the ranks of upper management are typically filled with people who are socially/politically smart I used to think this still meant a sort of philosophical bril

the ranks of upper management are typically filled with people who are socially/politically smart I used to think this still meant a sort of philosophical brilliance, an high minded intellectual mastery of manipulation. I’ve started to realize it might be more of an instinctual animal cunning; they just have a sense of the right thing to do or say. The remaining question is whether they learned that sense or were born with it. It is curious to entertain the latter; perhaps a hundred people are born with a hundred different calibrations, and only one of the hundred is born with just the right instinct.