On Intelligence, (and thankfully no politics there.)

You are sitting at your desk, or on your couch, or maybe on the john reading this. (That's disgusting by the way, Do you realize what's getting all over your laptop keyboard?) You can comprehend the words written here. Does that make you intelligent? Intelligence is defined as the ability to learn or understand. The skilled use of reason. But true intelligence actually is much more than that. The ability to adapt to a new environment or change your current environment to suit your needs is also a sign of intelligence. The capacity to acquire knowledge is another sign of intelligence. The capacity to understand abstract ideas, and to produce original and productive thought are most certainly signs of intelligence. Einstein (who most people would think of as intelligent) once said "It's not that I'm smart, it's just that I stay with questions longer."  Is that the key to intelligence, a bulldog like tenacity to get the job done, and done right?  It seems to us here at The Crazy that intelligence can mean different things to different people. We've all been involved in some task or other puzzling about the best way to do it and had someone walk up and solve the problem with a simple "try this."
  And it's obvious that people have different abilities, Einstein was gifted in math. But couldn't read until he was seven. And didn't learn to talk until he was four. Oscar Wilde (who once said "I am so clever that I sometimes don't understand a single word that I am saying.") had a very creative flair for writing but was unable to keep a relationship for any real length of time. Is the interaction between people a sign of intelligence? In anthropological terms intelligence is often associated with the use of tools. But birds, chimpanzees, apes, and even some reptiles have been known to use items from their environment as tools. For another example (and a funny one at that.) check out THIS site.. It is our opinion here at The Crazy that we humans are too egocentric to see that what we term as intelligence is nothing of the sort. The definition of intelligence is much broader than our current understanding. Are we missing part of a natural intelligence that is currently beyond our understanding? Maybe not, but it would be cool wouldn't it. That's about it. Ciao for now.