Intelligence doesn't have a universal definition. We all seem to understand what it is and we also seem to understand there are different types of intelligence. Some people might be incredibly intelligent when it comes to using logic and reason to problem solve but they might have little emotional or social intelligence. Some people have the entire package. The vast majority of people have an average amount of intelligence. And some people have very little or none. It all falls within the Bell Curve.
The Bell Curve, not the book, is a pretty amazing thing. Pretty much everything can be described by it's placement on the Bell Curve. If we imagined all of the people that have ever played baseball in their life and placed them on the Bell Curve, based on how good they were at the sport, then we would find the overwhelming amount of people that could simply put on a glove and throw and catch the ball with moderate success would make up the largest portions of the curve. On the left edge (with the the spectrum ranging from horrible to great) would be the people that are in harms way when they try to play a sport of any kind. On the right edge would be most upper level, organized players, with the farthest part of the edge housing the professionals. We could even break it down further and place all of the Major League players on their own Bell Curve and the vast majority of them would take up the largest portions of the Curve and the truly great hall of famers would be found on the right edge of the curve. This can be done for just about anything known to us.
The book, The Bell Curve, was published in 1994. The thing the authors were actually measuring and trying to quantify was intelligence. The authors conducted an analysis of a long running study performed by The United States Labor Bureau. The book was controversial for several reasons. It dabbled in the idea of different levels of intelligence based on race. It made policy and social recommendations that were bold and abrasive. The book received its fair share of criticism. The most severe critiques accused the authors of waging a campaign against welfare and immigration and even the justification to embrace racism. However, there were many parts of the book that were accepted by respected authorities in the field of psychology. The American Psychological Association formed a task force to look into the validity of the book and ended up backing several of the authors' claims. They also didn't support some of the claims, especially those dealing with race, but they didn't throw out the baby with the bath water; they used the stuff that was considered sound.
It's an engaging read, regardless if you agree with some of the claims. It makes you think hard about some ideas. One claim made by the authors warns of the following:
"...those with high intelligence...are becoming separated from those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this is a dangerous social trend with the United States moving toward a more divided society..."
I'm not endorsing the book. Simply the idea of measuring intelligence with a number seems off to me. Theoretically it might be possible to assign a number someday to measure this thing we call intelligence, but when we still can't accept a universal definition of the concept then I feel uneasy ranking it in this fashion. I have no idea how to do it but it just seems like we still have so much to learn about the brain before we can feel confident in our exact numbers. This doesn't mean that it's not possible to test for intelligence and identify it at some level. It simply means I'm skeptical of the accuracy of the assigned number, not the implication of the number. If I went back in time, say five thousand years, and went to visit the weatherman he might tell me it's going to be 300 degrees tomorrow. I might not think his number is accurate but I get the point: he thinks it's going to be hot.
The authors of The Bell Curve claimed that average and below-average people of intelligence have more children than people of higher intelligence. They claimed intelligence was heritable within the range of 40 to 80%. They claimed that it has never been demonstrated that intelligence can be manipulated to a significant degree through environmental factors. They claimed the United States is in denial of these facts and a better understanding of the nature of intelligence is needed to make future policy decisions.
I can't recommend the book. I can remember reading it years ago, at a time when I was probably more in alignment with the worldview of the authors, and still feeling like it was pushing an agenda. Some of the analysis was brilliant, but when it came to forcing the data to mean what they wanted it to mean then it just became bad science. Nothing is more painful for me to read so I can't advise you to do it. However, the claims I mentioned in the above paragraph seem very relevant to me.
The first claim about generating offspring seems accurate. There are many, many factors that make this a reality and I won't take the time to get into them in detail. The second claim about the range of heritability seems acceptable. It's a wide range. In fact, it's so wide it gives me hope that environmental factors can play a significant role, even if their claim is true about it never being demonstrated as of yet, in influencing intelligence. Finally, their last claim of the denial and need for better understanding seems completely valid.
Discussing the topic of breeding is worthy of its own essay. It's complicated at many levels. However, it's pointless until we grasp the other claims and come to terms with them. Regardless of who is breeding and at what rate, the authors claim people only inherit part of their intelligence from their genes. If it's at the upper end at 80% that still leaves 20% of people's intelligence to be molded and influenced from outside factors. If it's in a lower range of 50%, that's not even the bottom end of the presented range, then that's wonderful. Half of a person's intelligence can be influenced by something other than their genetic makeup. They claim that it hasn't been demonstrated that environmental factors influence intelligence in a significant way, but how can it not?
If a certain percentage of our intelligence is made up of something other than our biological traits then what else could it be other than environmental factors? Even if one argues some influencing factors could be attributed to mutation or random acts then I would counter that's environmental influences. The fact that something didn't do exactly what we thought it would and acted randomly or mutated is a byproduct of our environment. That's how the universe seems to operate. That's how things survive and exist within it. Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of the time those mutations and random acts of deviation are fatal. However, the environment of the universe is accepting of those events if they prove worth in the battle against entropy.
Even though we still have much to learn about our brain, it seems we understand it is a learning machine. We might not know the exact horsepower of any given brain on the planet but we still work off of the premise that its function is to learn. From the moment the brain enters the world it begins to try to understand its environment. It's an amazing process to observe, as any of you with children can attest. So much absorption is taking place in a relatively quick amount of time. The brain learns to walk and talk, many languages if we encourage it (environment), and function on its own. It is constantly learning. It absorbs the stories people tell one another (environment) and gains the experience without experiencing the actual experience, an amazing feat in the venue of learning.
If we accept the reality there are probably more below-average to average intelligence brains than above-average and beyond intelligence brains entering our country each day and we accept the premise that we can potentially influence the brain, possibly up to 60%, environmentally then we're all in this together. Being able to influence intelligence in a significant way environmentally and then passing it on genetically would lead to an exponential boom in intelligence if we simply made it a priority. It doesn't matter if you're smart and you have a couple of kids and you teach them the ways of the world to your satisfaction. If the world, and specifically the country, is going to be molded by people of lesser intelligence then your child's future is far more at risk than it would be if intelligent people were shaping the future.
If we can't come together to protect our offspring and provide them with the best possible place to live then what could we ever come together on? How can we ensure they have the best opportunity to succeed in life if we don't rely on intelligence to guide our decisions now? By encouraging intelligence, by demanding intelligence, by leading with intelligence then we are working hard to create an environment that is suitable for our children to inherit. Instead of striving to exist on the far edge of the Bell Curve, in all areas of life, why not change the dynamic within the Curve? We want to escape from our fellow man. We want to get smarter, make more, move away, gate up our community, hang out with those just like us and live as far away from the people in the middle of the Curve as possible. Why not strive to make the vast majority of the people in the Curve better neighbors? It's a disconnect.
I've stated this many times before and I mean it sincerely when I say it again: I don't have many answers. All of my eggs are in one basket and that is encouraging us to figure out how to best coexist with one another. That can only be done if we work to create an environment that encourages intelligence and relies on this intelligence to help us problem solve and direct our path. How could we want our course to be routed in any other way?
We have to be able to intellectually discuss what we are, what we've been, and what we want to be. Decisions have to be based on reflection, introspection, and vision. We can't rally to the edges of the Curve every time we try to solve a shared problem. We have to be smart enough to understand the solution needs to evolve from the place where most people exist, the bulk of the Curve. When we fail to make this our reality and settle for less simply for our own personal comfort then we obviously aren't smart enough to understand how we are all connected and share the same space in the Curve. We aren't smart enough to understand that we play a role, however big or small it may be, in every horrific event across this land because it is us that creates our environment.
If it were simply a matter of us, the ones who have failed to encourage the one thing that made us so special - intelligence, reaping what we've sowed then that would be one thing. However, when we fail our offspring and contribute to the average to below-average brains entering the world then we should be ashamed of ourselves. We can't make the world a perfect place. We can't avoid unwanted outcomes at times. We can't avoid pain when reality deals us harsh circumstances. But, we can give ourselves and, more importantly, our offspring the best possible odds.
