The Idiot Test

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzger gave a commencement speech at Northwestern University in June, 2023. There were several entertaining parts of the speech. I learned a new word — “cheugy.” (It’s pronounced choo-gy.) According to the Urban Dictionary, cheugy is the “opposite of trendy” and is used when someone follows out-of-date trends. Pritzger says it means uncool or you’re just trying too hard. It’s a word that is used by social media influencers, I guess. I wouldn’t know. Clearly I’m cheugy.

Getting back to the point, I thought this was a good speech, and I wanted to share one small part of it with you. You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube. Here’s the part I want to share and discuss a little bit:

“If you want to be successful in this world, you have to develop your own idiot detection system. As part of the responsibilities of being your commencement speaker, I’m going to share mine. … the best way to spot an idiot — look for the person who is cruel. When we see someone who doesn’t look like us or sound like us or act like us or love like us or live like us, the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgment or both — that’s evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things that we aren’t familiar with. In order to be kind we have to shut down that animal instinct, and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges. This may be a surprising assessment because somewhere along the way in the last few years our society has come to believe that weaponized cruelty is part of some well thought out master plan. Cruelty is seen by some as an adroit cudgel to gain power. Empathy and kindness are considered weak. Many important people look at the vulnerable only as rungs on a ladder to the top. I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They have never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears and so their thinking and problem solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades. Over my many years in politics and business I have found one thing to be universally true. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

I think this part of the speech resonated with me because I have felt this trend in our society for years. It seems as though every week I read about someone who has tried to lie, cheat, or steal to get ahead. Lately there have been many politicians or judges on that list. I’ve managed employees that I had to fire because they stole from the company. I’ve heard employers say, “He’s too nice,” before they removed someone from their position. It gives me the sense that our society believes that you must be hard, tough, and nasty in order to succeed.

I think there are a few reasons for this development.

1. Short-term thinking. Today’s corporations are focused on quarterly results and speed of service. People buy in to get-rich-quick schemes (meme investing and bitcoin, for example) rather than long-term sustainable development. Sometimes the shortest route to success is trampling on everyone ahead of you.
2. Lack of insight. Most people don’t take the time to really know their deepest motivations. I can’t tell you the number of psychotherapy clients I have had who couldn’t tell me what was wrong — they just wanted to be happier. The real problem with this is an inability to filter reactions that can seem arbitrary and capricious.
3. Taking the easy route. It is hard to come up with new solutions to the complex problems of our modern world. Often, people grab the first thing that seems like it may work, and try that. The result of that strategy is lots of trial and error, and little real progress. This also lends itself to impulsive actions, which can be harmful.
4. Surface-level thinking. See this article. There is more to a book than its cover. When we don’t give enough thought to the actions we take, we can end up with consequences that we didn’t anticipate, and don’t want.

The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.

J.B. Pritzker

So what can we do? Some of the answers come directly from the list of problems. We can think long-term, do some introspection to find out what makes us tick, put in the effort to find better solutions, and think hard about things. All of these things require effort. But there is an even easier thing that we can do, one that Pritzger pointed out.

Be kind.

It’s not that hard. Smile. Do something nice for someone. Pay attention when someone else is talking. Talk to service workers. The world can be a hard, cruel place, and we all struggle at times. Let’s make it better.