“And this ‘intelligence’ you have discussed will be found to resemble intimacy; though it may not (at first) appear to us as intelligence because we have been conditioned to recognize familiar and official looking outcomes as smart or correct, even though their form of ‘smart’ is cold, calculated, and constricting.

I notice that when I let my guard down — my professional mask — and engage in a intimate conversation with a class full of teenagers — they respond, they become enlivened. We all relax and the atmosphere becomes much more playful, intelligent, and authentic.

When I catch myself sounding official, distancing myself from the unique people in my class… I lose touch with them and myself… and it becomes mechanical, a derivative of the machine, and is no longer a joyous occasion of our collective spirit.

These are choices we make at work, at friends’ houses, at dance clubs, on social media… we must continue to reach out in love and play and not merely in repetition of the machine that wants us to identify with it.”

— Dominick DeGiovanni (slightly edited by me)