Democratic Intelligence

               

                In an educational and social system dominated by an economic and political oligarchy, intelligence an individual quality.  We celebrate ‘smart’ people and reward them materially and monetarily for their knowledge and ability.  We identify ‘good’ schools where all the smart people go and give tests and rankings to be sure only the ‘best and brightest’ make it in (with all the legacy students who just bought their way in).  We’ve become so accustomed to thinking of intelligence this way that it seems almost heretical to suggest that intelligence is not an individual quality.  There are people who have higher aptitude for some kinds of intellectual work, but intelligence is a social and cultural phenomenon, not an abstract ability or quality.

                Intelligence is culturally bound in several ways.  Not all cultures or sub-cultures cultivate or value the same traits and knowledge.  Cultures often restrict intelligence to certain classes or institutions, and cultures have different ways of identifying and rewarding intelligence.  Finally, every culture has an idea of what they expect intelligence to produce.  In our culture we are obsessed with ranking intelligence, of limiting the voices and perspectives that can participate in decision making and dialog.  We identify valedictorians, as if the grades people receive somehow entitle them to greater status and credibility, even though valedictorians are often not the ‘smartest’ people in the class.  These rankings, of both individuals and schools, are there to protect the privileges of the elite.  Sure, every now and then some savant makes it through the maze and gets anointed as elite, but by and large where you start out is where you finish.  As Evan Watkins once said, “school is pretty much a place where you go to learn your place.”

                In a limited and oligarchic democracy such as ours, treating intelligence this way maintains the stability of the oligarchy and the institutions that sustain them.  If it works, everyone else follows their lead and we all feel better.  But when that ‘lead’ is into a war in Southeast Asia or a catastrophic banking collapse, cracks start to emerge.  When information technology makes information ubiquitous, even if a lot of it is bad information, elites have a much harder time controlling the narrative.  And when the groups outside of the elite, driven by cultural, economic, religious or ethnic issues start ignoring the message, trouble is on the way.  In a radical democracy intelligence has to have a wider and more varied bandwidth than we are used to producing or validating.

                It doesn’t matter who is ‘right’ if there is no cultural protocol for agreeing who gets to say what is right.  Science on climate change will not change the minds of religious dissenters, and Trump breaking another law will not convince his supporters to impeach him.  The problem with isolating intelligence by individual, institution or class is that those who are not allowed in will never accept the results.  Radical democracy is a relational ecology.  As such, it demands that the relational elements of producing knowledge and intelligence be part of the process.  There are always relational elements to the production of knowledge, but in a democracy run by elites those relationships are discounted and hidden.  In a radical democracy they have to be put on the table.

                Democratic intelligence is something we create together, and because we create it together it has credence across the divides that disrupt elite knowledge.  It doesn’t matter if you know the right answer if there is no one who listens to you or believes you.  Dewey’s idea of inquiry is grounded in the practice of deciding together what we need to know and how we’re going to know it.  It means overcoming the barriers of confidence and credibility that separate us in our current system.  It requires all the ways of knowing we currently practice, but it also requires relational aptitude that we don’t pay much attention to. 

                It requires generosity.  We have to listen to people we might not want to listen to, who might not initially have much to offer, but unless they are validated they remain outside the inquiry.  Generosity is a means of inclusion.  It also means we have to take others’ objections and perceptions seriously.  The point is not whether they are right or wrong; the point is that they are real barriers to communication.  We often read and listen as a sorting mechanism, to decide who gets included and who doesn’t.  Generosity demands we listen to understand not just what is being said but why.

                Radical democracy requires creativity and pattern recognition, the ability to recast and rearrange what people say so that we can all see the relationships.  Most people have trouble seeing the limits and implications of what they believe.  All of us have this problem occasionally.  Creativity lets us all get out of the limitations we bring to our perspectives or standpoints and see something from a new vantage point.  It helps us figure out what the larger consequences and possibilities of the situation might be.  When we create together we own it together and we defend it together.

                Democratic intelligence is pragmatic philosophy in action.  It is the rewriting of the horizons of our possibilities and beliefs as a shared experience.  We all know something valuable.  We all have blind spots and holes in what we know.  A radical democracy recognizes that our value is not determined by consensus but by contribution, conflict and resolution.  Intelligence only matters if it produces intelligent action.  Intelligent is only possible if the people are invested in the process.  We grew up with a story about who we are and what we can do.  That story has been in tatters for awhile now.  It’s time to tell a new story.  A story with multiple layers and levels of meaning.  A story of wider participation, and one that values a variety of roles.  It is a story of a democratic intelligence.