Mental Capacities of Leaders - What Should We Expect?

In this blog I try to pose questions and discussions that do not show up ordinarily in the public discourse. In this political season it occurred to me to ask a question I have rarely heard discussed, even in the erudite ivy-covered halls of academia. The basic question leads to a number of sub-questions. I will pose them here and then turn it over to commentators to refine the questions, extend them, and provide their views on possible answers.

The main question is this: What kind of mental capacities do we need our national (and world) leaders to have, given the state of affairs in the world today? This is a the question that, it seems to me, should be asked before anyone declares that they are going to run for an office like the presidency. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have some sense of what we need in a president so that we could make more rational and more wise decisions about who to nominate let alone vote into office^*? Think of it as a kind of description of a candidate for a job. No company would hire just anybody to fill a job. They would start with a description of what talents, knowledge, skills, etc. the ideal candidate would need to have. Why shouldn't we think similarly for elected offices?

One approach might be to ask what sorts of capacities are needed by leaders in general. Another might be to consider contrasts. For example, would it be better to have a wise leader or a crafty leader? This might seem to be answered only with some contextual framing in mind. Would it be better to have an intellectual leader or an intuitive (i.e. gut feeling) leader? We cannot forget the contrast between George W. Bush (in the latter category) and Barack Obama (we thought in the prior category).

Should a leader be driven by compassion or conviction, that they know what needs to be done and have determination to do it? Should one be reflective and able to change their mind, or stubborn in their convictions in light of seemingly contrary evidence? Should they be knowledgeable or merely able to recruit and manage knowledgeable staff?

So far in the presidential political realm I have not heard any serious discussion about any such issues or these kinds of questions. The news is full of analysis of Romney's honesty (as if we really believe that a president should be honest), or Gingrich's true moral standing, or Obama's shift in wanting to find amelioration with Republicans (i.e. he finally gets it).

Given the field of Republican presidential hopefuls and the incumbent who will seek another term, we might ask what sorts of mental capacities do any of them have, in light of what we might come to realize we need. My own frank opinion of Obama is that he is excellent at rhetoric and certainly knows some of the right words to use, but every single action he has taken demonstrates a deep failure to comprehend the reality of where civilization is today and the bleak future it faces tomorrow. Of course the same can be inferred for the challengers since they make their unrealistic claims about how they will go to Washington, make the changes they advocate, and that their policies will fix the economy, etc. Candidates always have to promise miracles it seems. The difference between the challengers and Obama is that Obama has had the opportunity to take actions. The fact that the actions he has taken have either been to no avail (health care), or thwarted (out of spite among the opposing party), or just plain wrong given the underlying realities of how the economy works, provides strong evidence that he doesn't know what he is doing. He is incompetent, to my great distress (I had let myself have some of that audacious hope when he was running originally, but that didn't last long).

Our political process has devolved to the worst possible situation, in my view. We don't set standards of leadership excellence, especially mental excellence, prior to letting candidates run for office. We don't attempt to measure their capacities by looking at evidence of accomplishments prior to their running or during. Most often they run because they had somehow gotten elected to some lower office before and didn't screw up too badly. They run because they developed some name recognition (consider that actors who transition to politics were originally “voted” for in terms of people paying money to watch their movies — personally I think Arnold Schwartzeneger was a terrific Terminator, but governor?)

So what do you think? What would you like to see in an elected leader like the president of the US (or the leader of any country)? You can define mental capacities broadly to include things like honesty, integrity or any other behavioral quality that depends on a functioning brain. Also, why don't our smartest talking heads address this kind of question?

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^* Of course I realize this is just wishful thinking. Most of my writing about sapience and its general absence from the human gene pool should have alerted long-time readers that this is a completely rhetorical question!

Comments

[Nathanial]

George, I've been thinking about this for a little while, but have no idea to approach the question, but you might if you will.

The question is, given how species' evolve, and organisms inherent selfishness, can you see any race in the universe evolving from single celled organisms, to intelligent lifeforms, who could survive the discovery of fossil fuels without destroying their environment? Or in other words, if you booted up Earth 1,000,000BC and ran a thousand simulations, how many times would homo sapiens survive to 3000AD? Thanks!

[George Mobus]

Taking advantage of another snow day to try to keep up with comments!

Tom, step back, and selfgovus,

In posts I did some time ago I described what I have called a sapient governance. There are a series of these that you can find at: http://faculty.washington.edu/gmobus/Background/seriesIndex.html , the second series.

I have tried to map the concepts of hierarchical management (cybernetics) onto the governance of human societies. Hierarchical structures for management are extremely prevalent in the rest of nature. Our bodies and brains are a premier example of such structures, with the brain offering one of the best examples of all. If you are interested I would urge you to read this series.

Hierarchical organization of governance is nature's response to complexity at what I call the operational level of organization. When societies grow past a certain point they need several layers of management for the purpose of coordination.

In the evolution of societies (and by this I include societies of ants and societies of cells) layered management emerges naturally from the communications framework which the components use to interact.

Operational management is local and involves, for the most part, feedback control to keep things working smoothly within the society. It also involves tactical management to coordinate activities with other "peer" societies.

When you talk about a system of governance being crowd sourced you may believe that a grass roots process is at work in developing a workable governance for large scale societies. Indeed I do believe that from an historical perspective, when an existing system has failed, the chaos that then ensues at the grass roots level, the discontent and revolutions, allows for an emergence of local structures (e.g. relocalization in the not-too-distant future) in which people discover workable solutions to their immediate problems. But also from an historical perspective, when the scale of interactions (e.g. trade) between local organizations gets large enough we see the emergence of a coordination layer. Historically this has been the work of just a few "leaders". The grass roots have been good at breaking up the old system when it doesn't work too well for them, something I think we are witnessing right now around the world. But governments have always been fashioned by a handful of people who have the perspective of the whole more so than other individuals in the society.

We should not confuse the origin of governance with the evolution of specific governance practices which have been corrupted by our current consumption-based society. The form of governance we have today is mangled and distorted compared with the original ideas. Our current spate of leaders are anything but "founders" or wise elders.

It will be interesting to see what happens in Iceland. But I will bet that if you look very closely at the process you will find just a few individuals working to collate and condense the incoming ideas and probably filtering them through their own ideological perspectives. Making decisions about form and function is best done in a process that involves face-to-face deliberations. The internet doesn't have the kind of bandwidth needed to invent a government.

And to step back, the idea that no one person can know everything is just a bit of a red herring, don't you think? First, how would it follow that an uber leader NEEDS to know everything? For starters wisdom (from tacit knowledge) is a very different kind of knowledge from factual, disciplinary knowledge. Having sufficient doses of the latter can be a big advantage. And there are very smart people who do have copious amounts of cross disciplinary knowledge. They are called polymaths. But that isn't the necessary ingredient in anyone being able to provide guidance to the masses. The necessary capacity is high sapience - wisdom. Throughout human history and pre-history social units have been guided by a few individuals who express much greater levels of wisdom as a result of having greater sapience (a biological condition). The council of elders is a real phenomenon in human biological and cultural evolution. I'd be very leery of dismissing it too readily.

I am also suspect of phrases like "wisdom of the crowd". Consider Wikipedia, one of the most studied crowd-sourced resources on the planet. It turns out that most of the major articles are written by just a few people. Moreover, and you can sometimes see this for yourself if you look at the discussion pages for the editors, the more people who try to get involved in article writing on a single topic, the more disjoint and poor quality it has (although crowds can provide effective micro-editing and fact checking). In days gone by articles were subject to all kinds of revisions, additions that were contested, and loss of information when someone would just edit out someone else's content. The best (rated) articles come from a few writers on any given subject.

Crowds also can simply go off the deep end and group think can too easily take over.

So please consider. Evolution of all sorts of complex systems has always proceeded in a characteristic manner, with a pyramidal shaped hierarchical, layered structure that is the only way to manage complexity. The pyramid is narrow and even sometimes pointed at the top. For example the human brain is just such a structure with a vast amount of cortical tissue taking care of basic, localized functions and the final convergence point for all parts of the brain resting in that little patch of cortex just behind the eyebrows. Since this pattern is universally pervasive in nature, and since I think we have to think of ourselves as products of nature, it is likely that the pattern will prevail in our own forms of governance.

George

[Baw Faw T]

Thank you George for another splendid post.

Leadership is the ability to influence other people in such a way as to earn their understanding, cooperation, participation and ultimately their allegiance. The foundational principle of effective leadership is service to those you lead. The effective leader consistently demonstrates that he places the interest of those he leads above his own interest. A USMC Commandant of the 1980’s said that he wanted officers that were willing to take a bullet in the gut in the place of one of his troops. He also said that he considered himself a surrogate parent of ever man and woman in the Corps.

From my limited knowledge of history, I would name presidents Washington, Lincoln, FD Roosevelt and Eisenhower men who met the above definition. They had flaws but they seemed to be motivated by service of their fellow man.

The effective leader inspires followers by stimulating innate drives/desires such as belonging, recognition, liberty, challenge, and material well being.

We get the leaders that we deserve. We are inordinately influenced by physical appearance, speaking ability, etc. I do not have a TV, but I understand that two of the most popular TV programs are American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. I fear that we evaluate leaders with that sort of mentality.

Our population fills a spectrum from stupid/ senile/incompetent to genius/wise/ highly competent. However, the vote of the foolish/self indulgent person has the same value as that of the wise self disciplined person. All effort is focused on expanding the voting rolls rather than developing a criteria for a voting population that is capable of more rational voting. This kind of thinking offends many people but the present system has selected people that have led us into a situation that will result in unimaginable horror. At this point no leader(s) will prevent a mass die off.

[Sari]

I'd be interested in hearing your take on the recent internet protests against the SOPA act, the Anonymous group, the "global brain", hacktivism, information ecology, etc.

Is it really some emergent form of "bottom up" cooperation, or a bunch of geeks with a lot of time on their hands who will happily hack under any semi-ideological pretension (because it's cool and gives them waarm fuzzies), and who will lash out especially against whatever threatens their right to download stupid stuff for free?

Is it a sort of immune-system against anything that smacks of rigid control (without pondering the situation-specific costs and merits and consequences of their actions too deeply), with no inherent content or ideology?

[George Mobus]

Baw,

Agreed. It seems that bad money does really chase out the good.

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Sari,

I don't generally give much attention to policy/political actions like this. I focus on energy and, to some degree, the financial world (biophysical economics), having long ago decided that our political wranglings are mostly just that, the scuffles between mostly ignorant and certainly foolish hacks who are only interested in their own perceived gains. I've no time to consider their positions.

There are few issues that really cut to the heart of our human condition/predicament. One is the lack of sufficient sapience that would prevent these kinds of tug-of-wars. The other is our insatiable thirst for more power (i.e. high density energy to drive ever more consumption). No matter what happens vis-a-vis the internet, those two issues will prevail over everything.

George