I have been pondering a potentially useful distinction lately, and today is the day I have decided that I should probably put some of it down somewhere.

And seeing as it’s Writing O’Clock, that place would be here, and that time would be now.

First off, let’s define some terms.

Intelligence, we will define as the raw processing power of your brain. Mental horsepower. Some people have very strong minds, capable of pulling great loads of information. Others have extremely fast minds, which deal with small amounts of information but do so with blazing speed.

Most of us smart types have some of both, but for the purposes of this article, we will consider them equal and just think of it as horsepower. Processing speed. Hardware.

Sophistication, we will define as “understanding of the world”. This too has two dimensions, breadth and depth, but for the purposes of this essay, we will treat it as a single quantity.

Now for the relationship between the two. Arguably, sophistication requires intelligence. There is a limit to how well you can understand the world and how it works, and that limit is at least partly governed by intelligence. A highly intelligent person will be capable of a richer, deeper understanding of the world than someone of low intelligence.

This assumes sophistication derived via intellect, and I am well aware that this may not always be the case. Human intuition works in mysterious ways, and it is possible that a person of limited intelligence might well acquire a level of sophistication above and beyond what would appear to be their limit via collating and correlating information on a subconscious level.

But I think that would be the rare exception, the outliers, and we are best off setting them aside when we examine this issue of intelligence and sophistication.

Thus, sophistication requires intelligence. But intelligence does not guarantee sophistication. Sophistication is software, after all. It is the view of the world a person build up out of their life experiences, the formal knowledge they learn via their education, the observations they have made based on the patterns they have noticed in the world, and countless other factors that all contribute to a person’s understanding of how the world works.

A person might well have the excellent hardware of a truly powerful brain, yet still limit themselves to a very workaday and functional understanding of the world that is strictly limited to that which will get them through their everyday lives, and everything else is of value only as possible entertainment.

Likewise, a person of average intelligence might, through diligent self-education and determined effort at expanding their consciousness, approach a much higher level of sophistication than an incurious genius.

Still, as a guiding principle, intelligence limits sophistication, and that is a problem for democracy.

Democracy, broadly speaking, requires of every citizen that they have an opinion about the issues of their times and the proper course for the government of their community.

There is no option, on paper at least, to simply abdicate that authority to someone who understands these things better than you do.

And if we were all of similar intelligence, that might not be a problem, but societies inevitably produce an intelligentsia, formal or informal, and these people are always pushing for progress and making things more complex in the process.

This is a very good thing as a whole. Were it not for the intellectuals, we would all be living in caves. But in a modern democratic society, with every citizen an equal participant, it creates a great deal of stress and confusion as the denizens of the top tier of intelligence, in the true spirit of egalitarianism, attempt to translate the language of their own level of sophistication to people of a lesser level of understanding.

This ends up creating an undeclared elite as the people of low or average intelligence, sensing that they are unable to truly understand what is going on as well as the top tier does, are left with no choice but to instead pick the smart person who they like most and who seems to understand what is going on the best, and do what that person (or group, or political party, or whatever) tells them to do.

This violates the very spirit of democracy and its foundation values of equality and fairness, but it is nevertheless the inevitable result of the asymmetry of the distribution of intelligence in a population.

What further complicates the issue is that while, technically, every citizen should be interested in politics, realistically speaking, it is still entirely optional. You don’t even have to vote.

So instead of the democratic ideal of an educated and involved public functioning, via public debate, as one great and wise intelligence, a more realistic view would show a population loosely stratified into layers of sophistication, involvement, and intellect.

As far as I can tell, there is no acceptable solution to this problem. We are certainly not going to quizzing people on the issues before they can vote. Not only would the very questions on the quiz then become hot button political issues, but what does one say to a citizen who is turned away because they are simply not smart enough to vote?

“Sorry, but you will just have to let other citizens decide for you. Turns out, this country is not yours. You are a second class citizen. Be glad we still let you have opinions. Now go away. ”

No, that is not acceptable in any way.

But what I think we must reluctantly accept is that we of that top tier of intelligence have a responsibility not just for how we form our own opinions and make our own choices, but for what we may lead others to think and choose as well.

We might not want this extra responsibility, and our individualist culture would suggest that we therefore do not have to accept it.

But I think we have it whether we want it or not. That is often how responsibility works.

The challenge, then, is whether we use it well.