In San Jose, California, there is a non-profit called the Career Closet. Volunteers at this non-profit can choose among a half million dollars worth of clothes to help women dress for interviews.

Let me quote from the Mercury News: “Since 1992, this nonprofit has been dressing disadvantaged women in clothes donated by the Bay Area’s working women. Clients, referred by 130 local agencies, can choose a week’s worth of clothing, as well as handbags, jewelry and new underwear. They also get free haircuts and makeup consultations — everything they need to look professional.”

(Patty Fisher of Mercury News wrote the article I am discussing here.)

Is it fair that society judges people by looks and dress rather than their experience and ability? Certainly not. Unfortunately grim realities force accommodations. So, it is that those with more clothing knowledge, upper class accents and mannerisms will dominate the job market for years to come. With the advent of “emotional intelligence,” hiring decisions are more and more based on how your social skills appear. Emotional intelligence has great validity in sales and other people oriented jobs, but to use it broadly ignores the importance of ability and punishes the socially awkward or simply independent among us. We can do better. It doesn’t require a great deal of thinking to realize that emotional intelligence is but one facet of job skills and that they must be weighed in proportion to their importance. But when read articles about EI, I see over and over again broad statements stating directly or implying that social skills are the primary skill for success in all areas. Think about that. Think about the socially awkward like Thomas Alva Edison, Soren Kierkegaard, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, William Blake, Charles Lamb, Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Blaise Pascal, William James Sidis, and H.P. Lovecraft. Let society decide that only the socially skillful are producers and creators of value. Isn’t that the current direction? I wonder what kind of human development we can expect in a civilization of the popular? What would you call that society? We already know.

It’s called Mediocracy, government by the less than average. That’s what you get when ability becomes a side issue. That’s what you get when the give and take of ideas become so painful that a feigned state of agreement becomes preferable. That’s what you get when money is more important than making things, more important than being sincere and honorable; because both sincerity and honor disturb people and has the possible side effect of appearing socially awkward.

Hiring the at-first apparently popular is easy. Hiring the skilled requires judgment. Judgment means thought, work, contemplation and the application of judgment means a willingness to disagree, to advocate for the unpopular candidate. So by exercising judgment, a skill, those who believe in hiring the skilled, become unpopular and thus unhirable themselves.

Remember acting with intelligence, judgment, humor, honor or conviction can make you unpopular. These qualities make civilization go forward. They are vital in making life worth living, in cultivating the young, following the pathway of love of country and fulfilling our responsibilities to fellow citizens and posterity.These are the things we must give up to be hirable and liked.

Something of an ethics problem, huh?

James Alan Pilant