At first I was going to make a post about how there is not set definition for smart, but in the end I'm going very general. Everything is relative. By everything, I mean everything. I'll split this post into various topics to keep it more readable.
Smart
I'm sure you've heard someone say, "He/She's smart." But what does that really mean? He/She gets good grades would be a simple definition for it, but is that really what smart means? Does being smart in school really directly relate to being smart in real life? The answer to that is No. How intelligence actually works is that our intelligence needs to be split up into various topics and groupings. The first two things I want to differentiate now is Wisdom and Intelligence. Each have their own sub-categories within them. Wisdom is something I'll touch in the next topic. Wisdom is defined by me simply as the knowledge we obtain over time. This includes what we learn in school. Intelligence on the other hand covers everything else you would associate with smart including, the ability to learn fast, memorization, quick thinking, logic, imagination, and other such things. Memorization directly ties in with Wisdom. While if you look at this, some people you call smart for the wrong reason. Smart is a term that is improperly used. Because one person get's good grades doesn't mean that they are smart as long as you are looking at it with the current education system we have. Because of this "faulty" system, people are classified as smart only because they work hard. People that work hard receive the title of smart. They don't require any of the abilities that true intelligence has, but they are still qualified as smart. On the other hand, there are people that receive bad grades and can be considered smart. Those are the types of people that are smart but lack this hardworking ability. In a way the education system is not flawed, it judges people on their ability to work hard, which is a good indicator for the future. In other ways, it is completely senseless. To be smart is very broad and it truly depends on the scenario. No matter how you look at it, people define smart differently. Intelligence in current society, ignoring my definition of it, is relative to another. When you are called smart, it's usually a comparison between the person complementing you and yourself. They compare themselves to you and see that you have more desirable traits in regards to either Wisdom or Intelligence. I'm sure we've all been called smart but at the same time we've all been called dumb. Smart is relative to the person that is talking.
Wisdom
This also falls under the category of smart. Wisdom is highly relative. There are so many types of wisdom that it's foolish to group them together. People also call people smart because they know something that that person didn't know. Although this is truly the worst way to classify smart. Because you excel in one topic, doesn't mean you know everything. Although this is complicated in itself. If you know a topic you can be called smart, but on the other hand you may be ignored or disregard. If for example, you know about telluric currents and another person doesn't, the usual result is that you are considered smart. While on the other hand if you knew about The Beatles, you would be ignored or disregard. Why? It's simple. One topic is more esoteric than the other. If everyone in the world knew about telluric currents, then you would also be ignored. Wisdom is relative in this sense. In a way everything is relative based on society if you want to be specific. The societal norm is what everything is based on, take for example morality
Morality
The topic of morality was why I changed this from a simple talk of why smart is relative to, everything is relative. We had to write on this topic in English and this kind of sparked the idea. I'll be short with this one. Morality stems from individual thoughts. Morality is heavily effected by your environment around you especially if you are young. Morality is always constantly changing as more things effect you even this second. A easy way to understand this is a cube of clay. When you are born you start with a certain shape of or morality. When you get a fresh block of clay, it's very easy to mold and shape. As time goes on and the less you touch it the harder it becomes. Overtime the clay hardens. Your morality will slowly become more stable, but when you are born it's mushy and very easy to change. While you are really old, your morality can still change, it's just that much more force required. Morality is all based on what each person thinks. Although the majority of people have their morality influenced by society of the current time period. This revolves heavily around the concept of Good and Bad.
Good and Bad
This is a topic that bothers me a lot, it's easy to understand yet some people don't fully grasp it. There is no such thing as good or bad, it's simply a figment of your imagination. Good is what is socially accepted as good in the world. That means the majority of people in a certain community believe that doing such an act is beneficial and is accepted. Bad on the other hand is what that majority of people in the community believe as unacceptable and unsatisfactory. While this definition is wildly accepted, a much better way to explain it is in terms of morals. Each individual thinks one thing is good and another is bad based on their morals, which means good and bad are defined in your interactions with your environment.
These are just some of things that are relative. Everything is relative, maybe that's why Einstein was considered "Smart", although his grades certainty don't show he's smart.
I'm almost surprised that you didn't go into Good vs. Bad more, if only because that is the subject I would have discussed the most. Good vs. Bad is, in my opinion, the most relevant example of how things are relative throughout history and today. Take Harry Truman's choice to use nuclear bombs against Japan, the event and aftermath of which killed over eight hundred thousand people. Many people today say that this was a horrible decision, if not downright evil, and that Truman deserved to have been brought up on war crimes for his actions. (This is a good example, as it overlaps with morality.) But I disagree. To those who say that Truman made a bad decision, I point out that the Japanese were not willing to surrender. I would assert that the US had conquered the island of Okinawa, several hundred miles from the Japanese home islands. I would remind them that the US was planning for a full-scale invasion of Japan. And, finally, I would emphasize that top US officials estimated the death tolls for such an invasion at about a million Americans, in addition to SEVENTEEN MILLION Japanese civilians. Suddenly, eight hundred thousand dead, regardless how they died, doesn't seem quite so bad. Heck, if Truman hadn't decided to drop the bomb, I probably wouldn't be here; something which holds true for at least five or ten percent of modern Americans. So, if any of you reading this feel that Truman was wrong in his actions, ask yourself this: why is it that killing eight hundred thousand people is worse than killing eighteen million people, including civilians and, more importantly, your own countrymen? I'm not saying it was the right thing to do in general; I'm saying it was the right thing to do given the situation. Relative to the context, it was the equivalent giving Japan a birthday present as compared to shooting it in the head; if we'd invaded, Japan would likely have lost a third of its population before it surrendered. Don't judge somebody until you've lived in their shoes.
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