What drives us towards success : Our intelligence or vision?

We all must have met many intelligent people till day. These people are branded ''Intelligent'' either by academia or by general public. And, as per general perception these intelligent people are destined to achieve better things than their counterparts. But when they don’t achieve those certain standards then there a room for doubt is created where we feel there is a need to revise our standards of intelligence. I try to discuss this thought in the following discussion.

Recently I was watching this movie ‘’Fight Club”. This snippet forced me to think, four things:

• Should a leader be trusted without an ounce of doubt?
• Does the vision has any correlation with the intelligence?
• What makes a person say that he is a leader or he belongs to a certain group of leaders which makes him command a better sense of achievement and better mental prowess than the follower group?
• What factors are there which makes the reference group better than the counterparts?

Let’s start with the discussion that “What are our basis of our judgment?’’

We generally base our judgments about the person by emphasizing on certain few visible characteristics of him or by using people amongst the subject’s social group as a yardstick. This manner of judgment is suggestive, inconclusive and probabilistic so, let’s try to avoid judge people this way. This kind of judgment does not differentiate between the thought process and the results (whether positive or negative) of these thought processes. So the replication of success is not possible in this scenario, all we are doing is judging someone for the purpose of further incrimination/defamation/several other negative reasons which leads to no value addition in the person’s life. This way of thinking, will leave a person with redundant thoughts which will further act as an anchor and make you sink in a long run rather than advance you in your battle towards success.

Why this kind of differentiation is required at all?

When we build/narrate any success story about an inventor, artist or any successful person in any area or skill, we always emphasize about, what all he achieved in his life (the consequential ends), but we seldom talk about how he achieved the ends. Even when we talk about the ‘How’ part, we talk about the hardships he faced while working towards the consequential objectives. We altogether negate the thought process, the triggers behind the ideas which brought the drive of achievement. The thought process can help a person to emulate the right behaviors and which can further be used as a reference point to guide us to a probable success or at least help us to develop an approach which would propel us towards our goals.

So what is the fundamental problem in our judgmental attitudes?

We continue to base our judgments of goals, aims, success and failures on the materialistic reasons which include the indicators like:

• Wealth accumulated in one’s life
•  Publicity a person enjoys
• The verbosity of the person
• Interest in art and culture
•  Reading habits of an individual
• Spontaneity in the social setups
• Maintaining the public relations
• Resourcefulness of a person in the social and professional setups.

These factors are indicative and visible so we tend to base our judgments on the basis of these factors, but these factors tell us that the person is able to showcase his intelligence. These factors can be faked or emulated for shorter periods of time to portray a point of superiority in certain situations (generally these factors are used to make Marketing pitches and presentations effective) where there is a need to create a WOW!! Factor. For a person who seeks, to enhance the economic and intellectual standards of living, one has to look beyond these mere indicators of success and reach on to the factors which are responsible for these resultant attitudes or behaviors.

So here I raise a question, ‘’What is bigger your intellect or your vision?’’

Let me quote an example here, of one of the most successful businessman Jack Ma, (founder of $ 162.7 billion worth of company, Alibaba.com) who started his career as a lecturer of English and International trade at the University level. In his later years of University career he forayed into an unrelated field, of building websites and gradually by gathering investment and wisdom he formed world’s largest merchant website Alibaba.com. He became a successful entrepreneur and was listed in Fortune’s list of ‘’25 Most Powerful Business people in Asia’’.

Is that just an example of intelligence?  For me Intelligence is just being limited, and doing better than others in a given line of profession and making a bunch of rational choices which his peers would have made had they entered the industry few years earlier than oneself.

This is not an example of sheer intelligence, intelligence could have had been proved just by being a best teacher or by holding a P.hD in Shakesprian/ Immanuel Kant view of thought but, it was a vision of Jack Ma, which made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the decade.

Success like Jack Ma needs a little something more than the stereotypical indicators of intelligence. 

He had a little something extra to kick him ahead in the race towards success. He had power to ideate, ability to learn and unlearn, and apply/ exploit the know-how in an effective manner. Another example supporting this argument is from a Harvard trained Economist, ‘’Theodore Levitt’’ who wrote a paper titled ‘’Marketing Myopia’’,(HBR article- On Marketing Myopia) in which he arrives at a similar argument to state this point in market scenario where the conclusion goes like this: ‘’It doesn’t matter how smart, intelligent or well thought your product/ business idea is it will die out one day (Due to competitive environment), unless you don’t have a bigger plan to compete and diversify within an industry as a whole rather than fighting a smaller battle amongst the product leaders of today. That’s nothing but an example proving that vision is bigger than intelligence.

Vision, widens with experience and by keeping your mind open to possibilities. But, intellect is nothing but just a relative complement, like beauty. Definition of Intelligence has changed its meaning through the years but the stress area has always been on, generating matter material results consistently. And all these results should spread across a wide time frame where the sustainability and rigidity of the thought process is tested in diverse scenarios. Under those test conditions only, a thought becomes philosophy and a philosophy then transforms into a decision/judgment.

A last question to ponder upon, “We all are surrounded by intelligent people at our workplaces, but how many of them are the ones which have an idea/opinions which will be worth a dime in near future?” – The ones who have the ability to earn a dime even after stripping off every title and position they have today just with their idea/opinions.These are the people who have started to explore a right thought process.

In the end, I leave you with a thought, "That every inventor and every person who has ever done anything worth to be mentioned in the books of history is not known as an intelligent person but a man with Vision".

Responsibility of thought.

Recently I saw a documentary based on Kabul which was titled as ‘Love crimes’. This documentary majorly focused on propagating the rights of lovers. Let’s dive into this and understand what it was all about. This documentary was about the couples named ‘Yakub’, ‘Sakeena’ and ‘Azhir’, ‘Nauheed’ who were in jail on the charges of moral crimes of doing/making love without a social consent.

Now what are these moral crimes?

The crimes which are related to the breach of the moral standards? In simpler terms, the crime of these couples was that they dared to love in a society where it was prohibited to love on their discretion. One of the couples was imprisoned for 10 years and other one was given a life sentence, but wait it gets worse. At the time when Azhir and Nauheed were caught by authorities, Nauheed was carrying an illegitimate fetus of 3 months.

Lot of questions were raised on this story, many were about the human rights and others were about the freedom of expression and free will to take decisions. But as usual nothing much happened as sharia laws still stood a tall in Afghanistan even after the defeated effort of ‘Uncle Sam’ to liberate her from Taliban. These love crimes are unheard of in our society but really can we say that?

The restriction of having a wed lock in the love marriage kind of an arrangement is no less than these instituted laws. But yes, the difference is that we are not restricted legally, but our societal pressures force us to modify the personal thinking spaces. Which not only modifies the thinking related to love marriage and openness related to it but also modifies the perception of people towards their yet to be life partner. 

This type of *decision making impairs the thinking capacity of a person to choose a person whom they are in love with (or approaching that more logically that the person with whom they are comfortable and can adapt in the natural form rather than manufacturing there behaviors for the sake of getting married into wealthy, and socially upscale families). I don’t comment on this that the whole behavior modification will work for good in the long run but yes certainly the degree of blame transfer will reduce in case of any relationship malfunction or happening of any unforeseen event in the relationship.

*The independence of decision making will keep a person at solace by reassuring the person that the sole reason he is successful/unsuccessful is because of one’s own decision not because of his parents/peers/motivators. This makes him an informed decision maker, but when the right of decision making is taken the person becomes judgment impaired and unhappiness creeps in.

I gave a thought to these moral crimes and moral laws, which were meant to modify the thinking processes of the people and curbing the right to think freely or can say to think in the given nature of stipulated process. The laws in democratic countries like India are not the moral laws, they are in place to modify the actions which are evident and are in tangible nature. They are to increase the justness in the society where the fundamental rights of the citizens needs to be safeguarded. These laws does not take into purview the intangible crimes (Like moral crimes) into consideration, but on lighter note we we have institution of religion and karma in place for intangible crimes.

I am not a fan of moral policing, as it takes away the right to think freely. But just for the sake of an argument let’s think this way. Which situation is better mere action is offensive/criminal or a seed of thought which propagates the offensive/criminal action? And moreover, this can also be a case that the person initiating the action is different than the person who has planted a seed of thought, would your decision change in this situation?

Let’s hold our thought there and continue, with an instance which happened back in 2012 in my native state Punjab.

In Punjab back In 2012 there were series of riots between the workers of ‘Shromani Gurdwara Prabandak Commettie’ (SGPC) and followers of a prominent religious leader ‘Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan’ because he offended the former sect by emulating the dressing style of Sikh guru ‘Guru Gobind Singh Ji’ (as in this religion there is strict conduct not to objectify the guru’s and follow only one supreme power i.e. ‘Knowledge of nature and virtue’). 

Back in 2012, there were curfews imposed across Punjab, because of violent happenings which were carried out by the followers.Mostly, it is said that this uprising was guided by the Dera authorities itself. In the period of 10 years this baba has become so popular amongst his followers that this single person is able to polarize the state elections of Punjab and Haryana. People have started to idealize this person, they are ready to sacrifice themselves for upholding this person’s prestige.

So in the fall of 2012, when charge sheets of rioters were submitted in the court, I was surprised to see that there was no charges filed against ‘Baba’. Police couldn’t gather enough evidence to accuse him for the violence. So is this an example of brainwashing people or is a simple criminal intent of a mob mentality? We should keep in mind while taking decision on this that the propagator of all this is the nurturer of the root of this heinous motivation.

Conclusion and Final remarks:

Analyzing this further the majority of the population (target audience) is not well read, and doesn't have a rational mindset and they try to believe and institute there trust on a person who is confident, clear, and conform to the societal truths and practices and survives for the greater good of the society. Firstly, the trust is built up by the well-read and outstanding speakers by using knowledge of surroundings with some splash of imagination and making things new and spicy for people. Slowly people start taking interest and soon after sometime that interest changes into trust where they stop questioning the person’s point of view and adopt the sayings as it is.  Their actions and doings are affected by these teachings and at some level do affect the decision making of these people. It depends on the mentality of the people how seriously they take these things and practice things. But if the people are not matured, to handle the thoughts of ferocity and run out on streets decimating public property whom should be blamed?

It brings back us to the point where we started, what is the responsibility of the thought bearer in this case where the carrier of thought process is much more responsible than the people who are just adopters of the same. Does the onus of implication lies on the person who is imparting this?

But this give rise to the situation where the orator shall be aware of the audience’s mental capabilities which is let alone difficult but impossible. But we believe in the maxim that the individual is responsible for his doings but what is the validity of the free consent in this case, where there is measurable difference in the mental capabilities and exposure (in terms of experiences) of audiences as compared to the orators who is responsible for the entire aftermath actions of the audience pool.