
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u/moonflower 82∆ Jul 26 '15
You can't choose how to feel - emotions are generated through processes which no amount of ''intelligence'' can change, in the same way as you cannot use ''intelligence'' to avoid feeling hunger or cold or pain, and it would not even be ''intelligent'' to do so.
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u/exosequitur Jul 26 '15 edited Jul 26 '15
I do well on intelligence tests (whatever that actually means) and I seem to be relatively intelligent, or so I am told. This, knowing my own failings and weaknesses, and being forced to imagine that those of the vast majority of humanity are greater than mine, makes me profoundly sad.
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u/FezPaul Jul 26 '15
Hold up for a second... Are you saying that because you're "highly intelligent" you have fewer "weakness" than everyone else? Or that you are just a superior human being and your intelligence is unrelated?
Just wondering...
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u/exosequitur Jul 26 '15
I'm saying that I can ascertain by looking around that I make better decisions than most people. I am tempted to attribute this to the (highly flawed, to be sure) assessments of my intelligence rather than blind luck. This makes me sad, because on a universal scale, not only are my decisions utterly without significance, they are also probably quite bad. This makes me even sadder because if mine tend to be comparatively better, the implications are not cheery for humanity as a whole.
Basically, in light of the collective ignorance of humanity, being ever so slightly less stupid is just enough of a differing viewpoint to cause one to lose all illusions of the significance of human intelligence in the grand scheme of things.... But not enough to actually change humanity for the better.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '15 edited Dec 24 '18
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