Multiple Intelligences

In this episode Dr. Sally and Dr. Jen explore multiple intelligences. 

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S1:E19: Transforming consciousness through multiple intelligences.  

1:04  Sally says this episode is on multiple intelligences. They are generalists who look at the entire field of transformation. If listeners are interested in the deeper topics, perhaps do more research. In order to learn, there must be intelligence present. There can be no evolution, without a sophisticated level of intelligence. Life itself is evolving to express higher intelligences, a complexity of thinking, feeling and consciousness. So intelligence itself seems to transform. Psychologists, educators, cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, spiritual practitioners, all ask, is intelligence the same as consciousness? And is consciousness causal, ie. Did everything evolve from consciousness? Or is consciousness evolving, ie. emerging, complexifying,  getting more and more sophisticated. Nobody has solved that question yet. Sally quotes RJ Sternberg’s definition of intelligence. Intelligence is considered to be relational, an interaction between the agent and its environment, and how successfully it adapts to change. Learning allows every single manifestation of life to succeed in its environment. Learning to transform and adapt, equals success. At the bottom of all this capacity is the ability to flourish. People can study the brain with MRI’s, and see brainwave states, but can’t see consciousness or intelligence. Only the results of applied intelligence. She then describes the three ways people have looked at intelligence/consciousness 1) pan psychism. 2) consciousness as emergent after the Big Bang. 3) Consciousness as only belonging to humans. This debate is an unresolved minefield. 

13:03  Jen says that our own evolution contributes to the evolution of intelligence, and that we also arise from that intelligence. She offers further definitions of intelligence. We're trying to move away from defining intelligence exclusively by reason, but intelligence includes reason, as well as wisdom, insight, flow states and spiritual, ecological, emotional, and creative abilities. This embraces diverse and divergent forms of learning, responsiveness, and problem solving on all levels of reality, not just cognitive. She cites Jordan Gruber and James Fadiman’s book  “Your symphony of selves”. According to the multiple selves theory, when we put enough attention, energy and self awareness into a given situation, we can meet it with the appropriate self. There are as many intelligences as there are beings. We come from a deep intelligence, and that deep intelligence is expressing through us in very powerful ways. She then cites Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking who align intelligence with the ability to transform. So this ability to adapt, move and transform is something we're amplifying out into the universe here. 

 20:52  Sally says being overly identified with rational thought as the only form of intelligence has become a liability, and is now a cause of our global issues. She describes how measuring IQ’s (logic) became reified. In America today, they call logic subjects STEM – science, technology, engineering and math. Everything other intelligence becomes subsidiary and underfunded.  ‘Left brain chauvinism’ arose out of modernism, and the patriarchal celebration of the left brain, and the devaluation of everything else. That became entrenched in education systems, geared towards competitiveness and objectification. In some schools, auditory, visual, and kinesthetic capacities were then included, with amendments to the stereotypical STEM curriculum. Slowly academics like Howard Gardner said there were six intelligences, and later changed that to nine. People like Ken Wilber later changed this to 24 lines of intelligence. Sally lists some of these, many of which cannot be measured, and so they aren’t preferred in the curriculum. Some schools are dumbing us down, because they want convergent, one-word answers. They want to pump kids through the factory of education, which is skewed towards market forces for employment, status, consumption and money making. So not all intelligences are ranked the same. We're changing that view, for the survival of our future, because divergent creativity itself has been diminished. We cannot fix this with the same level of consciousness, or the same intelligence, that actually destroyed our universe, by turning it into an object for our consumption. She then describes Daniel Goleman’s IQ, EQ, and SQ. And the latest quotient - AQ, named by Paul Stoltz, as the adversity quotient of resilience, the turning obstacles into opportunity. How adaptable are we as organisms? It's not just about our brain. For 3000 years Yoga has been teaching that the whole body thinks, responds and is intelligent. Now we're also understanding ecological intelligence. 

29:17  Jen says stewarding these various types of intelligence is an essential part of self awareness. She then talks about neuro-divergence as forms of intelligence. Different types of intelligence exist among people with different IQ scores. She gives an example of her daughter Frances’ developmental disabilities, and her lower than average IQ, yet her amazing ability to live in the moment. We no longer pathologize this, and honor her struggles, and gifts. Jen thinks of her dyslexic brain as a form of intelligence, a kind of non-locality about her mind that allows her to express her creativity in really unique ways. One of the ways her PTSD shows up is in hyper vigilance, which is disregulating, but also a gift of survival, to be situationally aware, to want to feel safe and secure, a perk in a very uncertain and dangerous world. These neurodivergent intelligences are not a collection of problems that need to be fixed, but unique gifts. Pathologizing causes a lot of pain. Every brain is the right brain, perfect for us, just the way it is. 

37:24  Sally says the left brain tends to pathologize, objectify, rank and devalue anything that's not like itself, turning ‘other ways of being’ into a medical problem, to fix, because the left brain is about control, survival, order and problem solving. We seriously need it, of course, but as well as the other intelligences of expression, creativity, intuition, imagination. A psycho-graph, mapping our different lines of intelligence, can help us see which lines we still need to develop. Sometimes two people with different psycho-graphs work well as a pair, because they fill in the gaps. But sometimes that's a disaster. She describes how Einstein was pathologized for of his unique brain. And mentions the neuro-atypical savant, Stephen Wiltshire whose hand-eye, visual-spatial gifts are truly next level. During the Renaissance, it was considered a masculine capacity only, to be a genius. But we now know differently. Genius is distributed across genders, across cultures, across diversity as neuro- atypical. We need to rethink our schooling that can sometimes dumb kids down. So we're in a crisis, because multiple intelligences have been repressed. It's not considered sexy by some for women to have a lot of intelligence lines. And for men, it's not considered sexy by some to show some of the other intra-personal skills. So we're opening up all these lines of intelligence to everybody now, for a bright future. Sally then discusses Authentic and Artificial Intelligence, carbon-based and silicone based platforms, and how these may synthesize. We've got to be really careful about AI, even as we celebrate the diverse forms of intelligence that are alive today. Sally then shares a list of intelligences found in animals only, that humans do not have, honoring unique, diverse life forms. As intelligence arises through relationship, between an organism and its environment, and its adaptive capacity, without that context, that form of intelligence becomes vulnerable. That's why protecting wild spaces is important for diverse intelligence. Otherwise those levels of consciousness disappear. Focusing on unique psychographs and celebrating uniqueness is great, but figuring out how one can apply that and contribute to society is important. There's no point in being a genius all alone in one’s room. How can you start to believe in oneself and develop those lines of intelligence?

50:53  Jen says many intelligences are incredibly sexy, as is this move towards relational, participatory connections with each other, our Earth home, nature, and the deep intelligence of the universe that informs all of us. It's not our goal here to center human intelligence. She cites Dr. Julie Morley’s meticulous research with crows. She wrote a great article with Dr. Bekoff in Psychology Today about animal intelligence. Dr. Bekoff studies the emotional lives of animals. And his work illustrates that their complex intelligence challenges the view that animals have inferior intelligence. So we're challenging the pathologizing of neurodivergent human minds, and the idea that animals are not intelligent. Even trees are communicating with each other, using feedback loops that are underground. Jen then describes some unique non-human intelligences. We are born from a great intelligence, and we hold multiple intelligences. Our universe is a source of radical intelligence that has given us this earth, this body this reality. So in essence, we're channels for radical intelligence. As in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm. So why not celebrate our many intelligences, as the various expressions from our source take form. The missing link to solve our deepest ecological problems, is seeing our multiple intelligences as arising from nature, in a reciprocal relational way, instead of us always centering ourselves, and taking from it. Our attitude of domination, and dominion over nature, is a short-sighted perspective, which leads to unsustainable behaviors. We have lots of intelligences to tap into. And you can't help but see those intelligences when you look out into the night sky, or out into a field, or a forest. We come from, and we will return to, that intelligence. Our greatest gift that we can give to each other is our time, attention and intelligence.