Because I’m Full Of Useless Information (Well, Full Of Something Anyway)

I find that my head is the home of a lot of information that bears no practical daily application in my life, to my family or friends. However, this random bunch of hooey that hangs around in my brain does give me stuff to talk about, or write about on a day when I feel like I should have something to say.

Yesterday in the course of chatting with someone, I brought up Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. You have to realize, first, that my college gen ed classes involved a lot of psychology (particularly since I find psychology to be pretty fascinating – people confuse the hell out of me sometimes – having any insight whatsoever in how they work? Awesome). Second, you have to know that my dad was a pysch major – perhaps the worst kind of psych major: the kind that didn’t make a career of it, but instead theorizes about random stuff and ties it to principles and concepts other people have created and talks about it, and talks, and talks. Which is not to say that it’s not interesting – but… it means that this stuff gets further ingrained in my noggin.

Annnnnyway. The theory of multiple intelligences basically says that there are several types of intelligence and to a varying degree, each person has their own unique mix of these different intelligences. What this basically boils down to is that everyone’s got their strong suit, and our mix of where our strength is doesn’t make us any smarter necessarily than someone lacking strengths in those areas. My brother is a whiz at those 3D puzzles, any puzzles actually. He likes to put them together, and he’s always been able to build these elaborate Lego dealies in a really short period of time. This might indicate that his strength lies in visual-spatial endeavors, whereas for me? Eh, not so much.

The different areas, as defined by Gardner are:
Bodily-kinesthetic Has to do with movement and doing
Interpersonal How we relate to others
Verbal-Linguistic Has to do with words, spoken or written
Logical-Mathematical Has to do with logic, abstractions, inductive and deductive reasoning and numbers
Naturalistic Has to do with nature and relating information to one’s surroundings
Intrapersonal Has to do with introspective and self-reflective capabilities
Visual-Spatial Has to do with vision and spatial judgement
Musical Has to do with rhythm, music and hearing
Other Intelligences There’s a few others, including spiritual, moral, etc…

I’m guessing when you read the list, you already found in your head the places where your strengths lie. I can easily tell you that I’m far and away strongest with verbal-linguistic, intrapersonal (I’m thinky), and Musical. And I think I probably have a bit of bodily kinesthetic in there.

This concludes your lesson for the day – I expect to be back to mindless fluff shortly. Very shortly. (And hey, if you wanna, let me know what you think your intelligences are!).