Quote:
Originally Posted by Coexist.
and intelligent people tend to be more happy. That says it all; it's a correlation, not a causation. Intelligence leads to happiness. Happiness leads to content.
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I'm going to focus on this specifically, because I don't think that's what going on here. Intelligent people aren't necessarily more happy, in fact I'd wager the opposite is true because being intelligent means being more aware, especially of all of the bullshit in life. Hemingway put it best- "happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Inversely, less intelligent people would be less aware about things not immediately surrounding themselves, and would be content in what little they do know, because less negativity has a chance of getting into their respective realities.
I would argue that the difference between those of higher and lower intelligence (which is incredibly relative) has less to do with happiness and more to do with perception, more importantly the ""why". Intelligent people are more likely to know why something went wrong, and how to fix/deal with it. People with less intelligence would be left with more questions then answers, and certain aspects of religion, especially the community oriented part of it, would help them overcome the lack of resolution and accept their situation with the help of like minded individuals. I would even hypothesize that that sort of thing is a method of artificial resolution via a social safety net.
That being said, religion and spirituality aren't mutually inclusive, and I've personally found that the smarter a person is, the more spiritual they are. Hell, the more I learn, the more spiritual and closer to nature I feel.