When in Wal-Mart recently, I stopped to ask the clerk where the sound machines were located. I explained to her that I had developed a snoring problem and needed to find a loud enough sound machine to create some heavy “white noise.” I am not joking one bit when she responded with, “What do you mean WHITE NOISE?!? Noise doesn’t have a color… I don’t know what you’re talking about!” And then looked at me with utter disgust. I asked her if she was kidding and quickly realized that she wasn’t at all. She was quite literally baffled as I thanked her and said I would look on my own. Ironically, the second employee wasn’t much better. “White noise? I’ve heard of that but can’t remember what it is. Isn’t that like the sounds of dolphins or something like that?” (Keep in mind these are adult women who have - presumably - graduated from high school.)

Then you have the equally sad other side of the spectrum. These are the folks who are either unbelievably brilliant or simply want you to believe they are. While the two are a bit hard to discern, the quality this group shares is that they want you to KNOW how intelligent they are. It matters not that there are billions of other bright people in the world; they are determined to show you just how much of a genius they are. Because intelligence and vocabulary are not necessarily correlated in any way, I usually enjoy a good laugh when I read an article where someone has intentionally inserted words which require a dictionary to look up the meaning. I know very little about him, and certainly don’t have anything against him personally, but an excellent example is Newsweek’s columnist George F. Will. Will loads each of his articles with huge words. And although they are not incredibly uncommon or hard to understand in the context of what he is writing, it’s humorous because Newsweek’s readership is not the elite academics of this world. Words like Uriah Heepism, Metternichian, apocryphal, luxuriates, forfend, meretricious, and cartelization are simply words that aren’t that commonly used, even among those who are educated formerly.

It seems as though Mr. Will (and those are just a few random examples of his) wants readers to know that he has a Harvard vocabulary. Nevermind that most of the world has not attended Harvard, and many of those who have still relate to their audience using everyday English. Sadly, I encounter those types on a regular basis who work diligently to build a facade or false pre-tense to suggest how brilliant they are and how much better they are than the rest of us. Maybe the strong desire to be seen as an elite intellectual is merely a defense mechanism for something else, such as low self-esteem? I don’t know but I do know I’m not comfortable around those who want me to know they were number one in their class at Oxford.

For most of us, it would be tough to pick which group we would rather be around, the “dumbed down” group of individuals who are so uncaring that they don’t spend the time to pick up on the most basic of terms (i.e. white noise) or those who want to discuss whether the “plethora of paradigm shifts is more qualitative or quantitative in nature when it comes to heuristic research.” I believe most of us would rather not spend the majority of our time with either group.

My hope is that we don’t become a nation where the majority lies in one of the two extremes with just a small percentage of us left in the middle. Because just like the completely uninformed group, the group of individuals who publicly proclaim their brilliance is equally out of touch with reality. And when the majority of a nation becomes out of touch with reality is when the real problems begin! As always, I look forward to your thoughts.