Serious Are intellectuals more fit to govern society?

Danmire

Danmire

its okay.
is an Artist Alumnus
This was a question that was brought up during some Psychology work I did three years ago, and I believe it's a good question to think on.

Are intellectuals more fit to govern society? Intellect is the understanding and reasoning of specific subjects. In the case for a country, are intellectuals more fit to govern it? What about someone who isn't an intellectual, but has the same views as the intellectual? Does a difference in their intelligence matter? Should a leader be voted for JUST because their intelligence is higher than the other candidate?

I think it depends on the person's motive. They can be incredibly smart but still have hatred over a certain individual or group in society and would try to bring them down intentionally once they get power. What do you guys think?
 
the problem with politicians and world leaders in general isn't that they're not intellectuals (to the contrary, they are extremely clever people), but that they're weak, susceptible to greed and corruption
 
If you're stupid they're not going to put you in a high-power job. But if you're smart/clever, like cookie said, you can easily get corrupted and abuse your power.
 
Gengan said:
If you're stupid they're not going to put you in a high-power job. But if you're smart/clever, like cookie said, you can easily get corrupted and abuse your power.
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That's not what I said. Being intelligent has nothing to do with basic human weakness. Being thick as a shit brick doesn't make you any less corruptible.

Being incorruptible unfortunately self-selects itself against positions of high power in general: the guy who's willing to buy votes will get elected more often than the more honest one, provided he can keep up appearances with the public.
 
What do you mean by "intellectual"? Just someone who's educated in general?

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I think your definition of intellectual could make a difference in this discussion.
 
Personally, I think intellectuals are more useful to their country as doctors, lawyers, etc. than as politicians. Leadership and intelligence don't have a definite relationship, and imo don't mix well sometimes. Anyone smart enough to have a perfect grasp of the system will be able to bend it to their will. My ideal leader is modeled by Cincinnatus, a simple farmer who lead his country in a time of need with no aspirations for personal power. (Thinking about it, Washington pretty much fits that too, and it's hard to find someone who claims Washington was a bad President.)
Approaching government with the idea that a superior few are more fit to lead will ultimately form some sort of oligarchy which will just devolve into an aristocracy, which is imo one of the worst government structures in history.
 
In general yeah I think being intellectual is a positive trait for governing, but it's not the only thing to consider. People shouldn't be put into power just for being intellectual, but I think it is a requirement of a good leader.
 
Education and intellect are different things. You can sit in high school and read a book but that doesn't inherently mean you have a strong ability to critically think or explore concepts.

Both education and intellect do involve knowledge of sorts, but the difference between education and intelligence is that intelligence is internal, they are skills and abilities that we have naturally in varying degrees and education is given to us externally through teachers, books, parents and so on. Intelligence is the material that teachers use to educate and shape us and develop our natural intelligence.

Cookie summed it up best. Corruption is a factor that can overtake both intellectual and simple individuals. Obviously this "weakness" is present in varying degrees from person to person, but at the end of the day you cannot change human nature.
 
mattj is right, this is incredibly vague

put some more thought into the OP by defining things; if you want PM a mod with a revision and they can re-open the thread because right now nobody really knows what they're discussing
 
mattj said:
What do you mean by "intellectual"? Just someone who's educated in general?

[edit]

I think your definition of intellectual could make a difference in this discussion.
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Whose definition of intellectual? Problem is people just naturally take sides. Which is the problem. imo we could have world peace if aliens attacked. Or some outside power that would force humans to see eachother as the same. Not talking about world peace or how to achieve it but same thing. Their is no universal definition of what an "intellectual" is. Even trying to define it would cause a bunch of fighting.
 
Thanks for clearing that up Danmire!

Of course intelligence is a useful quality. But intelligence alone doesn't make anyone a particularly good leader, not only in the case of politics, but also in business, or even just in general. Leader's don't just have to make decisions (a task that obviously involves intelligence). They also have to convince people to follow them. And please people. They have to figure out where they plan to lead people, which often involves less intelligence and more dreaming. I suppose that all things (and I do mean all things) being equal, the more intelligent candidate would make more sense. But the quality of having a higher general intelligence alone wouldn't make one candidate more appealing to me at least. There are so many other factors that can make any person a more or less capable leader.

I will say though that if one candidate (or any person in general) arrogantly flaunts their intelligence that's an immediate turnoff for me personally, even if they legitimately are relatively more intelligent.
 
moonbound said:
Anyone smart enough to have a perfect grasp of the system will be able to bend it to their will. My ideal leader is modeled by Cincinnatus, a simple farmer who lead his country in a time of need with no aspirations for personal power. (Thinking about it, Washington pretty much fits that too, and it's hard to find someone who claims Washington was a bad President.)
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george washington wasnt really a "simple farmer" by any means; he was (obviously) a general, part of the social elite (iirc he owned the most land in all of the us as a function of marrying wealth), and he lived an "aristocratic life" (quoth wikipedia)

furthermore, his success as president was due primarily imo to his cabinet, which was essentially the collection of the most intelligent and competent men living at the time

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my view on leadership is that great leaders are what are needed to have success, and that intelligence (though not education since the two are obviously not the same) is needed. intelligence is needed simply because the ability to think critically leads to success.

however, the problem is that the best (and only, you could argue) way to have any type of success is by having strong leaders; hitler, lincoln, napoleon, lee kuan yew (just to name a few) are examples of great leaders and they all maintained success because they had intelligence and the freedom to wield that intellectually competence to shape the nation into how they want it to be. the problem lays in the fact that having strong leaders will eventually lead to corruption, as seen in the majority of monarchies. so it's all about getting competent + ethical leaders... and that's really luck of the draw.


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edit@ below
Intelligence has nothing to do with competence. It's just a mental fashion accessory, nothing more.
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bold claim....

i'd argue intelligence allows for understanding of the issues which allows for better decision making. see: creationist politicians

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also imo democracy is a shitty system because it really is mob rule but it's really the only system that works because all the other systems that have strong rulers will inherently be unstable because of the chance that *one* person will fuck up the system and be corrupt.

i guess a strong leader system could work if they ever establish a competent, ethical leader that handpicks another competent, ethical leader and so on, but that's really hard to do (although it *kinda* is being done in china now!)
 
cookie said:
the problem with politicians and world leaders in general isn't that they're not intellectuals (to the contrary, they are extremely clever people), but that they're weak, susceptible to greed and corruption
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I disagree completely. They're intelligent sociopaths who are incredibly weak willed and corrupted. I wouldn't call people like obama or hitler stupid, they're both very smart. "Intellectuals" aren't good enough to be politicians. It takes so much more than that to govern society. They're best at making decisions in the shadows. Intelligence has nothing to do with competence. It's just a mental fashion accessory, nothing more. In any case, most politicians are weak willed or sell outs(not unintelligent), the few that aren't are either ignored or killed. This may be off topic, but democracy is flawed concept of liberty. It's basically the rule of the mob, and we know how just mobs are, don't we?
 
ssbbm said:
furthermore, his success as president was due primarily imo to his cabinet, which was essentially the collection of the most intelligent and competent men living at the time
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Exactly. This is what we need. Leaders who understand that they aren't the smartest and so listen to experts in the field of whatever decision they're making. Education decisions should be made by people who have studied education their entire lives. Medical decisions should be made by people in the medical field, etc.

George Washington's farewell address basically said, "This is why I was awesome. Do this. This other thing is what is going to destroy our country. Don't do this." and then we shit all over that. Of course, he was against political parties and then campaigned for Adams over Jefferson iirc. So he was a bit of a hypocrite. But that doesn't make him wrong.
 
If you define intellectuals as people who are able to think critically about the system of institutions that make up society (government, culture, media, etc) and see how they can be improved in a rational and just way, there can be no objection to the notion that these individuals are 'better' suited to governing (though of course the best system is voluntary order without government aka anarchy). An individual is usually better equipped to think critically about these things if they are educated. The liberal education teaches individuals to see institutions as constructs rather than real and necessary (though they may actually be necessary), where as many people take them for facts of reality. Because these people have learned to resist these forces they are better suited to improving the equality of the exertion of these forces by such institutions.

this thread sucks.

As for the intelligence aspect, this is false conflation of intelligence with intellect, it is self-evident that intelligence has no bearing on the ability of someone to make good decisions. You have a huge number of people who are really excellent at arguing, but terrible at evaluating their own views critically to find the root (untrue) reasons why they hold ridiculous beliefs.
 
Wikey said:
Exactly. This is what we need. Leaders who understand that they aren't the smartest and so listen to experts in the field of whatever decision they're making. Education decisions should be made by people who have studied education their entire lives. Medical decisions should be made by people in the medical field, etc.

George Washington's farewell address basically said, "This is why I was awesome. Do this. This other thing is what is going to destroy our country. Don't do this." and then we shit all over that. Of course, he was against political parties and then campaigned for Adams over Jefferson iirc. So he was a bit of a hypocrite. But that doesn't make him wrong.
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I'm not convinced that any system of governance actually works for a long period of time.

The truth is that modern democracy cripples progress and tends to result in 'more of the same' because people would rather the devil they know than try something new that may be either better or worse. This being said it does *work* against all probability and results in a positive long term trend.

Of course it would work better if people voted for people who weren't idiots.


Also most politicians aren't that intelligent, all you have to do is hear their stupid logically flawed reasoning for the positions they take to recognise this.
 
You can have it both ways obv (mobile phone post alert) with people having a say and specific ones ruling, it doesnt have to be either direct democracy (lol Swis) or dictatorships.

That being said, what most people differ upon s how much power should be given to peopl, how should we use their input/vote and how much authority and for how long should the elected rule.
M
This needs a dedicated desktop for full throttle mode (AKA Dragon talks down to people in full colors) but lemme do an intro first. The class room analogy, wide variety of people, sizeable population, the good the bad and the blonde.

You can ask them who is the most popular/who would you like to lead the class and then let the eventul winner choose his aides which is most systems do, choos someone on his most popular views and how popular his party is and trust him to do his job right, etc popularity contest lesser of two evils whatever. This is representitive democracy.

Or

You can barge into class and ask whose th best painter, the best speaker, the best athlete, the smartest and you can gurantee that th answers will always be q accurate to the best intentions of those asked and when the chosen get their positio s and start producing you can gurantee, at least until new elections Re held these jobs will be done extremely well. This is meritocracy.

Problem is while the first is sloppy it allows for more parties and more options
for the country to be taken at while the second while great in details really favors one party rule or at least a very strong and detailed agenda everyone has to agree on.

The best of both twomis what I try thinking about all he time and hopefully Ill find somethething....
 
IMO, society is best run when people are allowed and compelled to do what they're good at in a way that improves society. Wikey already said a lot of what I wanted:

Exactly. This is what we need. Leaders who understand that they aren't the smartest and so listen to experts in the field of whatever decision they're making. Education decisions should be made by people who have studied education their entire lives. Medical decisions should be made by people in the medical field, etc.
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Because government representatives have the "last say", the current system of government runs into problems. The vast majority of representatives are lawyers and businesspeople, so basically, we've given the keys to people who are experts at arguing about laws and running things for the purpose of maximizing profit. The other effect is that because law and business have taken over government as much as they have, those practices themselves are prone to corruption. Government right now is about being good at specific skills that are not equivalent to leadership. We need economists, doctors, educators, scientists, etc. to work together to solve problems that involve multiple fields of expertise, and not have lawyers and businesspeople steal the show. Solve problems using the best tools to solve them! I'm tired of governments ignoring the advice of economics when they don't like the ideas presented for flimsy "moral reasons", then turning around at election time and running on a supposed track record of sound fiscal policy.

Of course, as was pointed out, there is more to leadership than intellect as defined. I think that leaders should be working in the best interests of everyone. People are free to disagree with that and I know people do for some reason. Anyway, let's think about what working in the best interests of everyone would entail. It would mean doing things you don't want to do, maybe even things that go against your deepest personal convictions (though if that's the case, maybe you should reexamine your deepest convictions). It would mean putting aside the useless arguments revolving around statements like, "This is my opinion and if you reject it you're biased!!!!" I also kind of suspect that a lot of leadership (defined in this manner) involves just happening to be very well-aligned with the most people in terms of interests. This doesn't just apply to "government"; it applies really to any position that involves having a direct impact on the direction of some jurisdiction.

We should hold leaders to a higher standard.
 
I find it humorous/somewhat appropriate that an artist ends up making a thread questioning government.

Well, basically, I was going to make a long post but Wikey and Capefeather basically beat me to it. The last paragraph of the post above me, in particular, is pretty solid. In an ideal government system, the politicians are employees of the people.
 
This is why I support people who want to minimize the effect of government on every day life. I was talking with a coworker the other day who said she doesn't really worry about politics. I said fine, that's why I do - because I want everyone to wake up every single day and never worry about what their government is doing, because the only thing government would be limited to is actual public goods and services.

Provided an intellectual supports the same thing and is able to articulate it as their platform, I'd certainly vote for them over someone incapable of articulating their philosophy - or an intellectual who supports a philosophy where they are running solely to increase their own power and influence on the basis only they are smart enough to run the world competently. Those people are dangerous and have destroyed countless lives, and fortunately most of them keep to pursuits with only indirect power over the citizenry like academia and media - insidious as they still are.
 
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