The mystery of good judgment

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":5.7,"text":"In this, the year we mark 70 years since the Suez crisis, one fun fact rates a mention. Anthony Eden held a first-class degree in Arabic and Persian. The man who led Britain to disgrace in the canal had not just a fine mind but one steeped in the very region that would trip him up. Few western leaders have been as literate about what was then called the Near East. (He had met the King of Iraq in his twenties.) Few western leaders have got the place more wrong. Eden ate from the tree of knowledge but could not make up for what he so lacked in judgment."}],[{"start":38.800000000000004,"text":"As another Middle Eastern farce goes on, seethe, by all means. But don’t, as seems to be the fashion, blame the war on stupidity. Even if it is true that Pete Hegseth will never trouble the admissions panel at Mensa, brilliant predecessors have fared worse. The big brains of Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld did not help them in Vietnam and Iraq. Hegseth’s alleged nickname at the Pentagon, Dumb McNamara, rather undercuts itself. To invoke that cleverest of fools is to tacitly admit that intellect is not the issue. "}],[{"start":74.55000000000001,"text":"Judgment: of all the traits that go into making a successful life, it must be the least understood, and so the most overlooked. Talent, of which intelligence is a subset, gets much of the attention. Parents go to the wall as a result of school fees and the like to maximise whatever quotient of it their children have. Hard work, or the “grind”, is the subject of almost all motivational podcasts. Even luck gets its due, as perhaps it didn’t a generation ago. “White”, “pretty” and “straight” are just three varieties of “privilege” in the parlance of the young."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":111.10000000000001,"text":"Next to all these factors, there is much less talk of (and even agreement on how to spell) judgment, which is the habit of making good decisions. Yet the parable of Eden, of McNamara, even of Angela Merkel, is about how little other assets are worth without it."}],[{"start":126.85000000000001,"text":"The point holds if we narrow the lens from the geopolitical to the personal. Most readers will know — or be — someone smart who makes error after life-altering error. The wrong spouse, the wrong career move, the wrong comment to the wrong person. This maladroitness is sad to observe precisely because it does not correspond to any intellectual or moral failing. Good judgment can at times seem a genetic accident, more akin to a heightened sense of smell than to an earned skill. "}],[{"start":155.95000000000002,"text":"Or at least, good luck divining a way of improving one’s judgment. Every atom of my being wants to argue that hardship is the great decider of these things, that experiencing some knocks is what confers a street-smartness. But it takes half a second to think of counterexamples. Churchill, who had judgment enough to sense that Eden would flop as prime minister, could scarcely have been higher-born."}],[{"start":180.70000000000002,"text":"Almost to a tee, I have the life I want. This is despite possessing less intelligence than several peers who have reached the same age disappointed. No one would suggest that hard work accounts for the difference. There has been huge good luck but also, earlier on, the opposite. Upon reflection, what it all seems to come down to is a few judgments, which are now far back in the past. Refusing a coveted Latin American posting that would have fascinated but waylaid me. (The editor’s face was a picture.) Deciding not to test whether fatherhood is something one can learn to like. Sensing that a boisterous pub one night was about to turn nasty and — do excuse the Pentagon-speak — kinetic. "}],[{"start":222.10000000000002,"text":"It is not a heroic epitaph to show for half a lifetime on the planet. “He made relatively few tactical errors.” But the counterfactual timeline of each of these decisions makes me shiver. It is hard to avoid the thought that we make so much of intellect and work because it is to some extent knowable. The other attribute that determines the course of a life is much spookier than that. As a piece of advice, “Have good judgment” is close to useless and the only one worth dispensing."}],[{"start":260.70000000000005,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1777097851_5952.mp3"}