Sean O’Conaill © Spirituality 2003
When I began my teaching career in 1966 human intelligence was still considered to be a single indivisible entity, easily measurable as ‘IQ’. Now the convention is to believe that there are at least eight, and possibly nine, different kinds of human intelligence. The ninth, currently under consideration, is spiritual intelligence, labelled SQ for convenience. A search of the Internet will discover at least four books on the subject.
A quick reading of these will discover tantalising glimpses of the phenomenon, but no clear delineation. Other kinds of intelligence will either discover or discern something ( e.g. scientific and mathematical intelligence) or create something (e.g. artistic and musical intelligence.) What specific work does spiritual intelligence actually do, or what does it create? The existing literature is unhelpful here. Richard Wolman* delineates eight ‘dimensions’ of SQ, but these are merely descriptive of the behaviours of those considered spiritually focused – such as religious observance or the reading of sacred texts. There is a strong element of condescension here, a tendency to equate spiritual intelligence with mere awareness or activity rather than with any clear achievement.
Another peculiarity of this literature is its tendency to draw most of its inspiration either from oriental sources such as Buddhism, or from contemporary science – such as research into the human brain. The foundational spiritual texts of the west, collectively known as the Bible, receive generally little more than a passing nod. Does the biblical concept of wisdom relate to SQ, and if so how? Nowhere so far is this question pursued in any systematic way.
One way of approaching this is through the fascinating story of Isaac Newton’s famous quarrel with the German intellectual Gottfried Leibniz.
By 1684 Newton’s greatest work had been completed, but not yet revealed to the European intelligentsia – including the discovery of the prismatic nature of white light, the universal principle of gravity and the laws of motion. In that year Leibniz published a paper on Calculus, a new branch of maths, which Newton had himself already developed, again without publishing. Unable to believe that Leibniz might independently have made exactly the same discovery, Newton accused him, quite unreasonably, of plagiarism. He pursued the matter even beyond Leibniz’ death, encouraging his own doctoral students to make overt attacks upon Leibniz in their theses, remaining fixated on the matter for the last twenty-five years of his life.
The point is, of course, that although there is no doubting Newton’s superb scientific and mathematical intelligence, we find him here gripped unknowingly by an overwhelming desire for the renown of primacy in this one discovery, even though it was far less significant than his other work, and even though this quarrel diminished his stature in European intellectual life during his own lifetime. He was, in a word, unwise. So are those now notorious scientists who have faked research or altered research data to prove their own already-published conclusions.
All competitive desire for renown is mimetic desire – an imitative desire acquired from the simple cultural fact that others possess the same desire. The Newton-Leibniz story establishes both that there is a distinctive and important kind of intelligence different from the superb scientific intelligence that Newton undoubtedly possessed, and that its absence in matters of this kind is a serious and self-destructive human flaw.
The reason this story should arrest the attention of SQ theorists is that the Bible may easily be described as a text centred upon the human problem of mimetic desire. To take an extreme example, the Herod who slaughtered the innocents in Bethlehem could not tolerate the possibility that his own primacy might be challenged in his own lifetime by some upstart. His problem was that his self-esteem had become indissolubly attached to his conscious possession of renown. It was essentially the same fixation of another Herod that doomed John the Baptist a generation later. And Newton’s fixation with Leibniz was the same problem.
Renown is an almost archaic term. To distinguish it from self-esteem we might call it other-esteem – the esteem of others. According to the biblical texts, its loss, or the possibility of its loss, can drive people to extremes. For Saul the loss of the other-esteem of the women of Israel was the source of his vendetta against David. For Solomon, the other-esteem his wisdom brought was also the source of his apostasy from the God who had answered his prayer for wisdom.
Solomon’s earlier resolution of the problem posed by the two women who claimed the same child is a fascinating example of biblical wisdom. So familiar is it that we may miss its full significance. We need to note not so much the innocent mother whose love for her child allowed her to give it up, but the guilty woman who was willing to allow it to be divided. She had woken first, realising that she had rolled on her own infant in the night, smothering it. Remembering that in that culture a woman’s status was tightly bound up with fertility, we need to empathise with her predicament: soon the other woman would wake up, becoming the first to scorn her neighbour’s carelessness. This day this useless mother would become identified as such – losing all other-esteem among her peers. But the living infant was all that differentiated her from the successful mother still sleeping close by – hence the substitution. Her ‘covetousness’ was irresistible, as her final shame was imminent.
Solomon’s wisdom penetrated to the heart of the crime, understanding the difference between love and desire, and understanding also the problem posed to the guilty woman by the threatened loss of other-esteem. The living child could cover her shame – and so could a half child divided at the command of the king. The real mother, on the other hand, was willing to accept shame to save the child.
No matter what else may have changed since Old Testament times, the fear of shame is a constant. It lies at the root of much criminality and addiction – and especially at the root of many instances of outrageous violence in our own time. David Copeland, the bomber of gay bars in England in 1999, insisted: ‘If no-one knows who you were, you never existed.’ And Robert Steinhaeuser, who killed sixteen in a school in Bavaria in April 2002, was facing his parents’ imminent discovery that he had been prevented from sitting final exams by the school in question – for forging medical notes to explain his frequent absences.
Given the self-conscious anguish of adolescents over everything from acne to lack of the (media-defined) perfect body, it is a remarkable fact that Catholic education still lacks a proper appreciation of the significance of the spiritual intelligence of the Bible. As a teacher for thirty years I can attest to its supreme relevance in the rough and tumble of a teenager’s life.
In one instance, two fifteen-year-old girls who had been close friends fell out bitterly over the leading role in a school musical. Shiela (not her name) was originally chosen for the part, which she acted very proficiently. Then it was discovered that her singing voice simply hadn’t the range for the music she was required to sing. She was asked to relinquish the part, which was then given to her friend Patricia (another pseudonym), who had been learning the role while watching Shiela. The two were irreconcilable, as Shiela insisted that Patricia had betrayed her. Furthermore, Shiela insisted that she could not remain at the school, and had to be relocated.
Of course there was bad management here on the part of those producing the show – but the story illustrates the power of mimetic desire to cause conflict, and the connection of self-esteem with other-esteem in the minds of even the most intelligent young people these times.
In another case, more recently, a teenager entered a media competition for one of the singing ‘bands’ that now proliferate – a competition for which she was ineligible as she was younger by two years than the required minimum age. When she won a much-coveted place through sheer talent, she was interviewed live for a TV ‘profile’ – and inadvertently let slip her real age. When this was noticed she was caught on camera in a series of increasingly embarrassing attempts to justify her original lie – until her family (very belatedly) decided to end her misery.
In both instances, the mimetic desire for other-esteem had profoundly affected the behaviour and self-esteem of young people whose Catholic education had no explicit relevance to this problem.
The phenomenon of bullying could on its own justify the teaching of spiritual intelligence in school. Bullies are essentially mini-warlords making a bid for the bank of other esteem in their class or year group. Very often they are themselves driven by fear of shame – perhaps over lesser academic ability. By orchestrating contempt against an even more vulnerable member of the group they can deflect shame from themselves, and enjoy the eminence of power, as well as the certitude that they themselves will not suffer shame. The fear they deploy – of being shamed – will keep it at bay.
Does a fiercely competitive educational system inevitably deploy fear of shame as means of motivating children? If so, is it spiritually intelligent?
And how many teachers of RE would be able to point to the treatment of the adulterous woman in St John’s gospel as an archetypal example of bullying? Jesus’s riposte is far more than a brilliant stratagem. It identifies the purpose behind all such violence – to relieve everyone’s fear of shame by depositing all shame on this one execrated individual. Every stone thrown at her would be an unloading of the sin of the one who threw it, a statement of personal inculpability.
And this in turn allows us to see Jesus’ acceptance of crucifixion as a willingness to be the scapegoat for the sake of our enlightenment, our realisation of what lies behind all such scapegoating. Indeed the entire life and mission of Jesus can be understood as an exposure of the cultural processes through which elites not only acquire power and other-esteem, but deploy shame to maintain their power.
How was Jesus able to plough this extraordinary furrow, facing the extremity of crucifixion – the instrument of ultimate shame – totally alone? This is the central mystery of our faith, the question that faces us with a wondrous truth: that he was in his deepest consciousness connected to a source of truth that allowed him to do without the other-esteem of his enveloping human culture. No other explanation is possible for his unique achievement in ‘overcoming the world’.
Spiritual intelligence depends in the end upon spirituality – upon relationship with this extraordinary source of wisdom that allows love to overcome desire. We need to see this as the central purpose and theme of biblical revelation – connecting this with the problems of shame as our culture defines them for individuals. The teenagers who today live in fear of shame, and in constant search of media attention, need to understand that the Bible addresses their predicaments like no other book, and draws them to an alternative and unfailing source of self-esteem.
The West will understand spiritual intelligence fully only when it looks with unbiased interest at the resource that lies under its nose, separating it from the uncomprehending triumphalism of Christian fundamentalism. For their own survival the mainstream churches need to discover this first – that the Bible is as rich a source for understanding ourselves, and modern culture, as for understanding God.
(*Richard N Wolman, Thinking With Your Soul: Spiritual Intelligence and Why It Matters, Harmony Books)