The dangers of “Adversity Quotient” [Note: Content Warning - toxic character aspects, racism, slavery]

I recently came across a post on LinkedIn which was forwarding someone’s assessment that we have: 

“four types of Intelligence:

1) Intelligence Quotient (IQ)
2) Emotional Quotient (EQ)
3) Social Quotient (SQ)
4) Adversity Quotient (AQ)”

I have no problems with the first two, and wary of the 3^rdbecause of the potential for authoritarian control, and have major concerns about the 4^th, Adversity Quotient. The Wikipedia article on that notion has clearly been written by a devotee, and thus has several tags asking for more information.

My immediate concerns upon reading this were the potential for toxic positivity and/or, from a personal growth point of view, the potential to create more shadow aspects of one’s personality - thereby actually reducing one’s capacity to be resilient. 

There are undoubtedly ways that people can make themselves more resilient - for example, see this article, but they all need to be assessed with an objective, “eyes wide open” sort of approach. Even this, for example, also from LinkedIn, and also suggesting a positive assessment of oneself with a view to being more confident, is something I would apply with a note of caution, as I don’t want to risk becoming overconfident and thus possibly putting myself at undue risk of possibly even physical harm.

These aspects were discussed in the comments - which included responses to the typical simplistic reactions.

However, the greatest danger of all, in my opinion, is that such thinking leads to a failure to change what should be done because of a focus on enduring what should be changed, rather than questioning whether that situation should occur at all and then working to change it. 

Yes, some things cannot be changed, but others simply require a lot of work - things such as fixing the ozone hole, the abolition  of  slavery (campaign  still  going two and a half millennia since  Ashoka so far), eradicating racism and achieving equity and justice for all the harm done, getting women the vote and eradicating sexism and achieving equity and justice for all the harm done,and overcoming the climate crisis - battle still struggling to get going because of denialism and the desire to maintain power etc.

 

PS - I have also posted this on Medium, at https://medium.com/@kayleen.white.58/the-dangers-of-adversity-quotient-835c0c1f2862

 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.