Justice of Peace, Tokoh Wartawan Sabah dan Labuan, CC Pung’s strong dose of philosophical musings.
I never really understood what is EQ (emotional quotient, or emotional intelligence), or the theory of ‘dumbing down’ something or how any of this influences others’ perception of you or how they unwittingly create a target on your back.
I tried reading about EQ before the Google era. I pretended to understand when the clever people littered their motivational lecture with what I thought were their at best superficial take on the subject. I read between the lines, and concluded EQ in essence is how, in a given tight spot, I summoned every elements of my being to emerge on top. It’s simply our instincts about self preservation. I grew up learning about Chinese idioms one of which talked of a dog jumping an impossibly prohibiting wall when it is cornered. The humans caveman survival instinct is known to five them to incredibly brave and at the same time dastardly evil, cruel, and dehumanising things. That’s EQ in its barebone sense. Indeed, trying to come out with a sugar-coated meaning of EQ is exactly the same as deception. Is it something you’d teach your children? Really?
Google says to dumb down is to simplify an issue to make it easier to understand. Well, you dumb ‘down’ for the benefit of an audience you deemed not as clever as yourself, or you simply assumed them as simpletons who need a stupid metaphor or analogy to help them. I wonder if I understood it correctly.
Let’s consider another scenario: you are in a group of high IQ, motivated and successful people. In an exercise of political correctness, the group invited a politician speaker of no particular stature nor intellect. At the end of his talk of no particular substance, the group will have no choice to dumb. DOwn their Q&A and discussion to keep their honored guest ‘engaged’. Right? You can argue about the rationale of engaging with an influential political figure. But can you understand Malaysia’s rationale of bringing hordes of unschooled unskilled manual labourers from, for example, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, etc? At under 50, Nepal is on record as one of the nations with the lowest IQ in the world. The other countries mentioned aren’t high IQ societies either. So, on an assumption that bad soil means low productivity, is it correct to assume that a mass influx of low IQ humanity dumb down the Malaysian society? But the same token can we assume that those in authority who think low IQ Nepalese men make ideal security guards are probably of the Neaplese IQ range?
They say ‘stupid’ is an offensive word. How do you describe a situation when you tried to talk to a Nepalese guard in Putrajaya who spoke no language spoken in Malaysia? How do you say ‘stupid’ in Nepalese? How should I swear at whoever brought this foreigner here in the first place? If you’re being honest, tell me the first word that came to your thought?
Speaking our or calling a spade what it is are not considered wise in our society of too many who subscribe to EQ and political correctness in all the wrong forms. So friends, if you do feel like people around you are always targeting you perhaps you’re an outlier who doesn’t think comforming is a misunderstood virtue, or isn’t a virtue at all.
Be uncompromisingly honest. But be mindful that in the wrong place, it’s called being stupid, albeit a good kind of stupid.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of Talantang.
