Intellectual Drive
That something extra
Lately, a recurring concern and theme for me has been neurodivergence and, more generally, divergent thinking; along with related topics of Openness/Intellect (FFM, HEXACO), Plasticity (meta-trait), intuition and perceiving (Myers-Briggs), thin boundary type (Ernest Hartmann), environmental sensitivity, plasticity alleles, orchid types, etc (The Nature and Nurture of Environmental Sensitivity; Knowledge and Neurodivergence; & Neurodiversity of Genetics, Cognition, Personality, Behavior, Culture, and Politics). My last piece was specifically about associative thinking, closely related to systems thinking, pattern recognition, apophenia, and fantasy proneness. At it’s most basic, this is what I often refer to as thought webs, as it’s a diverse integration and schematic networking of ideas and info, insights and imaginings, as well as theories, conjectures, observations, examples, and whatever else gets caught in my mental net (From Associative Thinking to an Associative Society). It also variously involves fluid intelligence, original problem-solving, creativity, innovativeness, aesthetic experience (sensitivity, appreciation, and aesthetic chills or frisson), awe and wonder, and tolerance for cognitive dissonance or negative capability (toward the unexpected, unfamiliar, unknown, unpredictable, etc). As less guarded and controlled, such a mindset tends to be all around open — to experience and ideas, to potentials and possibilities, to others and the world, to cultures and nature. It’s the psychological equivalent of a culture of trust, which is the basis of a free society. This openness is to think, feel, and act freely.
Similar to the intellectual mentality of critical thinking and reading comprehension, this isn’t only about one’s cognitive style and predisposition but also the honing of one’s mental abilities, skills, methodologies, and practices. That was the key point I made about associative thinking. There are certain personality types and traits, particular cognitive profiles that incline someone toward such atypical modes of mentation, in how one perceives and conceives the world, shaping the way one processes inner and outer experience, and determining what one can or cannot envision and understand. But even if one were to assume that it’s partly an inborn tendency, an individual’s genetics only takes one so far. Elsewhere, an interlocutor, Ryan Kennedy, noted that merely being capable of associative thinking doesn’t guarantee originality, depth, and profundity of thought: “I’ve worked a lot in marketing and communications for architects, but architects, graphic designers and those with an artistic sensibility often have associative or non-linear thoughts that go against my own. I feel like they often associate superficial things eg say “red” and “apple” without having necessarily deeper mental models.” Most associative thinkers are going to be otherwise mundane and ordinary. Those of us who have pushed this tendency further into extreme intellectuality are likely to feel out of sync even with the average associative thinker — we’re atypical among the atypical.
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If potential may vary on a genetic and epigenetic level, one suspects that everyone has some potential for this, as part of a common inheritance of a universal human nature. So, what determines greater manifestation and development or not. That is to say, it’s not limited to the personal what suppresses and compromises, stunts and harms this capacity for most people in the modern world. I’ve covered that kind of thing elsewhere (A Theory of Societal Retardation). From my studies of numerous fields, from health science to social science, it’s undeniable that the most powerful factor is the environment, the total conditions we are born into or even that begins to shape the egg and sperm before conception. But whatever the exact cause that initially sets the stage, there is something extra that goes far beyond a mere potential and predisposition. This magical ingredient is measurable. It has to do with other facets of Openness/Intellect. There are two aspects I’d bring up, both of which will support, strengthen, and amplify higher thinking, associative thinking, and divergent thinking. First, there is simply one’s general capacity. Consider cognitive load, perceptual load, working memory, processing speed, attentional focus, vigilance (sustained attention), flow state, and schema acquisition, but also cognitive complexity. How much can you hold in mind at once? How many separate bits can you manipulate in relation to each other? And how easily can you shift perspectives or simultaneously recognize other patterns? That multidimensional capacity, though, is entirely dependent on optimal conditions — it doesn’t happen unsupported. As always there is the rub.
Still, that’s just the brute power of neurology, as it’s formed within the constraints of species evolution and personal development. According to physiological structure, the brain has physical limits and resource constraints that can only be extended so far. There is a second component, however, that is more interesting and maybe more important. It’s what motivates an individual to push those limits as far as they can go, to boost their potential until they’re tapped out. Some people have an insatiable drive that is largely inexplicable. Either one has it or not. It’s not achieved through hard work nor earned through merit. It’s an inner force that is as mysterious to the individual it afflicts as it is to anyone else. Primarily, this is sheer intrinsic motivation, not rational or reasonable — as I previously put it in my piece about associative thinking, “it serves no concrete self-interest, external reward, or public acclaim; no monetary compensation, reputational status, career advancement, etc, or even concrete application for real world results.” In personality theory, this is variously referred to as need for cognition, eff0rtful thinking, typical intellectual engagement (TIE), intellectual curiosity (“hungry mind”), epistemic curiosity, cognitive curiosity, cognitive willingness, exploratory behavior, and novelty seeking. [Or less desirably: attentional dysregulation, perseveration, rumination, brooding, mental compulsions, obsessive thinking, hyperfocus, hyperfixation, hypersalience, monotropism, etc.] To put it simply, it’s the love of learning for the sake of learning, the compulsion of truth-seeking and sometimes at great costs to the individual, such as the struggling and starving artist, writer, or inventor — I’ve been there. It’s a deep, irrepressible demand to know and understand, to question and doubt, to challenge and critique, to trail blaze into terra incognito and create or give voice to something new. This is the impulse that has pushed forward civilization, in spite of all the problems and setbacks.
Once again, there is a basic element here that is a common human potential. Everyone is born curious about the world, just taking it all in with wide eyes and the brain absorbing everything like a sponge. The infant is pure openness and wonderment with everything bright, shiny, and new. That is assuming the infant isn’t malnourished, sickly, toxin-poisoned, deprived, untouched, and/or abused. As long as there is a minimal level of healthy conditions, there will be an extended childhood of curiosity and exploration, learning and experimentation with the brain significantly growing into one’s late twenties, although neuroplasticity is maintained across the lifespan (with neuroplasticity increased by eustress, exercise, psilocybin, etc). This is a defining feature of the human species, as part of neotenization and possibly self-domestication. It’s our natural state, but few people manage to maintain it long into adulthood. I consider myself one of the lucky few, the strangely privileged. As a unionized city government employee in an upper middle class liberal college town, I have an unusual working class job that offers good pay, great benefits, job security, low stress, and lots of free time. Though periods of crippling depression knocked the wind out of me, better conditions surely helped keep alive my intellectual engagement into middle age, having turned 50 years old a while back. But since my situation is rare, it means almost none of my friends and peers have been able to do the same at an equal level. Most people have demanding jobs and come home tired, then seek ways to decompress and recuperate over the weekend. The typical USAmerican is simply shut down, and in many cases they already know more than they can handle (To Know or Not to Know). This can be felt across the entire society, including at the level of communities (Trying to Open Up in a Closed Down Time). For those of us still with relatively higher functioning intellects into later adulthood, it’s a struggle to find and maintain relationships with intellectual peers, specifically of our own age.
As all of the above makes clear, there are many separate parts to what forms into a given individual’s thinking pattern and neurocognitive state. It’s not only that an associative thinker may otherwise be unimpressive. Someone who might have the potential for genius could be plain intellectually lazy and never even realize that they could’ve been so much more. But maybe worse of all would be someone who has the intense, aching drive to learn, develop, and improve while, for some reason, the right mix of potentials and conditions never come together. Then there are those who have everything stacked against them, such as stunted neurocognition because of adverse conditions and inferior education, yet they might nonetheless have a brilliant sense of questioning curiosity and hands-on know-how. In various ways, all of us are thwarted and frustrated in the modern world of late stage capitalism, never coming close to living up to the promise of our shared humanity, although obviously some have it far worse than others with systemic prejudice, racial or economic segregation, school-to-prison pipeline, adverse childhood experiences, toxic stress, shit life syndrome, fast life history strategy, and deaths of despair. If you’re one who has had the ability and opportunity to manifest any of your intellectual prospect at all, consider yourself fortunate. These aren’t times that are kind to most of us, with even the elite being damaged by it all — those like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are idiotic and ignorant, deranged and dysfunctional man-children. So, being born into wealth and power isn’t exactly a saving grace either. It’s just a shitty society all around. Still, one can dream that we might live up to our collective potential. Maybe all combined, we might muster enough motivation to reform conditions to improve the lot for the following generations. If we were ever to get our act together, if we were ever to use our technological capacities for public good, we could build an awesome society and make possible higher levels of cognition for more than rare individuals.
