Life is hard for smart people

I have just finished teaching the book of Ecclesiastes to our students.

It was the third time in 18 months I have had the privilege of teaching the book and each time it has spoken significantly to me.

One of the lessons I have been left with this time is just how profoundly difficult life is for people who trust their cognitive ability.

I have met many people who trusted their ability to understand and a common denominator is that they seem to all tend towards depression.

Solomon tried hard to understand how things work… and failed.

All this I tested by wisdom and I said, “I am determined to be wise”—but this was beyond me. Whatever wisdom may be, it is far off and most profound—who can discover it (Ecclesiastes 7:23-24)

I am interested where he went next… after discovering he couldn’t work out wisdom he went naturally to wickedness. Interestingly enough though.. he went to the wickedness of others, and in particular women.

So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly. [26] I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare. (Ecclesiastes 7:25-26)

I find it interesting that Solomon thinks that it is women who have the issue. Here is a bloke that married 300 of them and shacked up with another 700. For Solomon women were objects, which is sad considering the remarkable poetry of the Song of Songs.

Someone once pointed out that it is the very things you don’t like in other people that are the things you don’t like about yourself.

It seems pretty obvious Solomon is projecting out his own issues on women and seeing wickedness as something external to him.

The great achilles heel of logic is sin.

The problem for smart people is that their intelligence usually serves them well and they start to trust it. The truth though is that we all have blind spots, things we do not see about ourselves and if we trust too much in our ability to understand we become dysfunctional.

Solomon goes on, and basically makes the statement that there is not a good woman in the world:

“Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered: “Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things— [28] while I was still searching but not finding—I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. (Ecclesiastes 7:27-28)

I was reading a draft of a book my dad is working on and saw the quote:

“A fascist sees the mote in his neighbour’s eye, then hits him over the head with the beam in his own.”

No matter how intelligent you are, there will be some things that are simply not available to your intellect because of who you are.

Solomon grew up knowing he was Bathsheba’s son… it doesn’t take a genius to see that history would have the potential to shape his view of the opposite sex.

We all inherit or through painful experiences gradually develop lenses that color the way we see the world.

The problem for the intelligent person is that they believe the way they see the world is the way it is… and often thats true, except when its not.

Someone who doesn’t trust their ability to understand as much will possible more flexible and less likely to be profoundly disillusioned.

One of the truths Solomon comes to in Ecclesiastes is that all real wisdom comes from the fear of God and not from intellectual horsepower.

Like I said at the beginning, I wonder if this is why there are so many disillusioned and depressed intelligent people in the world?