The Smartest People in the Room

How much better off does it really make you to be smart enough to know how to create justifications for negative consequences? There are people whose whole job it is to do nothing else, and it's typically called "public relations," but that is only half of the rotten fruit being sold to you as ripe. What good does it do to graduate at the top of your class if that status propels you into a position that only brings out the worst in you? On the whole, it makes little sense to squander one's abilities for any reason. It seems, though, as often as people take the low road and do just that for no reason at all, or even for good reasons, just as many decide to take the even lower road and squander their abilities in the promotion of malicious or devious ends, if only to put their learning to "some" use. It is not because they are "bad people," it's just that they are raised in a learning environment where they are prompted to "give in" more than they are empowered to resist.

I know this firsthand from my own experience with higher education, where I was tempted to undermine my own credibility at times to ensure I made the grade and gave the average response to every question. Staying "in" was more important to me than rising "above," due to the potential of falling back down. In conversation with fellow students, I observe more "giving in" and "giving up" in institutions of higher learning than anywhere else (and certainly more than in the workforce), and it seems that it's because nowhere else is one's conformity so desirable towards their so-called longevity (outside the military, that is). Just as much as a wasted talent seems a shame to me now, even more so does a talent that has been put to misguided use via people-pleasing conformity. You could say, it is better that you should be a failure who does good work than a success who wallows in their justifications for iniquity.

For instance, what is the value of a higher education when so-called "outside the box" thinking means finding new ways to scam, lie to, or deny people a critical service? The phrase "smartest people in the room" originated to describe the men who ran Enron during the corruption scandals that brought the company down, and is pejoratively used now to describe any group of people who use their brilliance for malevolent ends. Many of those who engineered the economic collapse for their own gain could also be considered among the "smartest people in the room"--those who were smart enough to discover how to push buttons all day and make obscene amounts of money in the process, introducing little to no innovation or development into society. Where does it lead you as a conscionable individual coming out of the college system when the so-called "smartest people in the room" have the least integrity? There are many examples of how unbridled passion without reason can cause the collapse of a person and a society, but it seems equally perilous when self-concerned reason is exercised without regard to an empathic concern for one's fellow human beings. Those who are smart enough to switch off their conscience in the light of some flimsy justification suffer from a lack of integrity.

What good does it do one to be the the most educated and adept person in the room at exploiting loopholes to get away with corruption?  What good does it do you to be pushed into pursuing some college-bound path from the time you're born as if it's the only option in existence, where your future is mapped out long before you can even see any concrete routes to take within it-- much less have enough of an identity to know which route to take? And what good would it do you then, being in that situation, to set an uncharted course through that labyrinth with only a fabled "exit" in mind and no concrete idea of how to go about finding it, lining other people's pockets and ensuring your own indentured servitude to debt in the process? Higher education is capable of doing great things for the world, but so are people with vision, passion, and freedom from debt. You can be the smartest person in the room without having to forfeit your personal integrity to acquiesce to some "company line" of whatever institution or organization "accepts you" once you "get out." Education was never meant to be a conveyor belt upon which you just sit and accept whatever people instruct you to think. It ought to be a platform from which you can, as an independent voice, graciously challenge the scams, lies, and conspiracies that are propping up those very same people who do nothing but acquiesce to injustice-- it should give you the tools to refute them rather than become them. 

Higher education ought to be about making complicated systems more humane and more responsive to human beings-- not merely training on how to give a false smile, a firm handshake, and an automatic response that has been programmed into your head to the point you and only you believe it. It doesn't take a smart person to be a public relations slave for a major corporation, for example-- at least, no more than it would for a trained dog drooling on command-- so why one would waste all that time and money just to end up the equivalent of a drooling dog in the workplace seems beyond reason. That is, unless one's reason is to simply do anything (no matter the consequences) on the pretense of the Nuremberg defense, or the "need to make a living," or more appropriately, the "need to repay a debt." Only because the drooling corporate slaves out there are not alone responsible for the negatives of the world do they find some absolution from consequences. But why betray your conscience if you don't have to?

In a world where it is still possible to make a living doing positive and pro-social things for the world, choosing to contribute to something that produces more negatives than positives on the justification that it "repays the debt" sounds more like defending one's conscience through excuses. No one, unfortunately, is more skilled at turning off their conscience to become a slave to flimsy justifications than the so-called "smartest people in the room." And ironically, no one appears more well-equipped to combat those "professional justifiers" than those among the smartest minds who happen to still have the virtues of empathy, honesty, and a thirst for social justice intact. It all begins in the home. Empowerment breeds integrity. Conformity creates corruption.