What I am finding as I get older is that I don't have a lot of truly smart people in my life, people who have a knowledge base in their life that I can visit as comfortably as I google a question. Years ago when I was in grad school a classmate said that the library needed a guy sitting somewhere in the library to whom you could go and ask any question and get an answer. I know that it was tongue-in-cheek, of course, but that I idea has always stuck with me, that no matter how many good books I read, and no matter how many people have to give me homespun wisdom to get me through the difficult times, I also need people who are smart enough to consider an idea and tell me whether it is good or just full of crap.
As I think about the many people who have come in and out of my life, there are some people who simply don't qualify.
-Those who are Trumpites. This goes without saying...not that some who might support Trump might not know some things, and their perspective might be one that I need to hear...but these glass-eyed Stepford wife Trumpites have lost my respect. If they can't see how awful on the whole Trump has been, then they're really just dumb people who I can't trust.
-Nor do I want somebody who has become so woke that they have become insufferable. Today we have to deal with lots of people who demand that I feel a certain way, that if I don't, and if I'm not as outraged about ____ as much as they are, then I must be a ___ist. Sorry, I know how I feel, and don't have time with these folks.
-People who I deal day-in, day-out with. This seems strange, because surely there are a lot of smart people around me. But I've learned that up-close personal conflict is not one of my strong suits. I do get unreasonably upset talking to people who are simply wrong. I need to control my emotions better, but for now these people don't qualify, not because of them, but because I don't want to break relationship with people close to me.
That leaves a rather small group of people that I see very rarely...people I went to school with, or whom I have crossed paths with and walked with for a period of my life. Thinking through people with help from my Facebook friends list, I found less than a dozen people who would likely qualify. These are smart, moderate, sensible people who seem to have some level of success in their life. Unfortunately, they are a mostly homogeneous group...they come from a similar church tradition as me (even if some have left), they come from similar family and socioeconomic and racial backgrounds, and they likely are all more built up in my head than they actually are. They're too much like me, perhaps, to really expand my thinking.
I think about contacting a few of these old friends over Facebook or calling them, and asking them to be my Smart People Council. But they are busy with families and jobs and lives of their own, and perhaps they would have more pressing subjects that they need to find clarity on to the point that they don't have time to debate my insignificant issue. I need to make more friends where I am, to listen better to the people around me, and perhaps not think that I'm smarter than the nincompoops I look down upon. Maybe the first lesson my SPC would do is disband, to tell me as their leader to get a better life, I don't know. But still I imagine, someday when I am world dictator, these people will get my summons.
