Being intelligent about intelligence

It takes intelligence to recognise the various forms of intelligence. Let's start with a simple example:

Part 1 : Political intelligence

Do you find the shifting political landscape baffling? Perhaps you are stuck in a one dimensional universe. That is, one with just a Left Wing -v- Right Wing (LR) dimension. A sadly one-dimensional model of political psychology, and it's still the one model persistently used by a huge percentage of mainstream media pundits and commentators. Even when it fails to explain things adequately.

The next available dimension is the Libertarian -- Authoritarian (LA) dimension. For the sake of a simplistic model let's suppose it crosses the LR dimension at right-angles like an X-Y axis (realities might vary).

In mainstream UK media, the LA dimension is largely ignored or hardly mentioned. Perhaps because we've largely forgotten the periods in UK history when the LA dimension was really active and important. Most of the UK parties are sitting on a similar part of the LA spectrum i.e. somewhere blandly in the middle. But other countries like Russia (1907 and 1915) and Iran (1979) have a much more recent and visceral memory of LA issues. Or France during their 1787 Revolution; many British politicians at that time regarded the French Revolution as a ghastly foreign invention that they were very glad never got imported. Especially the Libertarian part, which sometimes also gets confused with Anarchism.

It's then just a matter of coincidence when and where a belief (or statement) on the LR dimension crosses the LA dimension. It's predictable that there will also be some misunderstanding and miscommunication when we assume the belief (or statement) in LR-space actually means the same to the other person in LA-space.

This issue of misunderstanding and miscommunication is quite fundamental. As we almost all have a partial view of the world, based on our partial psychology. Our partial world view seems normal to us. We accept others who seem the same, and tend to be reactive towards others with different world views, or different behaviours.

Next : Raising consciousness