and, imagination the many problems that we face in our affective relationship with ourselves

and with other people. The term "emotional intelligence" may sound odd. We are used to referring

to intelligence as a general quality, without unpicking a particular variety a person might

possess – and therefore we don't tend to highlight the value of a distinctive sort

of intelligence which currently does not enjoy the prestige it should.

Every sort of intelligence signals an ability to navigate well around a particular set of

challenges: mathematical, linguistic, technical, commercial… When we say that someone is

clever but add that they have made a mess of their personal lives; or that they have

acquired a fortune but are restless and sad or that they are powerful but intolerant and

unimaginative, we are pointing to a deficit in what deserves to be called “emotional intelligence."

In social life, we can feel the presence of emotional intelligence in a sensitivity to

the moods of others and in a readiness to grasp the surprising things that may be going

on for other people beneath the surface. Emotional intelligence recognises a role for interpretation

and knows that, for example, a fiery outburst might be a disguised plea for help, or that a long political

rant may be provoked by hunger, or that concealed within a forceful jolliness may be a sorrow

that has been sentimentally disavowed. In relation to ourselves, emotional intelligence

shows up in a scepticism around our emotions, especially those of love, desire, anger, envy,

anxiety and professional ambition. The emotionally intelligent refuse to trust their first impulses

or the wisdom of their feelings. They know that hatred may mask love, that anger may

be a cover for sadness and that we are prone to huge and costly inaccuracies around whom we

desire and what we want. Emotional intelligence is also what distinguishes

those who are crushed by failure from those who know how to greet the troubles of existence

with a melancholy and at points darkly humorous resilience. The emotionally intelligent appreciate

the role of well-handled pessimism within the overall economy of a good life.

Emotional intelligence isn't an inborn talent. It's always the result of education, specifically

education in how to interpret ourselves, in where our emotions arise from, in how our childhoods influence us

and in how we might best navigate our fears and our wishes. In the ideal society, it would be routine

to be taught emotional intelligence from the youngest age, before we had had the opportunity

to make too many mistakes. It is because we have—until now—not taken

emotional education seriously enough that our species has grown ever more technically

adept while retaining the level of wisdom of our earliest days—with catastrophic results.

We are now evolved monkeys with nuclear weapons. It appears that fate of civilisation now

depends on our capacity to master the mechanisms of emotional education before it is too late.

An emotional education means something far beyond formal education as we have conceived of it to date.

Though it should ideally include courses in every year of school or college,

emotional education is more than something that should just take place in classrooms at the

hands of teachers and come to a halt around the age of twenty-one.

The central vehicle for the transfer of emotional intelligence is culture, from its highest

to its most popular level. Culture is the field that can ritualise and consistently

promote the absorption of emotional intelligence. The 'lessons' might be embedded in a tragedy

or a TV series, a pop song or a novel, a work of architecture or a YouTube film. We can

envisage the entire apparatus of culture as a subtle mechanism designed to point us towards

greater emotional intelligence. We will never progress as a species, and will

indeed grow into ever greater technologically-armed menaces to ourselves, until we have accepted

the challenges and opportunities of properly educating our selves in emotional intelligence.

Our technical intelligence is great of course. It's led us to tame nature and conquer this planet. But a wiser, saner

future for the race must depend on a capacity to master and then seductively teach the rudiments

of emotional intelligence—while there is still time.

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