CSotD: Testing Our Intelligence
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Today's Candorville provides a springboard for all sorts of good rants.
One is to ask if people know their IQs these days?
It used to be a no-no to publicize those scores, and certainly to let a kid know his own IQ, in large part for the reasons Clyde gives: It prejudices the way people react to you.
It also prejudices the way you react to yourself: Told you are objectively, definitely stupid, why make an effort? Told you are objectively definitely smart, what need is there to make an effort?
You can also argue, of course, that the assumptions people make about people without knowing their IQs are equally prejudicial and unhelpful.
When a prison debate team won against Ivy Leaguers, people voiced all sorts of opinions about how it happened, mostly having to do with the amount of time the cons had to practice.
I didn't hear anyone suggest that maybe cons aren't stupid, but it was what immediately came to my mind.
The idea that convicts are stupid may be comforting, but anyone who has contact with them knows it's not the case.
There are some brilliant, unschooled people behind bars who wouldn't be behind bars if they hadn't gotten caught. There are also some very stupid people behind bars, but how is that different than the world outside?
Case in Point: In his commentary, Clay Jones admits that going after Ben Carson seems like plucking the low-hanging fruit, but the fact that the guy is still in play kind of brings us back to Lemont and Clyde:
Obviously, Carson has a high IQ, and it's disconcerting to hear such foolishness from someone who is clearly not a stupid man.
Plenty of people have riffed off the fact that "brain surgery" is a popular metaphor for high intelligence and yet we have before us a brain surgeon who believes ridiculous things.
But, 40 years ago, George Wallace was talking about "pointy-head college professors who can't even park a bicycle straight." Book-knowledge and common sense have never been strongly linked.
As Jones points out, we judge intelligence and credibility more on the basis of hearing what we want to hear than on what makes sense or bears up under scrutiny.
Grand Avenue, unintentionally I assume, addresses one part of the predominance of wilful ignorance as a societal force, because, behind the joke there is an odd story of blatant corporate evasion.
A quarter-century ago, Congress and the FCC devised the Children's Television Act, which was intended to counterbalance the impact of deregulation and force broadcasters to return to the days of quality kids' shows like Captain Kangaroo or lose their licenses.
And broadcasters countered by listing the Flintstones and Jetsons as "educational/informational" in their license renewals.
I'm not suggesting that this is the reason we have people who believe that dinosaurs and cavemen coexisted, but, if that's what can be legally passed off as educational/informational, the system is hardly boosting national intelligence.
And bear in mind that it took the FCC to get Captain Kangaroo to stop shilling for Schwinn bicycles and Tootsie Roll Pops.
The system sells things. That's what it does.
And Adam Ziglis fills in the wider implications of that, because Ben Carson is only a speck on the landscape.
Jefferson famously spoke of the need for a literate, educated electorate:
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.
It should be noted that, though his letter discussed Shay's Rebellion, he was not praising the rebels but celebrating the fact that their uprising had not been supported by the general populace. In fact, the political aspects of Shay's Rebellion sound eerily in tune with our current crop of anarchists and Know-Nothings.
But Jefferson wrote specifically about politics.
Zyglis points out a more broadbased, insidious result of ignorance, and of the indifference of a society that stood up to Shay but isn't standing up to the One Percent.
I don't know how much the result of the next presidential election matters, though god help us all if Ruth Bader Ginsburg's successor is appointed by a compliant corporate tool.
But the damage already being done to our kids and our future is the result of our entire system of uncaring.
There was a lot of snickering over Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign, but the jokes did not have corporate sponsorship, nor did they involve a lot of personal ridicule of the woman herself.
Compare that with response to the current First Lady's attempts to encourage healthy eating, and to legislation ensuring that taxpayer money for school lunches is not pissed away on nutrition-poor junk.
The link between poverty, obesity and poor health becomes even more insidious when it is reinforced by forces opposed to higher wages, better health care and aid to the poor in general.
And by those who feel the response to poor parents who want better schools is a charter system to serve (and profit from) kids whose parents raise hell, while leaving the rest of the poor kids in factories of despair.
And who blame the poor for buying cheap, affordable junk instead of whole grains and fresh vegetables.
But then raise hell on-line if they see someone buying decent cuts of meat or fresh seafood with EBT funds.
Face it: The only test that really measures our intelligence is in how we evaluate the societal impact of the things we choose to think are true and the policies we choose to support.
And how much fun we have laughing at pictures of the people in Wal-Mart who aren't cool and hip and fit and well-dressed like us.
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