There’s not a single gift that doesn’t come with consequences. Being smart is absolutely one of those—revered, honored, and despised all at once. We love smart people when they agree with us and uphold our beliefs, and we hate them when we feel belittled and condescended to by them.
There’s a particular expression of this, the Smartest Guy in the Room. This person could be any gender, but he’s usually a guy. Not because guys are smarter—in fact, the Smartest Guy in the Room is sometimes very ill-informed and utterly lacking in self-awareness. More because guys tend to be the ones who confidently put forth their views, right or wrong. It’s socialization, it’s how testosterone increases confidence, it’s whatever.
Smart men, smart people, are lovely. Intelligence is one path toward humble awe of the complexity of the world. The more we learn, the more we realize it’s impossible to learn everything. The more deeply you understand a subject, the more you understand its limits.
So many smart people get ignored because they offer their views with a well-earned humility, unwilling to pretend to know more than they know. This is one of the reasons why reporting on science and medicine tends to be so misleading and awful. Disciplined scientists would never come out and say “This drug will cure cancer” after research. They’d at best say “99.9% of all cancer patients who took this drug completely recovered with no signs of cancer.”
The discipline is to stay with what you can observe and prove. To only say what you know for sure, and leave space for future growth of knowledge, and the possibility of being proven wrong. That’s when science is a living discipline.
But pop science is awash in certitude and grandiose statements. And the Smartest Guy in the Room is the one who lives in that world. They’re more certain than everyone else, even if only to be certain that everyone is wrong. They’re the contrarians. They see which way the wind is blowing and find a way to move against it.
There’s a wisdom in contrarianism. Contrarians are good tests of tolerance and safety in a group. Often contrarians grew up in places where dissent was punished or harmful certitudes put forward without question. When they experience a space where they feel there is too much harmony and agreement, it’s almost instinctive. They have to test it. “You can’t really be as enlightened as you pretend to be.” “There’s always a flaw in the argument.”
And there is! There is always a vulnerability in any argument. There’s always an exceptional case not accounted for in one’s generality. There’s always something left out.
Where the Smartest Guy gets annoying is when they act like nobody else has ever considered this before, and they’re in a room of people who could calmly explain why they’ve considered the contrary perspective and find it not compelling.
As they grow in influence, the Rebel becomes the Tyrant without even noticing it, because parts of them still experience the world as the marginalized child they once were. Now people calling them out or genuinely critiquing their perspectives are examples of those oppressive forces that wanted to shut down dissent, without the Smartest Guy realizing he’s now the one shutting down dissent and unwilling to engage in honest, humble dialogue.
Smartest Guy in the Room is a posture of disconnection. It’s a suit of armor draped over the body of a child who really needs to be seen, needs to know they belong and that they’re safe. But people on the outside can only see the armor, not the child within.
When someone comes to your party in a suit of armor, it’s hard to be soft and welcoming. It’s a moment of tension. It’s like police coming to a peaceful protest in riot gear. The implicit message is We’re not together, I do not trust you. When we’re not trusted, we’re not safe.
When we see someone show up to our party in a suit of armor, we’re going to get a little aggressive. What’s the armor about? What are you planning here?
And the child within feel justified in wearing the armor, clings more tightly to the armor, because who would be vulnerable with people like this around? Good thing I showed up prepared!
The older I get, the less I feel the need for others to know how smart I am. This has opened up a space for more curiosity and connection. I realize I still have much to offer, and I am still loved, even if I’m not the know-it-all pointing out the contradictions in the room.
It’s a relief, too, to not have to be the smartest guy in the room. We can feel is the value within our words and perspective without anxiously proving how we arrived at that space. We can hear the beautiful echoes of all the ways other people came to the same kinds of knowing without feeling diminished. We can unshoulder the burden of that armor and that sense of mission.