Public You

Something that's been rattling around in my head for several years now . . .

Summary: From a certain point of view, there are 3 things that make up who you are: 1) Intelligence; I.Q., more or less. 2) Courage to question your beliefs. 3) Courage to act on your beliefs. This applies most when thinking about ideologies and politics.

There are different conceptions of self. In the West, it's mostly about who I perceive myself to be, whereas in the East, it has more to do with my family, my community. That's a broad generalization; there are lots of variations, and no one's got it quite nailed down. What is the self? Who am I, really? One of my favorite ways of thinking about it is the Amish response to the question "Who are you?" According to popular belief, the answer is something like, "Ask my neighbor."

So it's like the self can be looked at from outside yourself, inside yourself, inside your community, outside your community, etc. Really, there could be an infinite number of "selves," and without getting too ethereal with the logic here, who you are could change based on a number of metrics.

So let's think about the construct of a "public self," or who you are as far as your place in the world. While "left" or "right" in terms of political ideology is often an overused oversimplification, it has proven to be fairly apt, and I'm using it here. We know what someone means when they say "I'm a leftist," "I'm a conservative," or "I tend to fall in the middle." It's one metric for getting a sense of the public self.

I posit that where a person falls on the right-left spectrum can be understood by how they measure up on three variables: 1)Intelligence, or straight-up I.Q., 2)Willingness, or courage, to challenge their own beliefs, and 3) Willingness, or courage, to stand up for their beliefs.

Intelligence: This probably doesn't seem very P.C., but some people are just smarter than others. Of course, there are all different kinds of "Intelligence," and a person with an I.Q. of 85 could be a brilliant musician, far outshining another person with a 150 I.Q. who can't carry a tune or keep a rhythm no matter how hard s/he tries. Accepting that I.Q. is a limited conception of "intelligence," it fairly accurately describes a person's potential to reason, conceptualize, and comprehend complex topics such as we encounter in sociopolitical dilemmas. Someone with a high I.Q. is able to understand the complexity of the world, whereas someone with a lower I.Q. might not be able to quite make sense of it all--not that s/he should be expected to. I personally maintain that it is the responsibility of those with higher I.Q.'s to attend to the more complex matters of society, and the extra dignity that is given to these positions is not necessarily deserved, since no politician, leader, or luminary would have any power whatsoever were it not for the thousands of lower-caste people forming the bricks and mortar of the society they are assumed to have "led" or "built." Let's also dispose of the notion that it's somehow bigoted to identify and appreciate intelligence for what it is. If ten people are in a room with a ticking bomb, and none of them has ever defused one, the one of them that is most likely to figure the thing out and save their lives is the best choice to take on the task. And that person is the smartest one in the room. Likewise, smarter people should be given more responsibility in the higher levels of society--to a point. The other metrics I'll lay out should help to clarify.

2) Courage to question one's beliefs: It is scary to think that you are wrong, as it can threaten your premise for existing. If I've been living the last ten years spending all my time and money getting my hands on as many pieces of used tin foil as I can, because I believe that tomorrow the tin foil deity is coming to whisk away all tin foil-havers to a paradise garden for eternity, and then someone challenges my practice by saying I've been wasting my time, it's not only bad news for me, it's an indication that I've wasted the last 10 years of my life and am therefore a fool. That's why it takes courage to question your beliefs: again and again you risk having to acknowledge to yourself and to the world around you that you might be a fool. I don't claim to have a comment on the veracity of religions, but one reason people tend to cling to the beliefs with which they were raised is because it's intensely frightening and horrifying to imagine everything you have believed might be wrong; it's far more comfortable to build arguments and logical fortifications so that you can plausibly defend your belief system, and hence sleep at night. The courage to cast aside that comfort in the name of "truth," (whatever that admirable notion may be--I personally have very little idea) should not be undervalued.

3) Courage to stand up for your beliefs and your self: This is an easy one to understand. It is the domain of Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks, and any martyr from any religion, war, schoolyard bullying session, public scandal. You believe that something is right and you put your life, reputation, happiness, or health at risk. It is the type of courage needed by soldiers going to war to fight for their country. If you don't believe in your country, it's going to be difficult to die in its defense.

Now here's where it gets interesting: People have different mixes of these three. And that's what I think makes up who you are as a public person. It allows you to look at a person through a different lense. When we think someone is wrong, we often simply say they're "stupid," or "an asshole." Maybe they just have vastly different priorities.

Let's give some theoretical examples:

Rush Limbaugh: Very intelligent, Very willing to stand up for what he believes, Very unwilling to question what he believes.

Bill Maher: Ditto.

That bong-smoking friend of yours who talks philosophy all night but never seems to get involved with anything or hold down a job: Intelligent, willing to question what he believes, but not willing to stand up for what he believes.

George W. Bush: Average intelligence, very willing to stand up for what he believes, unwilling to question what he believes--that's why he was a bad leader, though arguably Limbaugh or Maher could have been worse, due to their deadly combination of razor-sharp intelligence and complete unwillingness to question their own belief systems--as has likely been the case with all tyrants.

What about someone with low intelligence but plenty of both kinds of courage? Ah, there we have the underappreciated "salt of the earth," methinks. The people who don't try to stick out, but rather work hard, watch the news, lend a helping hand where they can, try to have a happy life, and never judge people or try to advance an agenda past what seems prudent. These may be among the happiest folks around.

So who are the saddest folks around? I'd say they're the ones who lack either kind of courage without completely compensating with the other kind. There's the woman who's shut herself up from the big bad world because it frightens her, and in her own home and heart she'll never admit that she might be wrong about some things. There's the man who will never, ever question the rightness of his cause, but can't quite summon the guts to stand up at the town meeting. These, I think, are the angry, sad people of the earth.

The ones who may be the most immediately dangerous to themselves and the people around them--though relatively harmless to society at large--are the ones with less intelligence but plenty of just one kind of courage. Think cults (stand-up courage, but no questioning courage). Think self-haters and mutilators (questioning courage, but no stand-up courage).

Of course, the Super Human would be pretty high in all three metrics, but nobody's perfect. Since I'm the one pointing the fingers and judging people, I'll let you in on my own self-analysis: I figure I used to be more of a Rush Limbaugh/Bill Maher, around my high school and earlier college days, but now am more of a "bong-smoking friend of yours." Not that I smoke bongs. You get the idea.

As a nation, I don't think we're getting dumber. I think we're getting more cowardly--and it sure seems like we're losing the courage to question our beliefs faster than we're losing the courage to stand up for them--although lots of people are losing that one too, probably myself included.

. . .

There. I just had to get all that down somewhere. I don't think anyone reads this anymore, but if you did manage to slog through, and you have an opinion on this, please critique the idea by leaving a comment.