WHY IS HATE SUCH A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR?
Note:
Given the current hostile climate and polarity across the United States in this election year, a reader has asked me to write something on "hate," which I did in fact do a year ago. This missive was centered on the rage of the moment, emotional intelligence, against the vulnerability of hate in the most gifted among us. It is resubmitted for your pondering.
JRF
BACKGROUND: THE
GENESIS OF IQ & COMMONALITY OF ITS CRIPPLING GENIUS
We
humans jump on ideas that simplify our pressing dilemmas and meet the demands
of our common sense. We have been doing this with some vigor over the past
roughly 150 years. We apparently need to pigeonhole people into explanatory
categories with mathematics and science to compensate for our
confusion and exasperation when it comes to people as persons as so many
vicissitudes seem to be manifested.
This appears especially true when it comes to intelligence. Sir Francis Galton, the British mathematician, and founder of statistics, was fascinated with eugenics, behavioral genetics and intelligence. His book “Hereditary Genius” (1865) focused on biological breeding and nature rather than on nurture and the cultural environment. He was especially captivated by the distribution graph popularly known as the “bell curve.”
Biometrics, or reducing people to numbers on a statistical curve has been with us ever since. American biometrician Charles Davenport (1866 – 1944) was persuaded in his research that certain ethnic groups suffered stereotypical moral failings leading to criminality and prostitution.
Americans Henry Goddard (1866 – 1957) and Lewis Terman (1877 – 1956) introduced the French “Binet” intelligent test into the United States where it became known as the “Stanford Binet” IQ test. IQ stands for Intelligent Quotient and is calculated thusly:
[This was the standard test when I was in grammar school where it was first given to students. The hubris of the creators of this arbitrary and culturally dependent test was the assertion that IQ is unlikely to change in an individual's lifetime; that nature dominates decisively over nurture. I can remember classmates who used their poor test scores on IQ tests as an excuse for making little progress in school and subsequently in life.]
Reducing people as persons to numbers, statistical or mathematical variables was something of a defense mechanism to deal with exploding populations and the concomitant problems associated with crowd psychology from personal, family to societal dysfunction.
It is not surprising that social engineering would shift to emotional intelligence.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE – WHY IT CAN MATTER MORE THAN IQ
Science journalist Daniel Goleman (born 1946) erased the scarlet letter of shame across the forehead of many when he declared, “The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”
No longer was IQ an obstacle to a mind who wished to have a career say in medicine who had been told his (or her) IQ was insufficient for such a task.
Goleman launched a series of books including the 1995 title of this segment postulating five components as primary to Emotional Intelligence:
Self-awareness; Self-Regulation; Motivation; Empathy; and Social Skills.
SELF-AWARENESS
This is the ability to recognize and understand ones moods, motivations, and abilities. Also the effects they may have on us and others. Goleman says to achieve a state of complete self-awareness, an individual must be able to monitor his or her emotional state and identify the emotions. Traits that prove an individual as emotionally mature include: confidence, the ability to laugh at one’s self and their mistakes, and the awareness of how you are perceived by others.
Example: By reading the reaction of someone else, you have an idea how you are perceived by them.
SELF-REGULATION
This is the ability to control ones impulses: that is, the ability to think before you speak/react, and the ability to express yourself appropriately. Goleman defines emotional maturity in this component as being able to take responsibility for your actions, being able to adapt to change, and the ability to respond appropriately to other people’s irrational emotions or behavior.
Example: If someone is screaming at you, they are not necessarily angry at or with you. They may be angry with themselves, or at a particular situation and feel they need to take it out on someone. You do not need to take it personally or to react angrily in response. Silence is golden at such moments. Miraculously, calm is the husband of silence.
MOTIVATION
Interest is the key to motivation; learning and self-improvement follow. It is not the other way around. Once you hit an emotional bump in the road of life, interests supply the strength to keep carrying on. Goleman would define an emotional mature individual as one who accepts temporary setbacks as part of the routine, while having the perseverance to face adversity.
Example: One who chooses internal motivation driven goals (i.e., interests) instead of exterior motivation driven goals (i.e., financial gain) has an easier time dealing with those inevitable "bumps in the road." Internal motivation driven goals may involve such things as earning a college degree, becoming a healthier person, or following self-directed interests, whereas exterior motivation driven goals are other-directed interests which may be centered on wealth or status, such as having the newest most prestigious car.
EMPATHY
This is the ability to understand other people’s emotions and reactions. Empathy can only be achieved if self-awareness is achieved. Goleman believes that one must first be able to understand oneself before one can understand others. Empathy then involves accepting oneself as one is which then follows that it is easier to accept others as they are found. In a word, empathy develops tolerance of people and situations in relationships. The paradoxical benefit of empathy is that one never own other people's problems, problems that in any case one cannot solve because they are not one's problems.
Example: Being able to understand and cope with someone else’s hardships or sadness. When you fully understand yourself and why you feel the things you feel, you can understand other people even if they are different than you are. Empathy is not sympathy.
SOCIAL SKILLS
This is the ability to pick up on jokes and sarcasm as what they often are, which is defense mechanisms. Friendship and relationships demonstrate an ability to get inside defensive postures to develop common ground with others. Goleman states that emotional maturity defines someone who has good communication and time management skills, along with the ability to resolve difficult situations by managing conflict with empathetic understanding.
Example: When two people are in conflict, a third party intervention can be effective. This person remains neutral while listening to the contentious differences of the two parties. Simply by talking in the present of the interventionist, there is a possibility that common ground can be found to resolve the issue separating the two. Anger is often the result of hurt or misunderstanding. Americans are typically nonconfrontational protesting infrequently, but violently having allowed the hurt or injustice to fester.
Journalist Goleman hit on a compelling theme stimulating the collective conscience of society just as Stephen Covey (1932 – 2012) did with “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989), and as Ken Blanchard (born 1939) did with “The One Minute Manager” (1982).
The flaw to readymade solutions to complex behavioral and organizational problems is that they don’t have staying power as they are generic and not problem specific.
The idea of emotional intelligence first appeared in a paper given by Columbia’s professors of psychology Joel Robert Davitz and psychiatrist Michael Beldoch in 1964. Daniel Goleman took it to another level with “Emotional Intelligence” (1995).
Mental health and leadership has been the focus of many studies assuming emotional intelligence (EI) as real intelligence. These studies show no causal relationships to those attributable to general intelligence and personality traits, seeing emotional intelligence rather as a construct.
That said, people with high EQ’s (Emotional Quotient's) seem to have better mental health, job performance and leadership skills. In other words, they can process emotional information effectively and negotiate the social environment but the prospects for them belonging to the genius class appear slim as I next swing towards that muddy terrain where genius, and yes, often hates reside against suspect emotional intelligence.
PALPABLE HATE IN A CLIMATE OF GENIUS
As a consultant, I once had a client who was a genius as an engineer, and as a managerial vice president of a high tech facility developing brilliant strategies and imaginative tactics. His problem was a director who reported to him whom he saw as a nincompoop and incompetent.
He railed about this man all the time while I pointed out to no avail that the man was the CEO’s best friend and hunting and fishing partner. My client had a heart attack. When he returned, he was relieved of his former position while his nemesis’s continued to flourish unscathed for his ineptitude.
This blog and my e-mail site often receive expressions of contempt if not hate for this or that individual. Ironically, it is often a national figure or celebrity who they do not know, and with whom they have no contact.
The source of their displeasure is the gossip provided by their favorite network news outlet. News sources are advertising dependent, with these networks religiously giving the slant to the stories reported that their sponsors' expect and pay for, while the poor viewers, ignorant of the game being played on them, treat this information as the unvarnished truth.
Actress Marilyn Monroe once said, “Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you." Marilyn Monroe, who had very little formal education, shared this dilemma with one of the great geniuses of our era, Albert Einstein.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
In 1905, the Einstein published his epoch-making special relativity theory. He also wrote a paper revealing how Max Planck’s quanta theory was confirmed by experiments conducted by physicist Philip Lenard.
This is noteworthy as Einstein was always quick to give credit to others. Lenard was a scientist who became a Noble Laureate in Physics, but was destined to identify with the Nazis, and attempt to discredit Einstein’s proven theory of relativity out of jealousy and because he was a Jew.
In the competitive climate of German physics, Einstein demonstrated maturity and emotional judgment throughout his life:
(1) With anti-Semitism rampant in Germany during the 1930s, he renounced his German citizenship and became stateless;
(2) Refused to sign a manifesto which claimed, “Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long ago have been destroyed.” Such notables as Max Planck signed the document;
(3) He visited the battlefields of France after WWI, and commented: “We ought to bring all the students of Germany to this place, all the students of the world so that they can see how ugly war is.”
(4) He was among a handful of academics who had refused to sign the Fulda Manifesto supporting the view that German science should be at the service of the Fatherland and the military; instead he became signatory to a counter-manifesto seeking to promote international peace in the form of organic unity in Europe;
(5) Fame came his way when an eclipse expedition in 1919 mounted in Brazil and the west coast of Africa proved his theory of relativity. Despite the acclaim, he disowned the notion that his theory was “revolutionary” choosing instead to see it as evolutionary stressing the foundation work of Newton and James Clark Maxwell;
(6) Solvay Congresses of 1921 and 1922 banned Germans from attending; when he was invited as an honorary non-German, he refused to attend as a gesture of solidarity with his German scientific colleagues;
(7) Always modest about his own skill set, pointing out that he was weak as a mathematician and humble about all the accolades sent his way.
Albert Einstein considered himself an outsider to his culture and time, despite being awarded the Nobel Prize and essentially replacing Newtonian physics that had dominated the discipline for 300 years.
As a matter of conscience, he renounced his Jewish faith and his German citizenship and for a time was stateless until he became a Swiss citizen.
Einstein demonstrated self-awareness, self-sensitivity, self-identity, and consummate empathy for others, as well as self-dignity for himself and other members of human society.
With Einstein, Intellectual Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence were in balance, a state not always demonstrated by his equally gifted colleagues, such as Nobel Laureates Philip Lenard (1862 – 1947) and Johannes Stark (1874 – 1957).
Individual genius and early brilliance in science are no guarantees of rational maturity and dispassionate objectivity especially when ideological notions take hold.
In the case of these two men, anti-Semitism colored their approach to life with a sick focus on a once cherished friend, Albert Einstein.
Personality and emotions are inseparable from the way we see ourselves whatever our profession.
For a scientist, no matter how ideal the work environment, how well-funded the research, or how independent and unobtrusive the oversight, there are no guarantees this will shape a mature, generous, socially engaged and empathetic balanced personality.
Toxic hate flourishes anywhere, even in what may otherwise appear to be the most positive of circumstances.
PHILIP LENARD
Philip Lenard was a man of vitriolic and fanatical temperament with consummate zeal for research. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 at the age of 43. Despite his brilliance and success, he was a great hater of his peer group of scientists that included Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen (1845 – 1923) discoverer of X-rays, whom he claimed stole his research.
He made the same accusation of English physicist J. J. Thompson (1856 – 1940) for winning the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect.
Lenard had general contempt for English science in general claiming Great Britain was an island race of self-seeking duplicitous tradesman. He was however respectful of Einstein until he was universally acclaimed for his theory of relativity.
After WWI, losing a son during the war to malnutrition, and then a small fortune after the war to inflation, Lenard blamed Jewish politicians. From that time forward, anti-Semitism became his featured view of his science and that of other scientists.
Historian Alan D. Beyerchen claims Lenard’s upbringing and romantic need to be led by a great figure was coupled with a sickening need to belong to something greater than himself which became a contributing factors to his conversion to and zeal for Nazism.
JOHANNES STARK
Johannes Stark was only in his early thirties when he discovered the Doppler Effect in ‘canal rays’ that became known as the ‘Stark Effect.’ He was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Likewise, in the early days he was impressed with Einstein. But when he failed to receive a valued academic appointment, his enmity was fixed on the Jewish cartel led by Einstein’s circle of Jewish friends in the scientific community.
Thwarted at every stage to control the German physics community, he became increasingly vitriolic to everything Jewish. Once a Nazis, he became virulently hostile to Einstein when he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, awarded in 1922.
Stark released his venom against Einstein in his book “The Contemporary Crisis in German Physics” (1923), attacking Einstein’s methods of self-publicity; for the wild claims of his theories; while drawing parallels between social and political revolutions in Germany to justify his anti-Semitism.
German Nobel Laureate Max von Laue (1879 – 1960), winner of the prize for the diffraction of X-rays by crystals, wrote a long review of Stark’s book concluding:
“All in all, we would have wished that this book had remained unwritten, in the interest of science in general, of German science in particular, and not least of all in the interest of the author himself.”
Six months after the fiasco of Hitler’s abortive "1924 beer hall putsch,” Lenard and Stark published an article titled “The Hitler Spirit and Science,” comparing Hitler to the giants of the past in science, linking him with Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Faraday, and claiming Hitler as the genius of the Aryan race.
CONCLUSION
We only have to turn on our television or surf the Internet to see how pervasive hate is in the national dialogue at the moment, and in the international culture as well. You would think men of genius would also possess the humanity of emotional temperance as well, but that is not always the case. Could it be because they fail to understand that we feel before we think?
Envy is promoted by wanting what someone else has that is desired for oneself; jealousy is the fear of losing what one already possesses. Both sides of this coin promote hatred.
In the early 20th century, there were scientists who were intellectually conservative who opposed relativity and quantum physics, not on the grounds of faulty science, but because it threatened and undermined their traditional intuitive mechanistic and deterministic scientific traditions.
There were also those who envied and despised Einstein and his group because they saw the new science as a disruptive Jewish conspiracy designed to derail the world of conventional physics that had held sway for 300 years.
They also personally despised Einstein for his pacifist stand during WWI, his support of the democratic spirit of the Weimar Republic, and for his independent mind and judgment.
In the German physics community before WWII, many former Nobel Laureates shared the same anti-Semitic sentiments as Lenard and Stark, and were primed for the eminent domain of Nazi science without Jewish scientists.
In fact by the late 1930s, a quarter of the most esteemed and gifted physicists in Germany, who happened to be Jewish, were working in Great Britain, the United States and/or the Soviet Union. Some of these scientists were working on the Manhattan Project that would produce the first atomic bomb.
If this seems absurd, remember how petty most of us can be at times without possessing any of the demands of genius. Absent Emotional Intelligence, juvenility is not only rampant but equally democratic with the moronic and genius occupying common ground in the most brilliant among us.
One wonders if those with imagination and clout but little emotional maturity are driving civilization to the brink of disaster through their hubris, false pride, and contempt for others not of their ethnicity or for not being nearly as gifted.
They appear to lack the perception to see the absurdity of their ways, while failing to appreciate the wisdom of Horace Walpole’s words:
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment