The Lessons of a Smart Idiot

The chatter at the cafeteria filled everyone's ears. Report cards were just handed out, so it naturally became the topic for the day.
Mengele: I'm glad I'm smart, otherwise my parents would kill me.
Solomon: I don't think you're smart. I don't think anyone can be smart.
Mengele: You can't be serious. How can no one be smart?
Solomon: Being smart is a comparison. But everyone has a different experience in life, so how can you measure how smart someone is?
Mengele: That's easy, just look at how much schooling they have. An engineer would be smarter than a gangster that didn't finish high school.
Solomon: Alright. So let's switch the "typical" day of an engineer and a gangster. Would the engineer know how to make cocaine?
Mengele: Probably not. That would be an interesting spin-off of Breaking Bad though.
Solomon: Would the gangster know how to measure how many coulombs that pass through a wire?
Mengele: I don't even know what that is, so probably not.
Solomon: It's a unit of electrical charge. So now you see that in some way they are both "smarter" than each other.
Mengele: Then how can someone become smart?
Solomon: They'd have to read all the books-- including textbooks -- ever created to get skills and wisdom.
Mengele: If anyone could do that, they'd be a God.
Solomon: Oh no they wouldn't. They'd be a perversion of God.
Mengele: What? Why?
Solomon: Because they will have no time for happiness or meaning.
Mengele: They forced themselves into an eternity of work.
Solomon: Exactly. Also, the more discoveries they make will reveal more mysteries, and this will lead them to do unethical things for knowledge.
Mengele: Like what?
Solomon: They could put people into pressure chambers, and measure how long it takes until someone's eyes pop out of their skull. You must never forget why we fell from Eden.
Mengele: That has to be a joke. No one would ever try that.
Solomon: Go research the experiments of Unit 731.
Mengele: Then why do we want to become smart?
Solomon: Science operates our world. And some people believe that understanding science will lead to a better world.
Mengele: Do you believe that?
Solomon: Not fully. Everyone has different ideas of a better world.
Mengele: No we don't. We want a world without starvation, war, and disease.
Solomon: That's a world you want. Nazis want a world without Jews and racists want a world without blacks.
Mengele: But science has brought us so many good things, like vaccines.
Solomon: That's true. However a lot of unethical experiments were completed, in the hopes of stopping diseases.
Mengele: So if I'm not suppose to understand everything that can be learned, what should I learn?
Solomon: I think you should only learn if it benefits you and isn't immoral. Just don't let your life be defined by one thing, whether it is knowledge or success or happiness.
Mengele: Anything else?
Solomon: Yeah. A scholar knows that he is a fool, while a fool thinks he is a scholar.
Mengele: Why?
Solomon: Because a true scholar knows that some questions are, and should be, unanswerable. Also, they learn from fulfilling life, not just by reading books.