The Coming Storm

The Bell Curve, an excellent book more maligned than read, pointed out a trend seldom noticed. The authors called it “cognitive stratification,” not a phrase Byron would have chosen but serviceable enough. It means the concentration of the intelligent.

In 1850 people of high intelligence were dispersed through the population. If the child of a cowboy had an IQ of 160, he would probably remain in the geographical region with cowboys. He might be more successful than most, and might choose as friends the quicker wits thereabouts. Yet he would be part of the community.

A cowboy could be intelligent, but didn’t have to be. But then came the professions that required high intelligence. The dull-witted cannot work as programmers, chemists, engineers, doctors, or investment brokers. They can be decent and productive. They cannot write assembly code for a planetary probe.

In 1850 there were few jobs requiring the very bright. Today they abound. Universities began to scour the country for the highly intelligent. These, once found, met each other at elite universities or, later, in the places where the bright concentrated to work: Laboratories, software houses, hospitals, magazine journalism, and occasionally law firms. They married each other. Their children tended to be bright. The result has been that the bright tend to live, play, work, and sleep almost entirely with each other.

An opposite concentration occurs at the other end of the curve. In the cities the bright among the ghetto rise and leave for the suburbs. Who is left behind? If, generation after generation, the smartest take themselves out of the gene pool, the results will be just what we see. This is the underclass. It exists. It is larger than most people suspect. It is dangerous.

“Underclass” is not synonymous with “blacks.” There is a large and, I gather, growing black middle class. There is a substantial white component in the underclass. In the barrios of California one encounters Mexican unsalvageables. Whatever their color, they share low intelligence, little education, bastardy, and a tendency toward antisocial behavior. (Or, as we call it in English, “crime.”) They have no attachment to the standards that constitute civilization. They hate those above them.

Many of the insulated bright imagine themselves to be liberal (an arguable proposition), to care about “the people,” and to favor “diversity.” Few I’ll guess have had any contact with the underclass, or even with people who don’t have degrees. They have never been in South Central, never spent time in roadside stores in backcountry Kentucky or hung out with the crackers of Florida. They have never really met even normally intelligent rural people, whom they call “rednecks.” At their parties you do not see bus drivers or cops or factory hands.

If they knew “the people” they would not like them. The diversity they ideologically approve are people they viscerally detest. Down inside they must know this: It is why they avoid them. The diverso-elite alliance is a fragile one.

The elite do not understand, or perhaps more correctly refuse to admit, how very limited are the dull. They can’t concede that the course of managed improvement that they once believed in for the underclass, and try still to believe in, won’t work. Thus for example they call for programs to close the “cybergap,” and bring the internet to the downtrodden. They don’t understand that the downtrodden can’t use the internet, and aren’t interested.

The very bright assume without thinking that people can learn anything they choose. A woman who graduates from Yale in biochemistry takes for granted that if she wants to learn Italian, she can. It will take time and effort but she will have no doubt as to the outcome. New digital camera? She can figure out how to use it without the manual. She is used to gas chromatographs and gene sequencers. Learn PhotoShop? She just does it. After all, it’s only software. She assumes, unless she thinks carefully, that people know history, politics, literature, because she does and everyone she knows does.

It isn’t so. There are huge numbers of people who don’t read books, have never read a book, who can’t read. According to Newsweek,* forty-seven percent of Detroit is functionally illiterate. The illiterate live in a mental world beyond the capacity of a biochemist to imagine. Try to erase from your mind everything that you have ever read. Then imagine regarding a camera as simply incomprehensible. Or a checkbook.

The cognitive elite tend to favor diversity and affirmative action. They say that they believe that all groups are equally intelligent, and furiously resist evidence to the contrary. Yet by now they have to know it isn’t true. Believing what you know to be false, pretending to like people you naturally loathe, stresses the tectonic plates. A spring is being wound.

The potential for conflict is high. The underclass—the diversity—exacts a price. It is responsible for crime, almost all crime, which carries with it the cost of the prisons, police forces, decay of the cities, welfare both open and hidden, and a decline in the tenor of life.

The need to make the merely dull-witted seem not to be, even though they are not necessarily of the underclass, degrades the schools. The beneficiaries of affirmative actions, though they are seldom of the underclass, are frequently of the same racial groups. This fuels a quiet anger, a racial anger, among the middle class, who among themselves no longer even pretend that things are not as they obviously are. It isn’t quite reasonable that it should be racial, but it is.

The elite can buy their way into safe neighborhoods and better schools. The economic middle class cannot. They resent paying for welfare, resent taking up the slack for workers who don’t, and have no ideological attachment to diversity. As the baby boomers retire, suggest some,** the cost of their maintenance to the working middle class will become so burdensome as to engender revolt.

Diversity as a spoils system just may be heading toward its end. It’s curious: I don’t know anyone who objects to hiring without regard to race, creed, or color. I know almost no one who isn’t angry about affirmative action--and about the enstupidation of the schools for the benefit of the uninterested, and about unending crime…. If the dam finally breaks, what then?

But how did she get to the leisure class? By being born from ancestors who were intelligent and able to succeed quite well. I don't think she inherited an IQ that is any above the typical trailer park girl who didn't have ancestors who ever made it.

The bright don't always marry the bright, that's true. But they inhabit a world where they are far more likely to find and marry a bright mate. The stratification continues. And the bright do leave the ghettoes and underclass trailer parks, and again the stratification continues.

At the same time, the number of voters who pay no taxes is increasing towards 50%. This is the 'rat voting base, and the 'rats have every reason to continue to dumb them down in failed gubmint skools and increase the size of the dependent class.

When this dumbed down, non-tax paying class reaches 50%, watch out.

I went to catholic school where they did not test for IQ. When I went to college a career counselor suggested I take an IQ test because he thought I was a bit distracted and knowing my score would help. My first test was 120 but I didn't take it seriously. I wish I did because it was the only one I've ever taken, and taken supervised. Now I try to test myself every few months and it inches up five points every time I take it. I do puzzles,rubik's cubes,play video games,etc. and I use an abacus something my mother taught me.

My comment to the Times story above:

"...

Murray and Herrnstein predicted, in their controversial-but-brilliant work The Bell Curve, that as the marketplace grew more efficient at rewarding (with high salaries) his-intellect people (and especially as high-intelligence men and women married each other), then high-intellect and high-salary would become synonymous, and the income/intelligence continuum would become an increasingly "efficient" stratification.

And, since intelligence is largely inheritable (as they also set out to prove, hence the controversial response to their work, including outright rejection by the liberal establishment), we are now seeing the effect in the children of intelligent-and-wealthy parents, namely, that the smartest kids are from the wealthiest families.

Murray and Herrnstein pointed out that this would cause unintended negative social effects, but at least the authors were smart enough to predict the problems -- whereas the politically correct college administrators seem dumbfounded that their social engineering policies seem to have failed.

I have yet to meet the person who is equally at home with nano technology, Navajo, plumbing and climbing.

Err. but don't you know people who, with time and effort could make a stab at Nano tech, learn some Navajo, understand the concepts of plumbing, and climbing, even if they did not have the physical ability for those last two? I have associated with liberals, who while practicing medicine or teaching anthropology nevertheless profess a rudimentary knowledge of solid state physics, play at solving complex math problems, and believe they have the answers to all our social problems. don't you know this type too?

This is where I believe the author is coming from, and he goes on to say there are people who could not grasp any of the above. If they could grasp plumbing, they could make an above average living, but there are problems to solve in plumbing that are sometimes formidable.

The same could apply to a family like the Kennedys. Joe Kennedy was probably smart -- but had a criminal mentality besides a good IQ. He started poor and got into the millionaire class --- probably not through hard work but did require a certain level of intelligence. You don't really see much intelligence in his offspring or the following generations --- I think these are just some examples of why the premise of the article is wrong. The intelligent don't breed an elite class, they succeed and get rich themselves, their kids may or may not be smart.

Experts say the change in the student population is a result of both steep tuition increases....

Why have the costs risen so much? I have theory that the govt. subsidies in the name of grants are the cause. As long as the govt keeps subsidizing the cost the universities will keep raising the cost.

There is a difference between being highly intelligent and having a high degree of common sense. The lack of common sense seems to be a growing trend among a lot of people. Einstein could not tie his shoes, yet he is considered one of the greatest intelligent people in the world. A person can be a genius to the highest order, but if that person can not apply what he or she knows, then his or her intelligence is worthless.

water seeking it's own level has always been the primary flaw in a representational form of government at some point.

we are now almost there sadly....testing the breaking point into the total nanny state and ever dumbed down.

there was a reason that once only property owners could vote.

I think a lot of it is cultural. I know a guy who came from the poverty area of Mississippi--- from generations of poverty --- a mother who cleaned houses for a living, I'm not sure what the father did for a living but was also humble --- everyone of those kids made it into the middle class and he has a very succesful military career. His parents taught them good values and hard work.

"Lack of common sense is inherent in all IQ ranges."

Actually, as someone cursed with a relatively high IQ (as likely most Freepers are [how humble]), I look at it slightly differently.

Being brighter than most, just seems to make my errors more brilliant. Smart people make intelligent theories, which if not tested in the real world can result in stupendous errors. See the politics of the University system.

One's IQ can increase over time. I don't have the statistics but one author said, paraphrased, "You're IQ is at its highest or lowest when you die; it's how you treat it." In other words, if you rest you rust.

Visit American Mensa. You'll find some games and info there.

I've been reading and liking Fred Reed for some time now. He's only allowed to say the truth about here because he's an ex-pat living in Mexico. He would be figuratively slaughtered in the streets, were he to speak so freely here.

In the university here, 65% of the students are in remedial classes ---- even though there is a much less expensive community college --- but I think that it's an abundance of financial aid that is bringing that about. Plus poor quality education and many family factors.

That's right, and that select few are no longer living in Povertyville Mississippi. The rest of Povertyville is still there. Reed's point is that in ages past, that bright local would have run a local hardware store, or been a local teacher. Now, he's gone.

"Well, that would not be necessary Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. (Slams down left fist. Right arm rises in stiff Nazi salute.) Arrrrr! (restrains right arm with left) Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years."

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