Intelligence, therefore, is an attribute to know what to do and how to do it. When you give someone before he asks, you are an intelligent man. If you serve your boss before he gives his orders, you are an intelligent subordinate. Somehow intelligence is associated with the mental capacity to "get the hint", "get the message" or "get things done". You are intelligent if you know the ways of the world, if you know how to get around, if you can smell the rat from a distance.

So, intelligence has nothing to do with character or virtues. It is a gift of nature that hones the faculties of certain people to become independent, congenial and street smart. These people know how to maximise things, avoid conflict and achieve their goals. Intelligence is eclectic, intelligence is flexible; it is much like a weathercock that turns to the wind. Intelligence has nothing to do with honesty, sincerity and devotion. It is not enough to know what to do unless you also know how to do it.

Hence, intelligence of thought doesn't work without intelligence of action. The philosophers understand the world and they explain it. These philosophers had a special place in the ancient world, where warriors fought for changes envisioned by them. Plato's "philosopher-king" reposed the virtue of knowing what to do with that of knowing how to do it in a single individual.

But the meaning of intelligence has shifted over time, more emphasis being laid on how to do than what to do. If you look at the elections, which is one of the greatest contrivances of mankind, the focus is increasingly on how to win instead of why to win. Candidates make false promises to win their elections, get the popular mandate and then do whatever they like to do with it. If you consider the intellectual part of intelligence, which has to do with the power of reasoning, you will observe a similar trend. People who claim to understand the world tend to understand it for a reason. Truth isn't their motivation as much as manipulation is their intention.

The other part of intelligence is cognitive, the power of learning and understanding, which has more to do with success and survival. This is where the aptitude of intelligence is reduced into a self-serving attitude, a mere instinct to protect one's own interest. An intelligent mind does what is convenient, what is safe and what is rewarding; a rare gift degenerated into a set of useful skills.

King Lear is quoted to have said: "Jesters do oft prove prophets." The fools provide entertainment, but he also gets to tell the truth, an unpleasant thing avoided by intelligent men. Only the fools rush where the angels fear to tread. Jesus Christ was viewed as a dangerous fool by the Roman rulers, who sought to destroy the old structures and bring God's kingdom.

The fools get to tell the truth, whereas the intelligent people tend to hide it and tell what is safe. The fools can get away with telling the hardest truths--because he is a fool. People listen to the fools because they are crazy and cannot be held responsible for what they say.Ê The fools provide truth, balance, play, recreation, destruction, creation, and change.Ê

As a matter of fact, intelligence is antithetic to the change of status quo, because the intelligent people are always against the status quo of change. They make compromises, they manipulate, motivate and manage, their ultimate intentions seeded in their attempts to hold on to their selfish interests. Intelligent mind is an opportunistic mind, a mind that stretches and shrinks, its elasticity configured in its self-seeking motives. French satirist Jean de la Bruyere amusingly said, "The people have little intelligence, the great no heart.....if I had to choose I should have no hesitation: I would be of the people."

Perhaps people who have less intelligence are fewer in number. In other words, the world has less fools than intelligent people. It is when some of the fools choose to act that change happens. These fools give up their comfort, lay down their lives, starve, pick up fights, take risks, go underground, make sacrifices, and live their lives in fear and anxieties. Reformers, revolutionaries, messiahs, and prophets come under this category, people who renounce the luxury and comfort of conventional life in their ambition to bring change.

France was saved by its backbenchers, goes the saying. Intelligence is more tactical as courage is confrontational, and the latter is more effective than the former when it comes to true test. Change requires courage, while intelligence retains constancy. People who defy are always daring, while those who are smart defend what is convenient.

Smart is quick intelligence, the readiness of mind that readily scans a situation and identifies opportunities. Most smart people enter business and politics, people with slower intelligence going into other professions. The word intellectual is a misnomer, which underscores the engagement of intelligence but not the power of it as usually understood. Intellectuals are reprobates of intelligence, who exploit their sciolistic pretensions like wicked women use their beauty.

It is the fools who love, who speak the truth, who embrace ideology, accept martyrdom, and blow up themselves with suicide bombs. It is the fools who walk to the gallows, shed their blood, fight for their beliefs, weep for others, defend their countries, and suffer persecution. Everything innocent, everything pure, everything that ennobles, and everything that endures, the selfless spirit, the great vision, compassionate men and women, saints, monks, ascetics, and heroes are rooted in the simplicity of minds, which capture the eternal and the quintessential.

Intelligence is opportunistic, treacherous and tortuous, often crooked, often cocky, but always circumventing facts like a bypass road avoiding the city. Intelligence is garnish, the frills and furbelows, which hide the animal instincts of men under their clever propensities. Intelligence is a spin on the natural man, which makes him hollow and evasive in the name of civilization, his human dignity suppressed by the naked aggression of his own sordid instincts.

Intelligence condones, while foolishness condemns. And if the world is a dangerous place today, it is because we are not willing to gladly suffer the fools. We worship intelligence like ancient men worshipped mysterious powers and forces. We educate, we motivate and we propagate to raise the crops of men and women who are afraid to speak up and defend truth.

The inevitable has happened. The intelligent is full of passionate intensity, forgetting that life is temporary. Profanity has encroached upon the profound. What we call intelligent is actually stupid.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.