Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad

13 Dec 2011    

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they fist make mad" is an un-attributed quote dating back to Ancient Greece. This article discusses what it means, and how is it relevant today.

Today we tend to think of intelligence in two ways, expertise and emotional intelligence. We could say that someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence is upstanding and respected, whereas a person with a high degree of expertise is good at making technical decisions. The archenemy of Sherlock Holes was the mad but brilliant Professor Moriarty, likewise the archenemy of Obi-Wan Kenobi was the psychopathic Darth Vader. Both Moriarty and Vader had zero emotional intelligence, but, at least according to the poets, it didn't stop these fictional characters from almost conquering the world.

Nevertheless, everyone recognises that emotional intelligence has an impact on someone's effectiveness. For example, human resources departments talk about someone's "emotional baggage" getting in the way of their work. Albert Speer famously said Hitler was not as an intelligent, decisive, functionally effective leader; but rather a lazy, artistically tempered bohemian who worked in spurts. He said Hitler was an incompetent, unprofessional, self-taught layman without any sense of the complexities of any great task, who boldly assumed one function after another on the basis of naive intuition.

Socrates was the famous philosopher who said unjust people are not wise, they are ignorant. In other words the whole idea of a brilliant monster is an illusion - tyrants always fit Speer's description of Hitler, they are always unprofessional bohemians without any sense of complexity. So he didn't believe in this separation of emotional intelligence and functional intelligence. In order to understand what Socrates meant lets compare a German Plumber with an American Politician. Socrates said the four faces of wisdom are courage, strength, self-control, and judgement.

A plumber without courage might fix your kitchen sink, but you would never have him re-plumb your entire house, he doesn't have the ability to hold onto long term visions. A plumber without strength might knock something together in an emergency, but he doesn't launch himself into the concept forcefully and build something that will survive a storm. A plumber without self control is thinking about tea breaks instead of focusing on the goodness or badness of the job at hand. A plumber without judgement uses pipes that are too big or two small to fit the rest of your house, he can't find the harmony between his plumbing and the environment.

On the other hand, a politician with courage can't get elected, Obama doesn't talk about suffering, he wins voters by talking about ever rising living standards. A politician with strength can't get elected, Obama is weak because he tries to keep everyone onside and avoids attacking vested interests. A politician with self control can't get elected, Bush kisses babies and displays emotion to win make voters feel he is just an ordinary guy not a pragmatist. A politician with judgement can't get elected, people don't want to hear Bush taking about complicated things like environmental balance, they want hear how the status quo is unlimited.

A plumber without the four mental faculties mentioned looses his job. His whole life is a trial testing what he does against what does not work, so practicing plumbing continually improves his thinking. A politician without the four mental faculties gets elected and retires a rich man. His whole life is a journey toward a golden plated mental institution.

Socrates described how the four attributes, which we might call morals or ethics, namely courage, strength, self control and judgement, are actually fundamental mechanisms of human thinking which allow us to successfully perform any task. So the modern Western idea of a gap between morality and excellence is actually an illusion. If you analyse the mechanics of human thinking as it attempts to solve a complex problem carefully enough you find these four dimensions out which come the ethical concepts of courage, strength, self control and judgement. Socrates gives many arguments why reason is incompatible with injustice, but the most sophisticated and deeply buried argument - the holy grail - relies on the very mathematics of human thinking.

It's an extremely radial idea- Socrates is the only philosopher known to have made it- and when people hear it for the first time they say: look at DSK, he was a famous expert who raped, it's absurd to think you need self control to be effective. But that comes out the illusion of Dionysian expert statesmanship. Like the American politician or Hitler, DSK was just a man who gave the impression of competence, deep down he was completely out of control. He was an actor playing a part, and under it all he was a complete idiot. The Eurozone crisis has been handled disastrously, if you were actually a technical expert and could analyse his decisions carefully, you would see they lacked self control, his solutions built a house of cards that are currently collapsing.

Socrates said there are two types of profession, ones that have real world results, and one's that are theoretical. If a theoretical profession has no objective falsification mechanism the individuals involved can go in completely the wrong direction for long periods of time. Take the actor Charlie Sheen, he is an example of someone who makes a fortune even though he is a total fool, his only validation is what sells to the crowd, he is Socrates' wild beast trainer whose definition of good is what makes the masses scream. Eventually the degradation in intelligence arrives at a point of complete madness- he says something so stupid a kid starts shouting "the emperor's not wearing any clothes", then the crowd starts laughing hysterically, then they guillotine him.

Look at the world today, the US has just wasted billions trying to build democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Einstein said madness is repeating the same experiment and expecting different outcomes, now the Arab Spring is tuning into a nightmare. A vast cross section of the general public think climate change is an illusion, even though the earth is measurably warming. David Cameron calls his European veto last week a victory for his country, but it's clearly madness. The US is running a bigger deficit that Greece, on it's current trajectory it is broke but nobody is even hinting at a plan. Politicians in the Eurozone could solve the crisis in five minutes by suspending democracy and implementing reforms, but instead they let the people sink into abject poverty. The capitalist system has imploded, but the Tea Party want more not less laissez-faire. Everyone knows massive state investment for a profit is the way ahead for the West, but they can't bring themselves to even talk about it. The worldwide crisis started with everyone talking about how the 1930s was intensified by trade wars, but the US is now beginning to wage a trade with China. Basically the world has gone completely and utterly stake raving mad.

I met a guy recently who told me he used to believe Sep 11th is a conspiracy theory. He became obsessed by the news, and the more he read it the madder he got. Because he was a modern artists selling graffiti it helped his career for a while, but one day even that imploded. He said he recovered his sanity by switching off the TV.

What is happening in the world is that the internet and newspapers and television are tuning everyone into theoretical thinkers who have no falsification. You see mental discipline is painful, left to oneself people tend to head away from it, so their mind disintegrates and their theories get more and more absurd. So the world has been sucked into a sort of giant intellectual implosion, and the only people who are outside it are scientists and craftsmen and sportsmen who have falsification. Everything else, from politics to journalism to advertising to populist capitalism is in the midst of an implosion which is already bordering on total insanity. The rise in unemployment makes the problem a tinder box, because as soon as people stop having anything that gives them falsification they start going mad reading the news.

Socrates used call himself a gadfly stinging the elite and turning round society. Yesterday I had a dream about malaria- I don't want people to get the shakes, I want them to learn that these old fashioned things called "morals" are absolutely vital. Forget the liberal culture, what the people running the world must do is: (a) reinstate morality, (b) try to get everyone into the sort of occupation where they are forced to reject muddle headed thinking. You want things that have objective verification without the possibility of illusion, you don't need everyone to take up plumbing or rocket science, even sports does the trick. In general we need to move from populist capitalism to high tech SOE and elite culture. The whole twitter facebook and journalism and blogging thing is a nightmare. For example, if I was David Cameron the first thing I would do is hurl a vast amount of money at the BBC and transform it into something that monopolises the news. You must strip out all the things like "World have your say", and you must put people on air who are experts and who talk scientifically. If you are going to have poetry and morality you must ensure the dialogue teaches courage, strength, self control and judgement at the big picture level. Socrates said you should devote each month to a different perspective. You should also never indulge your listeners, you should put down populism and joke about stupid idiots who believe this and that, you should keep challenging them, keep educating them, staying ultimately focused on their soul. You also need to fire most of these journalists and bring in some much better people. Cultural forces are absolutely critical, spare no expense improving them.

P.S. If practicing sport improves one's courage, strength, self control and judgement, why don't wrestlers become naturally good at mathematics? Do people who study maths become naturally good at playing the lyre? No. Or people who play the lyre at wrestling? No. But all these three types of expertise require intelligence? Yes. So technical expertise doesn't flow well from one part of life to another? OK. But I say what all the spheres have in common is these four modes of thinking, like three flashlights with four beams each, and each focused on a different place. So if you look at very good wrestler, lyre player or mathematician, and try to measure their "life skills" or "emotional intelligence" I believe you would find it higher that the liberal artists who have no falsification. If you ask a good wrestler, a good lyre player, or a good mathematician whether or not they believe in something insane like a Sep 11th conspiracy theory they will all be more likely to say no. Have you ever noticed how liberal artists call people who do normal things square? It's because they are generally less insane. Thank god I didn't follow my fathers profession and become a lawyer! Lawyers are actors who play a very smooth act, but if you dig down into their conception of justice you will often find a heart of stone.

P.P.S What about you Hooper? Don't you practice the profession which is above and beyond all other professions totally theoretical and unverifiable - namely philosophy? Yes indeed, and brave I am too. That is why I warn against philosophy and write for the elite not the average man. So I am writing a blog but recommending the world at large doesn't read it, and they day they do I will delete it!