Intelligence, Money and Ability.
The most painful level of intelligence is when you are smart enough to know how much smarter others are, but also to know that you can never be as smart. It is irksome.
It's one thing to be inconcerned about the efficiency of your life (efficiency as a result of smarts and the results of actions based on those smarts). It's another thing to be concerned, but know that you're not smart enough to take the right actions towards optimal efficiency of your life.
The older I grow, the less smart I can feel myself becoming. I have less ability to remember things or to see the larger picture and connect things. This at the age of 28, and I can feel the difference from the time I was 20 or even 23. I can't help but wonder if my experience is normal because deterioration seems to be quite early and too evident. Anyway, as I grow duller, it is accompanied by a laziness. After all, the smarter you are, the less effort something takes and consequently the easier it is to take action. Conversely, the duller you are, the great the effort needed and the harder it is to do things. Laziness towards an action is therefore related to the perceived or real level of effort involved in that action.
Does that mean that smarter people work more and duller people work less, even though smarter people find it easier, while others find it harder ?
Regardless, I have been both dull and lazy with finances.
Where have I been spending my time ? On documenting memories ? (so that I can figure them out later ? WTF!) Or emotions perhaps ? And yet I cannot claim to have reached any emotional maturity comparable to the benefits I could reap if I had spent my time on finances. Or perhaps my time has simply been spent on the normal tasks that smarter people figure out how to do faster, more efficiently, or with less effort.
In financial matters especially these "smarts" become evident to me. I'm a big believer in money. While I'm not a "material girl", I think money (for me) equals the freedom to pursue true happinesses, unhampered by the financial concerns and constraints. I'm especially envious of those whose profession itself involves the understanding and efficient usage of money or leveraging credit. While I spend 11 hours of my day steeped in matters, of which only 20% can be useful and directly applicable to my own life, those in the financial (or medical) profession spend a large part of their day acquiring practically usable skills that are useful to them through their entire lives. Not just usable, but skills that potentially provide them various sorts of freedoms and privileges through their lives.
Tonight contained a discussion with those who had clearly more aptitude and had spent more time on understanding and using the knowledge of mathematics, logic and money than I have. Which, I may point out, they did outisde of their 11 hrs a day professional engagement.
In a discussion about credit cards, a peer of mine said that his instinct upon coming to the U.S. was to get a credit card, while mine was to avoid one. Being the simpleton that I am, credit card meant debt and I wanted to avoid it. For him at that time, while it did not quite mean being able to leverage money (as it does today), what it meant was the ability to have credit available in case of emergency. Understanding the source of this made me wonder if my parents being well off meant that I did not have this instinct. ie In case of an emergency for me, my parents would take care of me. And in case of an emergency for them, they could take care of themselves. It was either this background knowledge or AS A RESULT of my family's financial comfort, I could afford to not be acutely aware of the inherent risks in my life (for which I therefore did not feel an instinctive desire for credit or any urgent need for financial understanding).
I began the discussion being averse to the concept of leveraging money. Borrowing money to gamble it for higher interest than what I'm borrowing it at. I recognize its use, but I had not realized before tonight, that it did not come with all the baggage that I thought it did. I learned that a balance transfer cheque can be made out to a bank without any purchases. And I learned that automatic payments with a termination payment can make leveraging money a lot more simple than I had thought it was. These two simple pieces of knowledge took a little longer than it needed (thanx to my being slow lately).
These are observations interesting to me:
1) How "knowledge" is so obvious to some, and simply does not occur to others despite the facts being plainly visible. I suppose this is what allows some people to have advantages over others in various fields. In today's internet enabled age, is knowledge truly accesible to all (= people of my socio-educational category) equally ?
If yes, then the ability to connect the dots is the factor that distinguishes people.
2) Action based on this knowedge is also more obvious to some than to others. The risk inherent in those actions (especially when not corroborated or confirmed by the secure set of one's personal community around them) is also more worrying to some than to others. How is it that some people can derive such great faith in their own analysis even when it differs from others ? For example an Indian's personal community may often tell them that debt is bad. Yet there are many who find conviction in their own analysis of money leveraging and are able to act upon their knowledge, going against the grain of their general surrounders. I constantly double question myself without adequate conviction in my "knowledge".
3) Different people find joy and value in different activities. Some enjoy the challenge of such analysis, and coupled with self confidence in their knowledge, they "get off" on using their unique knowledge. Others find greater joy in conformity, comfort, and the status quo of not even realizing that their actions (or inactions) are a result of unquestioned practices of their local environment.
4) Some forge their own path through their own ground work without thought to their local norms and practices. Others look to their environment to learn how to interact with the world. While the first kind of folks take more risks, they are sometimes unaware of those risks due to their very nature. They usually end up reaping great benefits, but mistakes can also be great ones. The latter group perhaps evolve more slowly, at a more measured, lower amplitude pace. Their mistakes, great or small, are in keeping with the general mistakes of their generation and is unlikely to be as intense as to determine their life journey.
While my natural emotional inclination is to forge my own path, I think my practical / logical / daily life inclination is the latter. As I grow stupider, I think my emotional inclination is also becoming more conformist.
5) The ability to acquire knowledge varies greatly. This is probably a direct result of intelligence - the kind that none of us truly have any control over. The ability to read, grasp & process information, the power of memory, and the ability to connect dots and visualize a larger picture. While I have a little bit of these abilities, I probably think I have more than I actually do. Acquiring knowledge is tangible work and perceptible effort for me, especially with respect to financial matters. To others, it may require time, but it is not measurable effort - no more effortful than reading an Archie comic is for me.
The older I grow the more that everything I do seems to be a real effort. Almost nothing seems to occur with ease except vegetating in front of a TV or eating high fat foods - those seems to be the only truly easy things to do. Fortunately, neither are things I do too often. Even things that came to me so easily in the past - sleeping and talking seem to take enormous effort these days.
I can't even find a way to wrap my evening's thoughts up with perspective to learn from it.
It's one thing to be inconcerned about the efficiency of your life (efficiency as a result of smarts and the results of actions based on those smarts). It's another thing to be concerned, but know that you're not smart enough to take the right actions towards optimal efficiency of your life.
The older I grow, the less smart I can feel myself becoming. I have less ability to remember things or to see the larger picture and connect things. This at the age of 28, and I can feel the difference from the time I was 20 or even 23. I can't help but wonder if my experience is normal because deterioration seems to be quite early and too evident. Anyway, as I grow duller, it is accompanied by a laziness. After all, the smarter you are, the less effort something takes and consequently the easier it is to take action. Conversely, the duller you are, the great the effort needed and the harder it is to do things. Laziness towards an action is therefore related to the perceived or real level of effort involved in that action.
Does that mean that smarter people work more and duller people work less, even though smarter people find it easier, while others find it harder ?
Regardless, I have been both dull and lazy with finances.
Where have I been spending my time ? On documenting memories ? (so that I can figure them out later ? WTF!) Or emotions perhaps ? And yet I cannot claim to have reached any emotional maturity comparable to the benefits I could reap if I had spent my time on finances. Or perhaps my time has simply been spent on the normal tasks that smarter people figure out how to do faster, more efficiently, or with less effort.
In financial matters especially these "smarts" become evident to me. I'm a big believer in money. While I'm not a "material girl", I think money (for me) equals the freedom to pursue true happinesses, unhampered by the financial concerns and constraints. I'm especially envious of those whose profession itself involves the understanding and efficient usage of money or leveraging credit. While I spend 11 hours of my day steeped in matters, of which only 20% can be useful and directly applicable to my own life, those in the financial (or medical) profession spend a large part of their day acquiring practically usable skills that are useful to them through their entire lives. Not just usable, but skills that potentially provide them various sorts of freedoms and privileges through their lives.
Tonight contained a discussion with those who had clearly more aptitude and had spent more time on understanding and using the knowledge of mathematics, logic and money than I have. Which, I may point out, they did outisde of their 11 hrs a day professional engagement.
In a discussion about credit cards, a peer of mine said that his instinct upon coming to the U.S. was to get a credit card, while mine was to avoid one. Being the simpleton that I am, credit card meant debt and I wanted to avoid it. For him at that time, while it did not quite mean being able to leverage money (as it does today), what it meant was the ability to have credit available in case of emergency. Understanding the source of this made me wonder if my parents being well off meant that I did not have this instinct. ie In case of an emergency for me, my parents would take care of me. And in case of an emergency for them, they could take care of themselves. It was either this background knowledge or AS A RESULT of my family's financial comfort, I could afford to not be acutely aware of the inherent risks in my life (for which I therefore did not feel an instinctive desire for credit or any urgent need for financial understanding).
I began the discussion being averse to the concept of leveraging money. Borrowing money to gamble it for higher interest than what I'm borrowing it at. I recognize its use, but I had not realized before tonight, that it did not come with all the baggage that I thought it did. I learned that a balance transfer cheque can be made out to a bank without any purchases. And I learned that automatic payments with a termination payment can make leveraging money a lot more simple than I had thought it was. These two simple pieces of knowledge took a little longer than it needed (thanx to my being slow lately).
These are observations interesting to me:
1) How "knowledge" is so obvious to some, and simply does not occur to others despite the facts being plainly visible. I suppose this is what allows some people to have advantages over others in various fields. In today's internet enabled age, is knowledge truly accesible to all (= people of my socio-educational category) equally ?
If yes, then the ability to connect the dots is the factor that distinguishes people.
2) Action based on this knowedge is also more obvious to some than to others. The risk inherent in those actions (especially when not corroborated or confirmed by the secure set of one's personal community around them) is also more worrying to some than to others. How is it that some people can derive such great faith in their own analysis even when it differs from others ? For example an Indian's personal community may often tell them that debt is bad. Yet there are many who find conviction in their own analysis of money leveraging and are able to act upon their knowledge, going against the grain of their general surrounders. I constantly double question myself without adequate conviction in my "knowledge".
3) Different people find joy and value in different activities. Some enjoy the challenge of such analysis, and coupled with self confidence in their knowledge, they "get off" on using their unique knowledge. Others find greater joy in conformity, comfort, and the status quo of not even realizing that their actions (or inactions) are a result of unquestioned practices of their local environment.
4) Some forge their own path through their own ground work without thought to their local norms and practices. Others look to their environment to learn how to interact with the world. While the first kind of folks take more risks, they are sometimes unaware of those risks due to their very nature. They usually end up reaping great benefits, but mistakes can also be great ones. The latter group perhaps evolve more slowly, at a more measured, lower amplitude pace. Their mistakes, great or small, are in keeping with the general mistakes of their generation and is unlikely to be as intense as to determine their life journey.
While my natural emotional inclination is to forge my own path, I think my practical / logical / daily life inclination is the latter. As I grow stupider, I think my emotional inclination is also becoming more conformist.
5) The ability to acquire knowledge varies greatly. This is probably a direct result of intelligence - the kind that none of us truly have any control over. The ability to read, grasp & process information, the power of memory, and the ability to connect dots and visualize a larger picture. While I have a little bit of these abilities, I probably think I have more than I actually do. Acquiring knowledge is tangible work and perceptible effort for me, especially with respect to financial matters. To others, it may require time, but it is not measurable effort - no more effortful than reading an Archie comic is for me.
The older I grow the more that everything I do seems to be a real effort. Almost nothing seems to occur with ease except vegetating in front of a TV or eating high fat foods - those seems to be the only truly easy things to do. Fortunately, neither are things I do too often. Even things that came to me so easily in the past - sleeping and talking seem to take enormous effort these days.
I can't even find a way to wrap my evening's thoughts up with perspective to learn from it.