Lately I’ve been thinking about the narrative trope of the smart man who becomes dumb.
It is wonderfully captured by the character of Taravangian in Brandon Sanderson’s "The Stormlight Archive" series1. [Minor spoilers ahead] Here’s a man who, even in his "base state," is extremely smart and quick as a whip. But as the story progresses we see his mind slowly degenerate until he gives up thinking entirely and just "is".
In the story we see how his intelligence is balanced with his sense of morality and empathy. The "smarter" he is, the less empathic, but as he becomes dumber we see this empathy dominating his mental landscape, until that’s almost all that remains.
Of course, that’s a story, but still …
Lately I’ve been thinking about the narrative trope of the smart man who becomes dumb.
It is wonderfully captured by the character of Taravangian in Brandon Sanderson’s "The Stormlight Archive" series1. [Minor spoilers ahead] Here’s a man who, even in his "base state," is extremely smart and quick as a whip. But as the story progresses we see his mind slowly degenerate until he gives up thinking entirely and just "is".
In the story we see how his intelligence is balanced with his sense of morality and empathy. The "smarter" he is, the less empathic, but as he becomes dumber we see this empathy dominating his mental landscape, until that’s almost all that remains.
Of course, that’s a story, but still I wonder what would it be like?
Lately I’ve felt myself slipping and making some stupid mistakes that would’ve been unthinkable some years ago. Like telling myself I’m going to go do something and then forgetting, or random small stuff like that. This happens more often than not when I’m multitasking, especially at work. The other day I spent an hour or so looking at an experiment log trying to figure out why the model was misbehaving, and after much scratching of my head I realized I was looking at the wrong log!
Perhaps it’s just that I’m getting older, or the fact that yesterday we went to sleep at midnight because we were wrapping gifts2. Maybe it’s my lack of exercise. Or maybe the fact that I’m trying to stop drinking so much coffee: currently shifting to drinking only half a cup in the morning, when before I used to usually drink three large cups throughout the day.
Whenever this happens I feel a resistance in me, like a self-chiding for being so careless. But then I think of Taravangian and how I can just accept it as what it is and leverage that other part of me I usually don’t give much attention to: my intuition and simply being here in the moment.
I’m someone who tends to approach things very analytically, and finding that my "mind" is not working as expected tends to be a surprise.
We tend to think that these sorts of mental traits (intelligence, compassion, sociableness, humor) are constant, a defining part of ourselves, but the truth is that, as everything in life, they change depending on the environment we’re in and what’s going on around us. I guess this happens because they’re more or less "stable" over appreciable spans of times (at least in contrast with some other more volatile things like our "mood").
Anyway. I’m making too much out of nothing, as I’m sure whatever "slowness" I’m experiencing here is of my own making. And still, this slowness doesn’t preclude me from enjoying what’s going on around me.
Whenever such a lapse happens I try to be gentle and recognize that perhaps I might be asking too much out of myself.
Footnotes
What?! You haven’t read it? Stop whatever you’re doing right now and don’t come back till you’ve read The Way of Kings. You can thank me later. ↩ 1.
My wife was wrapping gifts. I was trying to help her, but I wasn’t so successful. ↩