In a few posts I ponder on the development of intelligence in general in humanity. Half way down this post I give a link to a theory which proposes that different people possess different kinds of intelligences.
Here are a few more ideas on the subject that came to me as I was pondering.
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Why is it not okay nowadays to organise competitions where gladiators fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the general public, and it was okay 2,000 years ago? Why is it not okay now to publicly hang, draw and quarter people who plot against the king and it was okay to do it a few hundred years ago? And why is it not okay to drown women to check if they are witches, or burn them at the stake, and it was 250 years ago.
Why do women have the right to vote nowadays and they didn’t 120 years ago, or, indeed, the right to work after they get married when they were forced to leave the workforce just 50 years ago! Or how is it that two people of the same sex can be open about their intimate relationship (and even get married) nowadays whereas a mere 25 years ago they’d have been committing a crime.
I could give loads of examples of cruel and inhuman practices and punishments (such as slavery, execution, flogging etc.) that have been outlawed and are now banned by countries that call themselves civilised and/or any way enlightened. And the regimes of countries where execution is an acceptable punishment are roundly criticised by human rights organisations.
Perhaps as countries become generally wealthier, and populations don’t have to worry about food, hunger, shelter, and other basic needs – in a kind of national version of Maslow’s Triangle – the general public will become more concerned about matters such as justice, the rights of vulnerable people, compassion, democracy and equality.
Over time, a critical mass of the population will think more deeply about humanity, and come to believe that injustice, inequality, discrimination and poverty are causative factors in things like criminality and terrorism. Such beliefs, combined with deeper thinking, will put pressure on governments to change laws so that a more understanding approach will be adopted towards resolution of human problems that in the past would have been met with a harsh punitive response.
In fact, the punitive response will be seen to be actually harmful to the overall well-being of the population in the long term.
But I don’t believe that general wealth, food abundance, housing etc. is the full story. After all, in Roman times there was plenty food and reasonably good housing conditions and yet criminals were fed to the lions and crucified, and slavery was acceptable.
Indeed, even a short 250 years ago, things hadn’t changed that much, really! Great civilisations that were centres of cultures, industry and learning in Europe not only tolerated but promoted an unbelievably cruel form of slavery, and severe and inhuman punishment was commonplace. Children often lost limbs, or even their lives, in highly dangerous workplaces so that unscrupulous industrialists could make more profit – and only a small minority had a problem with it.
And in the past 100 years tens of millions of people have been killed as technologically advanced countries promoted ideologies of one kind or another, their highly intelligent scientists, engineers, police, military, banking and economists – not to mention millions of ordinary people – rowing in with the regimes of cruel dictators.
And today, while many cruel and inhuman treatments are outlawed in most Western World countries, we still make weapons to sell to countries where cruelty and inhumanity are widespread, and buy items that we know are manufactured in far-away lands, in factories that exploit children, with inadequate health and safety work-practices that we would not tolerate in our own countries.
So – what happened since the early-mid 1800’s (at least in most countries in the world) that changed attitudes to slavery, rights of women, respect for children, other minorities such as gays and lesbians, even ethnic groups who are vulnerable?
I’m pretty sure that the changes, which, generally, are to do with our becoming aware of our own and others’ human rights, are linked to an increase in our emotional intelligence. And when I think of how our emotional intelligence increases the two factors that jump out at me are education and communication. That is, the ability to read and write so that ideas can spread from place to place – and quickly – by new, faster methods of travelling between places.
Widespread worldwide communication was made possible, initially, by a combination of the invention of the printing press and an increase in the speed of travel. It accelerated greatly with the advent of the telegraph and then the telephone – followed soon afterwards by radio and TV, and now the Internet.
This huge increase in world-wide connections between humans – in what is a very short time – reminds me of how connections between neurons in our brain enhance our abilities in thinking, feeling etc., a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.
Perhaps our emotional intelligence increases as we make more and faster connections – in a kind of global neuroplasticity. And as we become aware that there might be a better way, our existential given of responsibility kicks in to include our responsibility towards our fellow humans – and particularly those who are less advantaged and/or vulnerable.
Increase in emotional intelligence also alerts us to the fact that if we are generous, compassionate, fair, just and tolerant of difference there is a positive payback for us too!
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Our general opinions about intelligence are interesting. In this post I discussed how we put linguistic and mechanical intelligence at the top of the intelligence pile.
It’s a bit like our opinions around sanity. There are people who believe that by stockpiling nuclear weapons – that have the capacity to incinerate every human being in the world many times over – we will be safer. Not only are such people generally thought to be intelligent and sane, but they often find their way into very influential positions, and even high office, in the biggest, strongest and wealthiest countries in the world.
This links intelligence, to some extent, to values – and the argument as to whether or not science is value-free. In other words, if we use our intelligence to invent something that will kill people, can we wash our hands of responsibility for the result of our invention.
If intelligence is linked to our success in protecting the long-term viability of all our species, rather than the narrow interests of a few of us, surely those that promote reciprocity, cooperation, kindness and compassion (the caring skills) are more intelligent than those who produce devices that kill other humans.
And since those characteristics were more common in hunter-gatherer societies thousands of years ago perhaps an outside observer (our friendly Martian that drops by occasionally) would say that we are less intelligent now than we were then.
We are truly a strange species!