Emotional Intelligence: A Kidnappers’ Primer.

So, I’m not going to lead you off track, by suggesting that there’s a unique case of emotional unintelligence in Africa. That’s something a colonizer would say, and I’m not one of these.

Emotional unintelligence, and the lack thereof, is a global palaver.

It’s why America falls to Donald Trump, why Europe distracts itself with immigration, why South Africans are xenophobic.

Intelligence is not one thing. Its several, some studies say there are at least 7 intelligences? Many of us were failed by the school system, which labeled certain kids as intelligent, and others as not. The truth is, some kids are fish, others are frogs, others are cats. Yet we are all required to climb the same tree. The metric for exams is how well fish, frogs and cats can climb trees. Education itself, needs a reboot.

But, education cannot solve this problem.

Aren’t we all educated? Even with Phds? Still, emotional intelligence has to be socially and culturally learnt. I can be honest with you - I don’t have the answer. I can only ask the right questions.

We all need emotional intelligence for example, in our personal relationships. Many relationships fail, because both partners are operating at different levels of emotional intelligence. It’s like mixing old cloth and new cloth: there might be a tear, no?

We all need emotional intelligence, at work. Though I think, managers need it more than other employees. Why? because, most workplace abuse is from top to bottom.

We all need emotional intelligence in our politics.

Why, despite the sad fact that we are suffering tremendously under our governments, do we not take sensible steps to collectively course-correct? Because our individual, ethnic and religious sentiments overrule our actual needs.

So, maybe it is time to talk about religion?

Religion is a blunter of intelligence.

And of emotional intelligence, in particular.

Maybe not all religion? Afterall, some religious societies like ancient Mali or the Roman Empire can show actual civilization results. But, we must also confront this other truth: there is always more than one form of a particular religion. The Christianity and Islam dumped on colonized countries, are not of the same ideological refinement as the originals. Not to mention, the very nature of colonization always requires opposite results between colonizer and colonized.

Hence, the visible result of religion in colonized countries, is a dumbing down of the mind.

Religious people cannot conclusively process emotional intelligence. They have inbuilt roadblocks that constantly stand in their way when they think. Today I was talking to a er, sister in the Lord, ahum, about her abusive father. Her quick retort was that she has adopted God as her father. My old self would have reacted, but my new self, the more emotionally intelligent one, held back. I knew she was “spiritual bypassing”, but it wouldn’t have been helpful to say that in the moment.

Oh! Last weekend, I watched police in Ibadan, Nigeria, storm a kidnappers’ hideout. So much yelling and noisemaking by these “brave police”. It sounded and looked like a cheaply produced skit, but real lives were at stake. Yelling like banshees while closing in on violent, armed villains could be because BOTH police and the kidnappers were terrified.

Maybe hypermasculine, viking type yelling helps the rampaging police feel more “in charge”? But yelling also puts operational strategy at risk, compromises sight and sound with avoidable sensory overload, and might even give one or two sneaky bandits the chance to creep away silently in the melee.

Importantly, yelling blatantly shocks the kidnapped children, who in addition to their trauma, have to permanently remember when a chaotic, screaming deluge of heavily armed banshees in black descended out of dark night.

Low emotional intelligence is also what gives politicians and their police, brazen confidence to storm a kidnappers’ hideout within 2 days, while over 40 previously kidnapped school children remain in limbo 25 days later. Don’t the barefaced, selfish optics matter?

Revolutions result when politicians stop caring what the masses feel about barefaced optics.

Emotional intelligence, in one more nutshell.

It’s a task we all have.

Schools can’t do it, because they are capitalist institutions, and they train us for things that can make money directly. Like Medicine or Architecture. Why should they bother to teach Emotional Intelligence? In any case, many adults who should be teachers, are themselves crippled by a lifetime of maturing physically without maturing emotionally.

I wish for us, that we can relate with one another in ways that read the room, and perceive the unspoken hearts of people around us, and make choices that are in all our best interests. When that day comes, we will be ready to eliminate bad politicians, including the kidnappers and other political bandits that work for the political class. And many jobs, families, and relationships will be saved, too.

And the next generation of children will be both safer and better than we are.

And, we will all live happily ever after.