The very smart often lack emotional intelligence and may have problems with empathy

June 3, 2007 (updated August 9, 2009)

Well I am surprised. I got an email from Barry Schmidl.

I sent him more than 20 and he sends me one.

Related Article: So What’s With Barry Schmidl

“I didn’t stop and talk because of this or that.” He was going to lunch with his wife: how can one argue with that excuse for not talking. Sorry, not an excuse on PEI. I get in trouble all the time for saying hello on the way to dinner/lunch.

Then there is: “I didn’t get your phone call. I didn’t think your email needed a reply. Someone got the door before me. The dog ate my homework.” The long answer is in the comments.

I would have expected to get a logic reply from Barry. Barry is a member of Mensa, the smartest people in the world. He was “President of Mensa Canada, an organization for people with IQs in the top 2% of the population, and a member of the Mensa International Board of Directors, since July of 2004.”

The quote is from Mr. Schmidl’s bio page at the PEI Council of the Disabled which is about 540 words long. Mr. Schmidl, by his own writing, spends just 50 of those words talking about the disabled or disability. That’s about the same amount of time he spends talking about Mensa, the super brains.

However, he’s not smart enough to figure out that Trisha Clarkin was freezing in the dark outside the Premier’s Office, that he didn’t reply to any of my emails before and that I called him twice in November and December of last year. Barry is not smart enough to figure out that the $1 million cutback in the DSP was hurting people. He is not smart enough to figure out he should have been at the Human Rights Commission hearings in the DSP autism cases. Does the Council of the Disable represent autistics? Do they represent Islanders with Disabilities on the DSP?

IQ or intellect is a poor indicator of ability to get along with other people or show empathy. In the 1990’s Daniel Goleman wrote the ground breaking book Emotional Intelligence. Mere intelligence is not enough. We need to understand people, empathize with people among other things. We need to show emotional intelligence.

I am sure Jeanette MacAulay the Deputy Minister of Social Services and Seniors is intelligent. She calculated that non-government-agencies needed more money and she took it from people in wheelchairs. The disabled don’t need it and they lacked a voice. That’s how the $1 million cut back started. Remember the song: where did the money go? That’s where the money went.

I’m sure Jamie Ballem was smart when he created the DSP and cut-off parents with autistic children. Smart isn’t the problem. We’ve got lots of smart people running around ruining the place with logically smart decisions. What we need are people with emotional intelligence who feel for their fellow man before they act.

The next time someone sends you an email Barry, reply to it. And if they are complaining about you or the Council, don’t try to defend the defenceless – just say “sorry” and mean it.