Don't worry, be happy... and dumb

Someone made the comment to me the other night that they wondered if intelligent people could only be happy if they chose to be. Ever seen the t-shirt that says "I'm smiling cuz I have no clue what's going on"? The line of thinking is similar. The idea is intelligent people understand too much, see too much, and know too much about the world, and so have to consciously make the choice to be happy, otherwise it is too easy to become discouraged by all the negative forces in the world. The less intelligent live in their simple little worlds, very often unaware of the whole world out there. It's not even so much that they can't be unhappy - more that they carry only their unhappiness, whereas the more intelligent have their own unhappiness, as well as an understanding of the unhappiness of the world, to carry around. Ignorance truly is bliss.

I've always been a firm believer that, in general, being happy is a choice. So I was intrigued if only because you don't always run into people who also believe happiness is a choice, not just a pre-determined state. Whether the intelligent have to consciously exert a stronger effort to make that choice... I don't know.

Thinking of all the talented and gifted people in the world who seem to exude tortured angst - and even of the small group of "gifted" students of which we were a part - I can see how there might be something to this line of thinking. But then, I often wonder how much of the wallowing in tortured angst by the geniuses of the world is a conscious decision meant to fulfill some sort of self-serving purpose and I wonder if this type of theory requires gross over-generalizations that just don't stand up against reality.

Geniuses, quasi-geniuses and the truly intelligent already have to be eccentric and a little wacky - must they also be forced to fight just to be happy? I'm not sure. I find this theory interesting, and I can buy into parts of it, but I also don't want to provide excuses in a world where it's already too hard to make people understand that they're responsible for their own happiness.

Of course, there is also the school of thought that says any theory being discussed after the consumption of that much alcohol should be thrown out with the empty bottles. ;)