Moral Giftedness

 

 

A quick review of the Seven Types of Intelligence as defined by Harvard Guru Howard Gardner as background can be found on the following URL:

 

http://tinyurl.com/axvkn

 

Note that none of those categories of intelligence pose any particular challenge (to be read 'threat') to society, and so there was no reason for the scientific and mental health mafias to reject them. They're eminently useful categories for defining what the ideal person in non-anarchic societies, structured variously as they are at this point in history, should be.

 

I posit that there is another type of intelligence: Moral Intelligence. I further posit that there are and always have been people who are gifted in Moral Intelligence to the point of being preternaturally so gifted.

 

It is dismaying to me that despite the fact that there are, and always have been, gifted and hyper-gifted geniuses of morality throughout history, this type of intelligence is not so much as recognized in the list as existing. It is subsumed under the more manageable and affable Interpersonal and Intrapersonal categories of ability. We know, however, that the morally gifted usually don't, and didn't historically, get along well either with others, or themselves.

 

It is the people who are exquisitely aware of distortions of morality and ethics and who are fearless about speaking out about the injustice and describing it articulately who are the most likely to be the ones who are given the medicines that artificially induce "desirable" traits like complacency, malleability, indifference in the face of suffering, the inability to pinpoint who the perpetrators of moral wrongs are, etc. In fact, psychotropic drugs have been formulated to do just this; these are not the side effects of the drugs, these are the target effects. Psychotropic drugs are not considered to having taken effect, or be administered in sufficient doses, until the recipient of them evinces these traits (i.e, becomes a zombie like your average workday citizen). This demonstrates that despite the fact that moral giftedness is ignored by the scientific and mental health communities, i.e., they do not want the public-at-large to be aware that it exists or to validate it in any way, they themselves are very much aware of the fact that it exists and that it has the potential to bring about change in the status quo. Vast sums of money and effort have been invested in keeping moral intelligence under control. Thus, we can be certain that those whose hands are on the money levers know they have a great deal to lose if moral intelligence were to express itself freely. The research goes on.

 

The severely morally gifted are those most likely to be institutionalized and/or to die an early and often brutal death as a direct result of their gift. Their suffering is generally in direct proportion to the greatness of their gift.

 

In addition to the traditional societal methods of suppressing the expression of the morally gifted and inhibiting their courage to express themselves, a new method has been devised for the world-wide internet community.  The moniker "rant" (as in what the mad do) is applied to impassioned posts on subjects of morality and ethics. A person who has posted on a moral or ethical topic is expected to partake in a sin offering ceremony. She or he must keep the post as short as possible, apologize for having written the post and end with the mealy-mouthed cliché "getting off the soapbox now."

 

The state does not generally have to intervene when one of its citizens hyper-moralizes and becomes obstreperous, not anymore, not since the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Most people have been programmed by the media so well (TV and radio shows are called 'programs', after all) that they themselves will attack the miscreant on the ground and they usually succeed in beating him or her emotionally into submission sooner or later.

 

Geschwind's Syndrome, considered to be the interictal behavior of those sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) who demonstrate the "Epileptic Personality", is now believed to be the reason why some individuals demonstrate behaviors such as:

 

Emotionality

     Mania

     Depression

     Guilt

     Humorlessness

     Altered sexual interest

     Aggression

     Anger and hostility

     Hypergraphia (excessive writing)

     Religiosity

     Philosophical interest

     Sense of personal destiny

     Hyper-moralism

     Dependency

     Paranoia

     Obsessionalism

     Circumstantiality

     Viscosity (the quality of being socially "sticky")

Hyper-philosophical

 Emotionally volatile

Obsessively detail-oriented

 

As we can see from the list above, the traits of the hyper-morally gifted are described not only in uncomplimentary terms, but in pathological terms, as the effects of brain damage.

 

We must ask very basic questions in order not to be drawn in by the assumptions inherent in some of the terms describing the "symptoms" of Geschwind's Syndrome.  What is "hyper-moralism"?  At what point does a person become too moral for comfort in non-anarchic society?  The same might be asked about being philosophical. At what point is someone considered pathologically philosophical in non-anarchic society? We must assume that to be moral and/or philosophical is considered desirable only up to a limited degree in non-anarchic society.  We do not hear about individuals being hyper-beautiful or hyper-handsome.  Even if adjectives like these were to be coined and applied to individuals, they would not signify and sort of aberration or symptom of disease. Quite the contrary, they would be considered supreme compliments.

 

Professor Eric Altschuler, a neuroscientist at the University of California in San Diego, has "diagnosed" the prophet Yechezkel as having been a sufferer of Geschwind's Syndrome. He bases his "diagnosis" of a man who lived about 2,600 years ago, inter alia, on the fact that the Book of Yechezkel is the longest Book in Torah. Thus, the prophet, in Dr. Altshuler's opinion, demonstrates the hypergraphia symptomatic of Geschwind's Syndrome. Moreover, the Book of Yechezkel is concerned with moral excellence and the lack thereof. This, in Dr. Altschuler's opinion, reveals that the prophet demonstrated the symptom of hyper-morality as well. Dr. Altschuler goes on to describe the prophet Yechezkel as pedantic (probably because he described the perfected Temple in the minutest detail), aggressive and suffering from delusions. And so it becomes clear in the good Dr. Altschuler's mind that the prophet was ill with Geschwind's Syndrome. "Scientific" conclusion: a person who tenaciously ("viscously" in neuroscientific jargon) clings to the moral principles that are apparent to him or her as being the basis of healthy society, and who takes up the pen because he or she knows it to be mightier than the sword is demented.

 

Other famous figures in history that have been retrospectively "diagnosed" as having suffered from Geschwind's Syndrome or TLE-related hypergraphia include Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolfe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Franz Kafka, Lord Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron and Petrarch. One can only imagine how much poorer the world would have been had psychotropic drugs been in existence in their time and had they been administered to them.

 

Hyper-morality, then, is the result of encephalopathy and thus can, and should, be "treated" in the opinion of neuroscientists like the good Professor Altschuler.  The severely moral should be relieved of their suffering. Likewise, society-at-large should be relieved of their viscous aggressiveness and incessant harping on that annoying subject.

 

 People who go mad in the face of injustice and steadfastly, persistently and undauntedly voice their moral outrage, particularly those who do so in the form of writing treatises and books on the subject, are doing nothing more than exhibiting the symptoms of the neurological illness from which they suffer.

 

By grouping being hyper-moral with symptoms that are accepted as being symptomatic of various anti-social personality and psychological disorders, as they are defined in non-anarchic societies, the mega-message is clear to the public-at-large:  Only those who concern themselves overmuch with morality are demented, suffering as they are from a pitiful disease of the brain.

 

Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Yisra'el

[email protected]