Working with industry professionals across specialised fields means I meet a lot of what would be considered smart people. Being Finland, likely 90% of my clients are masters degree and up as pieces of paper are considered vital here but, it also has a culture that is not conducive to social awareness.
While suitable within Finland, disregard of social environment doesn't work well internationally and as a result, Finns are often considered cold and uncaring. This is social convention dictating terms though as give them a drink, and the emotions are there, not very far below the surface.
Part of the training I am involved with is helping people get better with people as most of my clients are managers hired on field skill, not social ability. This means that while knowledgeable, they can lack effective tools to get their knowledge across or activate a group with it.
The other thing is that often their approach isn't of the sort that facilitates conversation or relationship development. In a social environment, being smart is not enough if no one is willing to listen to what you have to say, no matter how useful the information may be. This is something that people who are too combative I their approach willl likely find also.
As great add the internet is for sharing information, it has also become somewhat of a screaming match with many voices competing to be heard and without the face to face interaction, much of what is said is delivered as a scream into the void. With so much on offer, there is no need to listen to those who are aggressive or trolling, it is easy just to tune them out.
For the most part, these people don't add much of value to the conversation anyway and due to their approach, more and more ignore their words until they are irrelevant. It is quite sad in some respects as at done point they may have been able to bring value to conversations but due to their approach or personality, they risk being ostracized. Is this unfair?
If intelligence is the ability to adapt to ask environment for survival and one is looking to be heard in a social climate, is it the groups job to include the individual or the individuals responsibility to learn how to be effective in the group? Where are the limits of inclusion? What is acceptable for an individual to conform to?
What I find is that there are quite a number of people online who believe what they offer has value fitter the group but sound much more like the crazy homeless guy ringing a bell on the street corner. It is not that they were necessarily wrong but if the more of delivery is not conducive to developing conversation and action from the necessary people or groups, what is the point of speaking at all?
Well, it can satisfy the selfish desire to feel one is trying to do something. I say selfish because if someone wants change (action) but isn't willing to change the mode of delivery to something suitable for the target audience, are they truly trying or just filling that need to feel like they are? They may later say, "I told you so ", but that isn't the case at all if no one is listening to what they say.
To me, there is a difference between being smart and having the intelligence to effect change. For the most part, intelligence recognizes there is a process of alignment involved and if a group is required to change to get somewhere, it takes time to build the understanding to align the parts and make the shifts.
Smart people may know what needs to be done but can lack the understanding of the time it takes to align a group. Screaming and shouting rarely is a catalyst for faster change but that is often the approach taken on the internet. How smart are they?
It is an interesting problem as even though there maybe value in what is said, humans will rarely act positively to aggressive conversation and will instead build defences. Even though it perhaps shouldn't as much, the delivery of words matters especially in areas with social dynamics in play. To ignore these dynamics is to not understand the environment and therefore be less effective at influencing it.
Many seem to think that freedom of speech comes with the right to be listened to. No. There is consequence of speech and that isn't just on the words said, it is also on how those words are said. The consequence of some approaches means people can ignore the words completely by tuning out based on delivery. This is not just for aggressive presentation technique, boring gets ignored too.
If you are one of those people that is looking to get your information across but are unwilling to change your delivery methods for the audience, unless you are lucky to have inherent traits suitable for the audience culture, you are likely going to have to change your approach. Expecting the group to conform to you is not very smart at all. At least not now in the environment we have, but perhaps later when things align differently it will be okay.
There is so much information available from so many sources that there is no need to listen to people who do not consider their delivery. Disagreement and criticism doesn't require behind an asshole and for the most part, no one is so smart that what they say can't be found elsewhere in a more useful and effective package.
For many though and despite what they may say, they do not actually care about improvement, they just like the sound of their own words. This is lucky because, as they ignore their audience, there can come a time where their own voice is all that they will hear in their echo chamber of one.
No one likes to feel irrelevant to the conversation, but screaming and aggression rarely leads to inclusion.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
(posted from phone)
Receiving an answer that basically says no, but still in a good way, is hard to give and for some people also hard to get.
What I've also seen and heard few times is that people may even think alike and have the same opinions, but both of their ways to say things are so far from each other, that they don't even see how they think alike. Or it might just be the fact that you said, they like their own voices so much that they don't even listen the other one.
And those, who are on the receiving end of the screaming and aggression, even if they don't know why the message is delivered in that way but still decide or manage to see beyond that aggression, dig out and try to understand the real reason and answer back politely, lovingly and calmly, are the true masters of conversation and social skills. Wise people that may be educated or not, may be smart or not, but definitely are the kind of people who have my absolute admiration.
And back to the funny black and white remarks that I've decided to do here more than serious stuff, I think Finnish engineers and coders only have so much vacant slots on their skills set. They either have excellent machinery /code fixing skills that are a combination of hard work and talent, or they are good with people. And if they are good with people, they have no skills on things that doesn't have people in it. So they are humanists. Who, as we all know, have usually excellent social skills, but have no idea on how to invent, built stuff, statistics or basic calculation.
'Talking past each other' is the term often used for this.
The interesting thing is, depending on conversation, one can take the value out of the words and not answer back at all. Why engage in the lives of drama queens?
In Finland (in my experience) the engineers who take the time to learn the other side a little have a much larger advantage over the others.
This depends on their focus and intent as they are often able to see the trends in the people before the narrow technicals. They can be drivers of development.
There is so much potential in Finland but people here like to remain much too narrow in their skillsets without exploring a little wider. The quest to not be wrong but, limits the randomness of experience.
No reason. Drama queens do not deserve more attention. But some of those who answer screaming aren't necessarily drama queens. It's a tricky thing in life to know when to answer patiently, even if the other one can't talk politely, and when to just walk away. Internet trolls, as everyone who like to start a conversation with a total stranger impolitely, trolling, agressively, deserve no answer at all.
Indeed. Not only learning things that aren't that close to ones education, but also keeping ones eyes open all the time and learning something each day, is a good way to get smarter every day. And of course as we humans can never be totally alone, minding only about our own business, even if someone wanted to do that, isn't possible. It's always good for anyone to learn how to interact with people better. It makes the delivery of ones words so much easier if the receiving end is receiving, not building up their defenses, as you said.
Glorification of college degrees is an issue across the world that started because parents wanted their children to have a better future but clearly it backfired tremendously by creating a huge debt sink and people that spend 10 years in college, go out to the real world and can't do shit because academics is only half of what you need to function in society and sometimes these people are not ready at all for the shock.
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I was 23 when I arrived in Finland and most people were yet to have their first job. The current state is that people are coming out of university after being carried by their parents til the age of 25 expecting to go into work that allows them to buy an apartment. 15 years ago, personal debt (besides house) was almost unheard of while now it is skyrocketing as people are trying to satisfy their desires on credit. These things are connected.
They are connected indeed, I don't know if it's due to personal expectations or social pressure but people are more willing to go into insane debts they can't possibly afford to pay, furthering them into dependence and for those people expecting a job in the weird field they where encouraged to study well... We surely will have a lot of trouble dealing with this in the following years...
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I think that it is part of the push of consumerism, the drive for profit. The environments are engineered so that people are more predisposed to buying on the future.
Borrowing from the future but eventually someone has to pay.....
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I definitely agree with you @lunaticpandora. People need street smarts aka social skills in addition to that piece of paper. I also don't understand the willingness to go into so much debt. Colleges today are also indoctrination camps for bringing in the NWO.
Exactly. No one is ultimately irreplaceble. If you are not willing to put yourself in a position to be listened to, people will ultimately move on to a person who will
It is a shame in many ways as there are risks to turning away also but, there is only so much attention available in an attention economy and people will make their decisions largely on what feels suitable for them.
Emotional intelligence is more determinant of success than analytical intelligence, though a lack of either will make life hard. It's unfortunate that our schools only teach analytical intelligence. That leaves it to the families and neighborhoods to teach emotional intelligence, but if the entire community lacks it (due to cultural norms, perhaps) then each new generation starts with the same deficits. Despite the inadequacies of public education, one thing it gets right is that whatever it teaches winds up being the new norm for the entire area, so that problems from a given family line can be put to rest in the new generation. Schools should really teach emotional skills like self-awareness, managing one's emotions, and awareness of how other are responding and how to adjust one's presentation to that.
School itself is not the problem, it is the limitation and narrow focus in only including the gradable. Enough within one generation is all it takes to shift the world's societal axis.
The problem is that currently it focuses on what will create workers, not what will create strong individuals with civic consciousness.
A very good article in a topic that I am currently doing my best to figure out myself. Very fitting you could say. As I am working on ways to present topics, what words to use and in what context to present information in. Not an easy task.
So thanks for this.
"No one likes to feel irrelevant to the conversation, but screaming and aggression rarely leads to inclusion. "
I've met so many people like this. It's funny that they don't seem to realize that their tactics aren't getting them anywhere. It's like they live in bubble.
They do live in a bubble, they just don't seem to realise it.
The ability to listen is a trait that many do not truly have and that disabled them to become collaborators in team based projects which are essential for some organizations. what makes things worst at times are that these same people also lack self-awareness to realize it! These create walls and make it difficult for team goals to be met.