"Goodness should be accompanied by wisdom"
On the Wright Brothers, college sports, and the thing that counts even more than intelligence
It's hard to imagine just how head-spinning the pace of progress must have seemed in the United States around the turn from the 19th into the 20th Century. Reliable electrical service was exploding on the public scene, alongside the first American-made automobile (1896). The new century ushered in the first long-distance radio broadcasts (1902), the airplane (1903), and the first standards for safe drinking water (1905).
■ We flatter ourselves in thinking that we are the first generation to experience dramatic technological changes with big social consequences. It's been done before. But we truly deceive ourselves if we think that what matters most is how smart we think the changes will make us.
■ In 1900, the governor of New York, one Theodore Roosevelt, wrote a magazine article proposing, "Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character [...] in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character; and if between any two contestants, even in college sport or in college work, the difference in character on the right side is as great as the difference of intellect or strength the other way, it is the character side that will win."
■ 125 years later, the same is true: Character is still more dispositive than any other factor in life. Our eagerness to discover computer-aided "superintelligence" had better not overtake our interest in forming better people.
■ We can't afford to be shell-shocked by change any more than our forebears could have done so in 1900. A lot of people with bad intentions are grasping every prospective weapon in reach, because they see personal advantage in it.
■ Good people need to double down on the centrality of good character while at the same time seeking to level up on their ability to use it. It's hard work, but that's our duty. In Roosevelt's words, "it is of much more importance for the good of mankind that our goodness should be accompanied by wisdom than that we should merely be harmless."
