There are a few columnists and podcast shows where you have this slither of looking-forward-to-that-day, the day of the week when a new column/episode will drop. Janan Ganesh in the FT is in that category, and too Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway in the weekly (tech-centric) news podcast Pivot (Tuesdays and Fridays).
Janan Ganesh writes societal and political commentary that is insightful, seasoned with delicious turns of phrase, and with shrewd cultural observations, I find. Janan loves to point out glaring truths that few would say, with an observational intelligence rather than the tone of a rant or preacher on a soap box.
Last week’s The Truth About Emotional Intelligence resonated. Living in California, we’re swimming in a culture of ‘nice’. And San Francisco is a parish in which virtue signaling – and sometimes the attitude of moral aloofness over precision in observations of ‘what’s really going on’ – is a well-attended church.
In the article Ganesh writes:
There is no correlation between outward goodness and psychological acumen. You can be an emotionally intelligent bastard. You can be an emotionally tin-eared and uncomprehending sweetie. If the first type of person doesn’t get their due, that is no great loss to the world. But the over-promotion of the second type, the attribution of an almost mystical power called EQ to those who are just nice, or wet, seems riskier.
I’d add one important point. We’re in an era where imprecision in language is getting more and more problematic. And, it’s a huge feature of the culture and identity ‘wars’. Listen to how often, in America, where something will be called racist when in fact the situation is not a response to the colour of someone’s skin, but more their behaviour on another factor that coincides but is not the cause of the issue.
On a tangential note relating to social trends, I enjoyed hearing a small company entrepreneur this week being asked what he thought about the ‘woke mind virus’ trend. And the response that he relished it, since it is rendering more and more people uncompetitive, and so providing more and more opportunity.
