Everyone is Stupid

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

-attributed to Albert Einstein

I agree.
My belief is that everyone has a nearly equal net intelligence. (The rest of this post uses this as an axiom.  If you disagree, my argument is null and void and there is little point to you continuing on reading this.) People considered genii are usually high above the average in a specific type of smarts, but by my belief this also means that they are either severely below average in a different ability or slightly below average in many of the rest.  [As unfounded proof: Note the stereotype of the nerds/geeks who have high levels of mental prowess but feeble physical strengths and relatively low social skills, while the stereotype of the jocks with incredible physical self-knowledge but little academic ability (and low social skills; they get popularity from their talent, not social suave).]   Due to the cultural push for specification, it is likely that those who have strengths in certain areas will continue to work and improve in those areas, while their weakness continue to become frail. Thus the true "average" who is perfectly normal in every category is unlikely enough to make Einstein's statement statistically valid.

Also, it makes mine valid.  Everyone is an idiot.

Now that my word choice has hopefully manipulated you into a defensive mode (either in defense of yourself or someone you know), allow me to explain.

The fact that everyone is an idiot is a wonderful thing.  Teaching brings people together, when all are willing to learn.  [A domineering and stubborn instructor is just as useless as an proud student.  Realize that you and everyone around you is an idiot, and be okay with learning more.  You'll enjoy it.  I promise.]  Because everyone is an idiot, everyone can be taught.  Because everyone has approximately equal net intelligence, anyone with more than you in one area has less than you in another.  Thus teaching is always possible and whoever can humble themselves enough to take instruction can continually draw closer to others.

See?  Being unintelligent is a marvelous thing.

Unfortunately, it's harder than it sounds as people have different learning and teaching styles, and trying to fit them together doesn't always work.

Personally, I have a problem with unfocusing.  You can't teach me more than one thing simultaneously, and you can't teach me much at all if I'm doing any task that requires my attention.  In addition: I am not very in tune with my body, so whoever generously attempts to teach me anything physical cannot expect good results if they assume I can do anything "naturally".
This was my problem in dance.  I felt like that fish trying to climb a tree.  Or more like a canary told to learn to dive and instead ending up very depressed and rather dead.  I am slow in remembering steps to begin with, so any more than five and I was lost.  Add on the techniques of shoulders back, arms down, closed hands, up on toes, straight legs, point foot but not sickle, big jumps but ones that land on beat, and keeping feet turned out and I felt so overwhelmed that most of the time my brain just gave up.  I can get one thing at a time.  One.  And I need a lot of time to practice that one thing before it becomes natural enough to do without thinking.  It was luckily a beginning dance class, so I still got a B+, but I was certainly glad when I no longer had to attend it.
This was also my problem today in jiujutsu.  Normally I do quite well, as the moves are taught step by step and we are given time to practice over and over again before we move on.  It still takes a long time before I can remember anything in an actual grapple, and even longer to perform them well in one, but this method of instruction works well for me.  Being slow to learn, I often get into positions where I don't really know what to do from there, so my partner teaches me something.  Unfortunately, the teaching style of one of my opponents didn't work all that well for me.  I assume that he was used to his body and was pretty good at figuring things out, because that's how he would attempt to teach me.  I can't do that.  If I'm in a bad position, my first and only focus is survival.  Don't die yet.  Don't die yet. Keep going.  So surviving AND trying to "figure out" how to change positions is beyond me.  I'm also not really a spacial thinker, so my brain doesn't creatively see positions with any kind of accuracy.  Luckily he gave me hints and pointers each time I floundered for a minute or so.  Which was every time.  I still learned a lot, but his teaching style only served to frustrate me.  Lying on the ground with him sitting on my chest forever as I struggled to keep him from choking me or breaking my arm was not fun and not too informational.  I must admit that practicing survival from the worse side of mount was good, but I still wish he would of taught me things and let me practice instead of waiting for me to fail long enough that it was obvious that I couldn't do anything.

Thinking over this, I realized something.  I probably do this to other people, specifically with math.  My ability to focus works incredibly well with math, as I can attack a problem from many different angles for quite some time without tiring.  I can also plow through pages of work on a single equation and still be going strong.   While I try to recognize that the people that need my help do not have the minds that will figure it out for themselves, I think I can sometimes push people to apply the method I've just shown them before they really understand how it works.

Then again, sometimes people are just lazy and want me to do algebra from them.  Not that I mind really, algebra is fun for me.
Either way, I should probably be a little more sensitive to others' inability to comprehend things at my level, and a little more patient with myself when I don't quite get things at someone else's.