Emotional Short circuit - Over emphasis on IQ

Disclaimer: This is purely my subjective thoughts on Emotional intelligence and my personal understanding after reading few books on the same topic.This is the first post on the topic.

One of the most difficult questions that could torment a life is the simple question of one's own identity. The want from with in to see yourself in your true form is the unquenchable thirst in everybody's heart. The reason behind the search for one true identity is due to the multiple personas discovered under diferent situations of life. As time goes by, the mind slowly learns to accept multiple dimensions of one's mind and fine tunes its rules to prepare for known situations which has already been experienced, learns from the unknown and prepares itself for the future. But, Why? Why does the mind bother about the one definite ultimate identity in the first place? And, why should it prepare itself?

Evolution is the possible answer. Nobody knows why, but that is how our system works. All living systems for that sake thrives on it's identity. As living beings grow old, their form and identity keeps on changing and evolving. Beyond a point, it becomes incomprehensible as to why we were angry or ebullient or depressed or lonely. Poets and Novelists thrive on such emotions and Other men buy their books and poems.

I have always personally been a great fan of psychology. My interest comes from my interactions and discussions with my Grand father, Mr. Visveswaran, Retd. District Educational Officer. Having been a teacher all his life, he had shared his experiences and insights about brain development, cognition and behavior during our discussions. He had discussed about Sigmund Freud and nature of ego. From there, I pursued further and read some books on human psychology and social behavioral patterns and understand to some extent about this complicated subject.

In this series of posts, I would like detail about the Emotional Short circuit in our brains, IQ and EQ, Adaptive Social Learning and Decision making.

Why did I start researching on this topic?
All this started by reading a blog post by eminent researcher and thinker, Andrew Mcaffee. The blog post was about making use of IBM's Super Computer Watson as a Medical Diagnostician. Watson had won "Jeopardy" game competing with humans and had superior skills in Intelligent search, Contextual pattern matching and Efficient Data Analytics. The blog post called the super computer as Dr.Watson and suggested using the same to diagnose and treat all range of diseases as it claimed that there is a dearth of human doctors and by nature Humans are prone to errors.

Though I appreciate the intention to solve a social problem, My gut instincts and common sense commented,

With all due respect for Dr.Watson, I am still a firm believer of Human intuition and incomprehensible ability of humans to solve even complex situations. Our Knowledge is certainly not limited to data. Of course, it can help us arrive at better conclusions. The veracity of the data available for Dr.Watson must be strongly checked. 

I strongly support Dr.Watson to be used for data analytics but certainly not in health care prognostications and personal diagnosis. For 99.99% diseases, medicines, tablets and treatments are not the cure. Do not make it worse with Dr.Watson. Let's keep it human. 

And the comment was very well received as the same thoughts came from the bottom of my heart. The need for Human empathy is what made me think and take a closer look at our current state of affairs. With the growing list of support from machines, are we growing insensitive and indifferent to human emotional requirements ?

Over Emphasis on IQ:
It all started with World War I. With well established institutions and command over various sciences, it was during World War I, A special means of test was used in US Military and Army to identify, recruit and train human resources based on their intelligent quotient. Though Intelligence tests can be traced back to the efforts of Francis Galton to effectively measure evolution based on Charles Darwin's theory, it was Lewis Terman, who actually tested on a group of boys who were then famously called, Terman's Termites, and successfully developed that into a full fledged system for Human Intelligence evaluation.

Then on, IQ tests became a de-facto standard to measure one's potential. The rise of world war II and then followed by Cold war period all demanded the need for high intellectual power. Those with high IQs were mapped with high performance for their individual efforts and thereby IQ became the much demanded  integral part of one's personality.

Super powers which controlled the war and therefore the world economy over emphasized on IQ and developed lot of highly skilled and individualistic personalities. The belief then was Independent thought and individual progress would sum up to the progress of the society and therefore national progress. It did work out well until the world was dominated by few countries during the imperialistic times.

In the name of War and Business, Rules and Terms were drafted to suit the needs of the imperial powers. The world and human mind slowly turned to work like a Mechanical Clock. There was World wars, Cold wars, Oil Wars, Ideological wars, and Economic wars. Though the countries strongly believed highly qualified [High IQ] people were appointed to deliver, there was strong discontent among different groups leading wars on different fronts. Times Changed. Several Countries which were considered backward rose from their slumber, fought for their independence and slowly was struggling for their own individualistic progress.

At this juncture, it is essential to question the over emphasis of IQ and IQ only.  Even after having the best of minds to solve the problems, what is the missing piece in the puzzle? The answer is lack of Human Emotional empathy. Individualistic Intelligence was mostly used for Selfish purposes in order to maximize one's own profits. In the process, there was complete disregard for the emotional strain of people and nations that were exploited. The need for Emotional and Social Intelligence in every day life must be insisted to solve the perplexing problems of our society.

Consecutive Posts on Emotional Intelligence:-

Need For Emotional Intelligence
The Science behind Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Demands of life