The Hammock Papers: Consequential.

08 February 2026

Consequential.

The culture loves the simplicity of labels.

Like its sibling catch-alls passionate, awesome and kind, smart is a word that is misunderstood, misused, and inappropriately labelled.

We have surrendered one of our most consequential words.

“Smart” once described a rare and admirable combination of quick pattern-recognition, sound judgment, deep understanding, and intellectual courage.

Coffee makers are smart. Doorbells are smart. Thermostats, scales, toothbrushes, refrigerators, and even trash cans are now smart. Today it is a hollow compliment applied to almost anything that moves, sells, or flatters our self-image. A toddler who stacks two blocks is “so smart!” An adult who can parallel-park receives the same adjective.

When everything is smart, nothing is.

Worse still, we have begun to use “smart” where intrinsic value is lacking.. Calling someone “smart” now frequently substitutes for saying they are good, wise, honest, or brave. The implication is clear and corrosive: intelligence (or any cheap counterfeit) is the only virtue that really matters. Decency, integrity, humility, and perseverance have been demoted to secondary traits—if they are noticed at all.

The result is an overvalue of discernible cleverness. We celebrate people who are quick, shiny, and rhetorically flashy while growing blind to those who are slow, deep, awkward, and true; I admiringly call this group the "crooked trees." We have convinced ourselves that being “smart” is the same thing as being useful. It's not.

Language is a tool used to shape reality. When we continue to culturally degrade language that once pointed toward something difficult and valuable, we devalue the very thing it pointed toward. We no longer have a reliable way to name genuine excellence because we have spent the word on light bulbs, algorithmic patterns, and passive-aggressive comebacks.

It is time to retire “smart” from this type of casual drivel.

Let it rest until we're able use it to describe a mind that sees the wonder others dismiss, holds conclusions lightly but courageously, changes its mind when the evidence demands it, and remains humble in the face of what it does not yet understand.

I move that we abolish the cult of smart. Instead, especially where kids are concerned, try using ...

Hard-working
Enthusiastic
Determined
Poetic
Perceptive
Shrewd
Discerning
Experienced
Well-read
Critical
What else?

These still carry weight. They still cost something to say, a reminder that not every convenience, not every quick reply, not every small optimization deserves to be canonized with the same adjective we once reserved for the keenest forms of understanding.

What matters for recognizing high levels of performance is that a person is challenged, requiring attitudes that are perceptive and receptive to being challenged, if not actively seeking out challenge and eagerly facing and admitting the prospect of misadventure, even failure.

That may be the most important thing a parent, a mentor, or even a teacher can impart.

James Hamblin explains ...

People are born with some innate cognitive differences, but those differences are eclipsed by early achievement, Boaler argues. When people perform well (academically or otherwise) at early ages and are labeled smart or gifted, they become less likely to challenge themselves. They become less likely to make mistakes, because they stay in their comfortable comfort zone and stop growing. And their fixed mindset persists through adulthood. The simple and innocent praising of a smart kid feeds an insidious problem that some researchers track all the way up to gender inequality in STEM careers.

From Inc. ...

Our society is obsessed with the label of being smart. Even more so, we're obsessed with how smart you are compared to others. Historically, these measurements started in early education as a way to place children in the "right" class levels. As a result, our society has become overly focused on intelligence, so much so, that in the business world it's common to innocently describe others as smart without much thought. Being smart is defined in the dictionary as having or showing a quick-witted intelligence. This just tells someone they're fast thinking, but what value does it ultimately provide in the workplace?

The proclivity to use this label can cause long-lasting damage. Below are some reasons why being labeled "smart" is actually a hindrance rather than a help.

Hamblin continues ...

At whatever age smart people develop the idea that they are smart, they also tend to develop vulnerability around relinquishing that label. So the difference between telling a kid “You did a great job” and “You are smart” isn’t subtle. That is, at least, according to one growing movement in education and parenting that advocates for retirement of “the S word.”

The idea is that when we praise kids for being smart, those kids think: Oh good, I'm smart. And then later, when those kids mess up, which they will, they think: Oh no, I'm not smart after all. People will think I’m not smart after all. And that’s the worst. That’s a risk to avoid, they learn.“Smart” kids stand to become especially averse to making mistakes, which are critical to learning and succeeding.

“Mistakes grow your brain,” as the professor of mathematics education at Stanford University Jo Boaler put it on Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by The Atlantic. I wondered why, then, my brain is not so distended that it spills out of my ears and nose. I should have to stuff it back inside like a sleeping bag, and I should have to carry Q-tips around during social events as stuffing implements. Boaler notes, more eloquently, that at least a small part of the forebrain called the thalamus can appreciably grow after periods of the sort of cognitive stimulation involved in mistake-making. What matters for improving performance is that a person is challenged, which requires a mindset that is receptive to being challenged—if not actively seeking out challenge and failure. And that may be the most important thing a teacher can impart.

Psychology Today looks closely at the culture's neutering obsession with "smart"...

The other aspect of "smart" is an evaluative one. It says, roughly, that this display of intelligence is one that the speaker considers praiseworthy, or which accords with the speaker's values. If there is a cleverly worded advertisement in favor of a political cause that I support, or a thoughtfully posed objection that supports my point of view, that is "smart." But if there is a cleverly worded advertisement in support of my political opponent, or an objection which undermines my favored theory, that is not smart at all.

This account of the meaning of "smart," if it is on the right track, encourages a degree of caution. Thick concepts are notorious for the way they build evaluative views into purportedly neutral language. Consider "chaste." This term has a certain descriptive content to it, but it also tacitly accepts a certain view of gender and sexual morality, one which many of us would now reject. We are therefore rightly reluctant to describe people as "chaste," and I think we should show a measure of reluctance toward "smart" as well, which is not as descriptive as it seems to be.

Let’s stop using smart.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL