Just Because You�re Smart, Doesn�t Mean You�re Not Stupid

By Neal Pollock

I. Background

�A.� People are mostly unconscious or subconscious, not conscious

�� 1.� Levels of Consciousness: rational, irrational, non-rational

�� a. personal unconscious or subconscious (Freud/Jung)

�� b. collective unconscious (Jung)

�� c. conscious mind--a new development

�� 2.� The Johari window:

a. what you know you know

b. what you know you don�t know

c. what you don�t know you know

d. what you don�t know you don�t know

3.� Basic character set in childhood (mostly unconscious)

�� a. lots of trial and error

�� b. learn from examples (how parents act)

�� c. conscience is a non-rational process

�B.� People like to believe they are in control (i.e. conscious)

�� 1.� simple observation belies this belief

�� 2.� belief differs from knowledge; few study epistemology

�� 3.� people ascribe expertise to college degrees and job titles

�� a.� most scientists have never studied the Philosophy of Science

�� b.� understanding a specialty does not imply understanding per se

�C.� Our society supports a belief in causation--a bottoms-up approach--past drives the present

�� 1.� Jung developed synchronicity--meaningful coincidence

�� 2.� Jung spoke of a top-down approach, a teleological approach

�� a.� the desired goal, for instance, drives the present from the future

�� 3.� when planning a journey you need both the start point and the end point

a.� as the Mad Hatter told Alice, if you don�t know where you�re going, any road

will take you there.

4.� inductive vs. deductive reasoning; Yin vs. Yang; the play of opposites

�D.� Knowledge (relationships & symbols) vs. Convention (definitions & signs)

�� 1.� VA Standards of Learning in History for instance--memorization

�� 2.� mostly we are taught conventions, not knowledge

�� 3.� understanding comes through knowledge, not convention

�� 4.� knowledge can be experiential vs. intellectual

�� 5.� convention is only intellectual, surface oriented

�� 6.� people filter/color/screen percepts -- e.g. via Myers-Briggs preferences

�E.� Individuals are not constant, they are dynamic

�� 1.� bi-directional communications are dyadic, interactive

�� 2.� roles: �where you stand depends on where you sit.�

�� 3.� society/group effects: (paraphrasing Jung) when a group of people put their heads

together you get one big fathead.

II. Ethics and People (based on the above observations and conclusions)

�A.� Traditional morality is not based on individual conscious discrimination/thinking:

Jung, C. G. Civilization in Transition CW10, Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ 1964

p. 357 �The mere observance of a codified �Thou shalt not� is not in any sense an ethical decision, but merely an act of obedience and, in certain circumstances, a convenient loophole that has nothing to do with ethics.�

�� 1. Group psychological effects:

Jung, The Symbolic Life CW18, p. 571 �Thus a hundred intelligent people together make one hydrocephalus.� The psychology of masses is always inferior, even in their most idealistic enterprises.� The whole of a nation never reacts like a normal modern individual, but always like a primitive group being�Man in the group is always unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic, and unreliable.� Crimes the individual alone could never stand are freely committed by the group being�The larger an organization the lower its morality.�

Jung, Psychological Types: p. 449 �The more a man�s life is shaped by the collective norm, the greater is his individual immorality.�

Jung, Civilization in Transition: p. 228 �Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal.�

�B. Ethics (as work) based on individual conscious discrimination/thinking:

�Creativity and Work by Elliott Jaques: p.332� �what is experienced as psychic effort in work--the intensity or weight of responsibility--is entirely concerned with the discretionary content of work.� To conform to rules and regulations and other prescribed aspects of work requires knowledge; you either know or you do not; but it does not require the psychic effort of discretion and decision, with its attendant stirring of anxiety.� I was able to demonstrate that weight or level of responsibility is objectively measurable in terms of the maximum spans of time during which discretion must be exercised by a person on his own account.� The longer the span of time, the more the unconscious material that must be made conscious, and the longer must uncertainty about the final outcome and the anxiety about one�s judgement and discretion be tolerated.� In short, the longer the (p. 333) path toward gratification chosen�the greater is the experience of psychic effort or work.�

�C. Ethics as a dynamic vs. static process:

Freud and Psychoanalysis p. 288 �We should never forget that what today seems to us a moral commandment will tomorrow be cast into the (p.289) melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or distant future it may serve as a basis for new ethical formations.� This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilization, that the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things.�

III. Practical Considerations

�A. standard and traditional methods often fail us at the worst possible times

�� 1. intellectual understanding of the principles of ethics are totally insufficient/ineffective under those circumstances where stressful, unprecedented, emotional choice must be made.

�� 2.� group action results in projection of group psychotic/irrational behaviors--mobs

�� 3.� people do NOT know themselves well at all; they cannot predict how they would act

B. Ethical decisions are work and require conscious discrimination.� Nevertheless, they can be

practiced so as to make them part of an individual (i.e. introjected) and an automatic process

�� 1. individuals need to identify their true values and beliefs--not group beliefs (cop-out)

�� 2. actions resulting from these values must be role-played under trying circumstances

�� a. similar to management in-box exercises and supervisory counseling role-plays

�� b. war games are exercises should be tailored to realistic ethical decision-making

�� 3. individual inconsistencies/hypocrisy need be identified and worked through/resolved

a. cognitive dissonance corrections, behavioral modification, therapy as

necessary, employed to correct situation

b. leadership role selection must reflect the ethical level of the candidates

�� 1) leaders must avoid seagull management (leave alone-zap)-Blanchard

c. individuals must accept responsibility for their actions and decisions

d. competence is transitive and task specific:

Yogiism: Just Because You�re Smart Doesn�t Mean You�re Not Stupid!

> Neal Pollock; pollockn@spawar.navy.mil

> Chief Acquisition Engineer, PEO(IT)C1

> (703) 602-4787; (703) 602-8540 Fax; DSN 332

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