CHAPTER 32

Using Your Existential Intelligence

For the past hundred years, since the advent of intelligence tests and intelligence testing, people were thought of—and thought of themselves—as falling somewhere along a continuum of intelligence that ran from incredibly high to above-average to average to below-average. It was never very clear “how much” intelligence any of these stops along the continuum represented, so it was impossible to say whether a person of average intelligence, for instance, had “enough” intelligence for a particular task, whether that task was learning theoretical physics or voting in an election. It was simply taken for granted that average intelligence—the intelligence manifested by most people—was “good enough” to handle the ordinary tasks of living.

It was presumed that ordinary intelligence was “intelligence enough” to work in the world, abide by society’s laws, and be able to understand everything from contracts to the math lessons encountered in school. Certainly it was easy enough to believe that a person who needed five tries at the bar exam was not quite as sharp as a person who aced it on the first try and that a great checkers player was not quite the intellectual equal of a chess grandmaster. But distinctions of this sort remained entirely impressionistic, arbitrary, and whimsical. Little was known or could be said about intelligence because the concept was murky at best.

Since “intelligence” remained so murky a concept, the integrity, utility, and meaningfulness of intelligence tests were easy to dispute, as was the idea of “unitary intelligence.” Naturally enough, the idea of “multiple intelligences” arose. From this new point of view, people were no longer smart or not smart but rather smart or not smart in particular ways, a genius here and an idiot there, competent with respect to this and incompetent with respect to that.

Howard Gardner, the leading proponent of multiple intelligence theory, named first seven intelligences and then an eighth intelligence: linguistic intelligence (“word smart, as in a poet” logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart, as in a scientist”); spatial intelligence (“picture smart, as in a sculptor or airplane pilot”); bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart, as in an athlete or dancer”); musical intelligence (“music smart, as in a composer”); interpersonal intelligence (“people smart, as in a salesman or teacher”); intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart, exhibited by individuals with accurate views of themselves”); and, later, naturalist intelligence (“nature smart, as in a naturalist”).

At the end of the day, and even after the introduction of additional intelligences like Daniel Goleman’s “emotional intelligence,” we were still left with a large hole in the middle of the intelligence debate. First, none of these constructs got at our felt sense of what it meant to say that someone was or wasn’t smart. Second, after a moment’s thought you began to realize how many disparate ideas were being squashed together into one construct: natural differences, cultural differences, experiential differences, attitudinal differences, motivational differences, and so on. Third, and most important, the theory failed to address the following vital question: which intelligence or aspect of intelligence allowed you to comprehend what anything meant?

It turned out that the intelligence pundits had failed, until Gardner’s recent introduction of a ninth intelligence, to describe or even consider our most important intelligence: our existential intelligence. Existential intelligence is the part of our nature that steps back, slips on a wide-angle lens, and appraises in the realm of meaning. It is our most important intelligence because it allows us to know what to do with the other intelligences. We may have a great gift for visual representation; but it is our existential intelligence that allows us to know whether painting is the way we should spend our life. We may be capable in any number of ways, but we are just a bundle of capabilities until we apply our existential intelligence. Existential intelligence is the intelligence, the coordinating intelligence, the intelligence that all the other intelligences serve.

In order to provide ourselves with intelligent answers to questions such as whether it is more meaningful to write this novel, set in a desolate future, or that novel, set in a hopeful present, we are obliged to turn to our existential intelligence. We can’t answer such questions through the application of science, even if we are an Einstein; nor with music, even if we are a Beethoven; nor with words, even if we are a Shakespeare. We can only answer them through the application of existential intelligence: by applying our gift for meaning comprehension and meaning management.

Existential intelligence is the capacity for conceptualizing large questions about human existence, about the meaning of life, why we are born, why we die, what consciousness is, and how we got here. It is all that but it is much more. It is the intelligence we use to appraise the meaning of our life minute by minute. It is only existential intelligence that permits us to think through whether or not we should fight in a war or protest that war, renew our efforts to live or take our life, embrace our culture or rebel against it, manifest our compassion or manifest our rage. Anything that we intend to do thoughtfully requires the application of our existential intelligence.

This is the intelligence that concerns you, as a writer, the most. It guides your writing themes, your writing choices, and your writing relationships. It helps you understand why you are bothering to write, why you are spending years on a recalcitrant book, why you are revising eight times when you would rather go fishing. The other intelligences are all well and good; your existential intelligence is key.

LESSON 32

Existential space is the space you inhabit when you want to consciously make decisions in the realm of meaning. You go there to shine the light of your existential intelligence on questions such as “What should I write?” and “How should I live?” Go there!

To Do

1. Test your existential intelligence by posing it a question such as “Which of these two potential projects is the more meaningful one?” See how it responds. Give it a letter grade and if it gets a poor grade, ask it to do better.

2. Test your friends by asking them questions in the realm of meaning, such as “What should a person do when a meaning crisis strikes?” or “How do you plug up a meaning leak when you feel the meaning draining out of your current writing project?” Rank-order your friends according to their answers. Then visit with the highest ranked among them for some meaningful conversations.

3. Raise your existential intelligence by making it feel welcome.

4. Raise it even further by using it.