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Editor's Note: One of my current studies is the issue of how we as humans treat each other -- and what motivates us to do that - a psychologist friend and I debate this issue as our acts being controlled by moral intelligence as opposed to emotional intelligence. The former is a social contract, the latter a environmentally learned response. These articles are dealing with this debate. Moral Intelligence
© Vincent di Norcia 2003
Core Ethical Values Moral Intelligence means, Caring for
Every core value represents positive reciprocity, a form of
mutually beneficial social interaction, or exchanges. If everyone benefits, to a
mutually satisfactory degree it is better than if only a few benefit, or if some
are seriously harmed. Win / Win or Benefit / Benefit relationships are better
than Win / Lose, Benefit / Harm relationships. And they are positive reinforcers
too. Ethics, that is, is good for you; that's why we usually prefer, and even
enjoy, mutually beneficial activities.
And one modern rule:
This is a minimal list, of core
values. It is a starting point, not the finish line. Add and improve, as you
feel the need. Several practical maxims can help guide our Moral Intelligence as we try to show our Care for the Core Ethical Values listed above. These are dynamic practical notions. They involve us in complex interactive social relationships, and changing, diverse circumstances. Uncertainty, limited time and resources tend to be the norm. Discerning and assessing the right options are not easy or automatic. Given all these limitations we need to act intelligently, as well as from sound moral values, like the core values in the core ethic. We also need practical guidance on how to navigate such complex environments. That is why I have suggested a few practical maxims. The main practical maxims I suggest are these five:
Intelligent Ethical and Social Problem Solving [This is only an outline of a flexible problem solving approach. It is not a fixed sequence. Feel free. Be smart. Start anywhere and move in any direction, as the need requires.]
Avoid Common Pitfalls Ethics is a sensitive and complex matter. It demands extensive, sophisticated social and practical intelligence. But it is all too often encumbered by confused assumptions, impossible ideals, and misleading myths, such as...
The Intelligent SEER Maxim Intelligent, Responsible Decision-Makers should act so as to best show their Care for the Social, Economic and Environmental Rights and Interests of Stakeholders.
Moral intelligenceMichael Young Brief Summary: The authors of 'The Bell Curve' portray both the success of the members of the cognitive elite and the social problems of those with lower IQs. However, their view of success is too narrow and does not focus sufficiently on virtue and morality. WHEN I coined the word "meritocracy" and its imagined credo, IQ + Effort = Merit, I could never have anticipated that the actual rise of a "cognitive elite" in America and its contrary in the underclass would be chronicled with such meticulous scholarship forty years later. I was talking mostly of what might be; Herrnstein and Murray are talking of what has been, and is. One of the most enduring truths is that man is a verb; but what human beings can do remains astonishing and frightening. I love America almost as much as my own country. This is perhaps partly because for three years running in the 1930s I was taken each summer by my informal foster parents (one of whom had been Eleanor Roosevelt's best friend at school) to stay in the White House. My childhood recollections are no doubt unreliable, and even more my judgments. But for what they are worth, I was impressed by Franklin Roosevelt not just as a wily politician but also as a man of moral stature, and I felt a little the same about some of his colleagues when I sat down for dinner with him and Wallace and Hull and Ickes and the other New Dealers. Whatever later revelations have done to tarnish the image of Roosevelt, I don't think that many people would consider that a comparison between him and Nixon or Reagan would be wholly unfavorable to their predecessor in the Presidency. One of the extraordinary things about moral qualities is that they are so readily recognized by those around the people who possess them. This can make goodness catching. In 1940, Winston Churchill showed that he had learned something from Roosevelt's "fireside chats" when, as France was falling and England seemed open to imminent invasion by Hitler, he began his broadcast to the nation with the simple but inspired words, "The news from France is very bad." A prime minister who could face the truth at that moment was a man for whom people would die. John Major is not such a man. I go so far back in the history of this century in order to make my main point about this magisterial book. The authors have much to say about the changes which have occurred since that time. In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence--or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time--seems to have swept almost all before it. "The United States led the rest of the world in opening colleges to a mass of young people of ability, regardless of race, color, creed, gender, and financial resources.... Scoring above 700 is forty times more concentrated in the freshman classes at Yale and Harvard than in the national SAT population at large." After the 1950s, "The next three decades saw a great social leveling, as the executive suites filled with bright people who could maximize corporate profits, and never mind if they came from the wrong side of the tracks or worshipped at a temple instead of a church." In Washington, "the top echelons of federal officialdom, special interest groups, think tanks, and the rest of Washington's satellite institutions draw heavily from the cognitive elite.... Part 1 mostly described a success story--success for the people lucky enough to be part of the cognitive elite but also a success for the nation as a whole." The other side, the dark side, of America is also portrayed: the steep upward curve in the rates of divorce and illegitimacy, with people of low ability most affected; the crime that is tearing a free society apart, with criminals having lower IQs; the poverty that afflicts the "very dull"; the people on welfare, these too with lower IQs. We are presented with a society savagely stratified according to cognitive ability. The strange thing is that the authors, ardent for the truth though they be, are not prepared to recognize that nothing has failed like their kind of success, because success has been judged so narrowly, by the criteria which they hold onto like dear life. They are more broad-minded than some of their colleagues in their definition of ability. They see merit in Howard Gardner's seven distinct intelligences--linguistic, musical, spatial, etc. But neither he nor they admit even the possibility of the sort of "moral intelligence" which in my view characterized Roosevelt and Churchill. They quote from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about an "aristocracy of virtue and talent," without noting that virtue came before talent. They do not cloud their minds with the thought that the quality of moral leadership has deteriorated as leadership has been more and more restricted to people with a particular kind of cognitive ability. It is not enough for members of the new elite to "keep the sidewalks shoveled in the winter." The fellow feeling that David Hume regarded as the foundation for all society is not bounded by sidewalks. The elite have burrowed their way into their comfortable nests by competing successfully and sometimes ruthlessly with their peers at school, all the way up to Yale and Harvard if they are smart enough to get there. Herrnstein and Murray are fond of the word "smart." Being Harvard men, they are certainly smart themselves. But because they do not see the worm in their thesis, the contradictions in their underlying position, they have very little to say about remedies for the lot of the underclass, or indeed of any class, except for the timehonored maxim that the Federal Government should get off people's backs. "A wide range of social functions should be restored to the neighborhood when possible and otherwise to the municipality," they write. They do not ever consider that community and family morality is generated when children and adults live together over longish periods of time. Familiarity breeds not only contempt but tradition. The social mobility that is the subject of this book, and the geographical mobility that is associated with it, are themselves threats to fellow feeling. If the authors could accept that, they would be a little further along the road toward understanding and judging the unexampled century of the uncommon man and the uncommon woman
Betty’s Thoughts: 7/29/2004 In response to question: By Jim: Second, I am not going to let you off easily on the Moral Intelligence discussion. Plus, I have something more for you to consider: If we accept that intelligence is somewhat specialized and directed by our experiences and environment as opposed to being instinct, then isn't there a thing such as moral education? Again, I think it goes back to institutions' responsibility to society as opposed to man's responsibility to society. Regardless, in my mind there are three very specifically I feel are called to accountability: family, religion and law. I'm not ranking them, but in my mind as they exist in the United States, each of these three are corrupted by our time in history. Many think this corruption has been caused by science. Maybe corruption is the wrong word (although that is the one I feel most comfortable with.) Thoughts? You keep using the term moral intelligence when that is really not the term in vogue right now that is descriptive of the choices people make in managing their emotions. I will get the book and bring it with me as it will be good for me to review the concepts and put it into my own words. I think man has been corrupt since the beginning of their evolution or creation---whichever way you view it---the Biblical story teaches man was so corrupt that the very first brother KILLED his own flesh and blood in a fit of jealousy!!!!! The Greek gods were absolutely driven by their sex drive and their fits of revenge----history is replete with mismanaged emotions and poor moral choices---so I am not of the school that anything is different---I think we rewrite history because we like to think it was different and we have selective memory to support a view of man that gives us HOPE---if he was better at an earlier time in history what did we do right and what do we do to restore it. I am more of a realist and think that there are always pockets of kind, loving people and pockets of fools and downright wicked people. The most fascinating thing about the emotional intelligence observations to me are how people are different after brain surgery or strokes in the area of expressing or being aware of emotions. There is a definite part of the brain that manages emotion and self-awareness and social awareness just as there is one for music and artistic abilities etc. |
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