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I wrote on this a while ago-
From primitive times, man has lived in tribes. This would be unneccessary if the set of skills required to make serious progress in this big, bad world were homogenous. Tribes are useful, not only because of the division of labour and economies of scale they create, but because different sets of skills come together, interact and fuel progress in a way that single individuals cannot achieve. Thus, at the end of the day, everyone benefits from each others' skill sets. I may be a brilliant hunter, but I may not be able to skin am animal well. But if I set up shop with a briliant skinner, we are both better fed than before. Thus, there are gains from trade, when different sets of skills come together.
Today, a society is an amalgamation of people from various backgrounds with various skill sets, more than they ever were in history. An entrepreneur passes on the handling of accounts to an able accountant, he may supervise the work, but he needn't pore over balace sheets anymore. An economist often outsources the programming and statistical part of his research to an able statistician or programmer, while she herself focusses on the implications the study has on policy measures.
In such a society, it is inevitable that emphasis is not on a single measure of success, that of reasoning and cognition, but on a various dimensions that determine success, such as the ability to juggle numbers, or have more effective human interactions. In fact, Howard and Gardner have identified eight types of intelligence, which include musical, spatial, and interpersonal among them. Various other definitions of intelligence, which encompass skills other than simple reseasoning, have been given by psychologists in recent times. These are greatly distinct from the definitions given before, when societies were more homogenous. Earlier definitions focused on raw IQ, and thus there was a single dimension in which an individual's abilities and potential success was measured.
It is also imperative that society gives weightage to various abilities and skill sets, to encourage those who bring new skills to the modern tribe, and contribute in their own unique way. If abilities are measured in the single dimension of cognitive reasoning, then the pattern emerging would be a single bell curve with more than half the population falling below the level of what we have defined as average intelligence. If society had a singular focus on this evaluaton as a measure of potential success, the "below average" might as well end their lives. However, if the abilities and potential of an individual are measured in multiple dimensions, then there is a greater probability that any person will score above average in the bell curve of some dimension, even be much above normal in one or two dimensions. To recieve evaluations on dimensions over a range of abilities works better in motivating people to develop those skills on which they scored high, and not be too unhappy about the dimensions on which they did not do so well. A multidimensional measure of intelligence is for the greater good of the greater number.
To conclude, it is true that society today does not place emphasis on cognition and reasoning. In today's diverse society, it is imperative that there be equal emphasis on a variety of skills, as indicating to people that their skills are equally important and valued as those of their peers, is the very adhesive binding them together in the society.
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