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The Sense of Competence

Saturday, January 12, 2019 10:26

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“What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?” he asked.

“The sense of competence,” was the answer, given without hesitation.

“Right. And what do we mean by competence? Not success! God knows it is something very different from success! Any fool may be successful, if the gods wish to hurt him. Competence means that splendid joy in your own powers and the approval of your own heart, which great men feel always and lesser men now and again at favoured intervals.

John Buchan – The Half-Hearted (1900)

Not a novel I recommend but within it there is this fascinating variant of an old insight. Via his main character Buchan asserts that happiness arises when individuals are aware of their own competence. This idea runs parallel to Baruch Spinoza’s dictum that happiness is only to be found in understanding – to understand is to be competent.

If we accept that personal happiness is related to personal competence then a number of things become clear. Firstly there is no value in government efforts to promote happiness unless it also aims to enhance the competence of its citizens. Not collective competence but personal competence. Yet government is predicated on hierarchies of competence – as is Buchan’s quote.

Perhaps this gives us a clue to the modern condition. In spite of their imperfections and biases the internet and social media are facilitating competence which is not hierarchical. Anyone can use the internet to enhance their own competence and from what I see many do just that.

Many don’t of course and therein lies a source of modern conflict in that it is relatively easy to become more competent than a government minister, at least in the way ideas are handled.

Other routes one could take with this is the idea that people can be competently stupid and therefore happy in their stupidity. We see this all the time when governments validate stupid activity. Or one could be happy as a competent criminal or happy as a competent benefits scrounger and so on and so on.

What’s the answer? As usual there is no answer although one might suggest a partial answer in that people could aim to be competently moral. Maybe our political class could set an example here. Doesn’t seem likely does it?

Source: https://akhaart.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-sense-of-competence.html

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