Mor(e)on IQ

Not long after my last post about intellect and "orders of being," I decided to browse the psych section of a book store while I was out, and what did I find? A highly relevant book called "IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea" by Stephen Murdoch.

Juicy.

The forerunners of IQ tests were created by a staunch social Darwinist and father of Eugenics, Francis Galton. Another eugenicist, Henry Goddard, brought the more refined intelligence tests of Binet to the US, and he helped promote mass hysteria about "feeble-minded" people (the euphemism of the day for the mentally retarded), especially the "morons" (mildly retarded), passing for normal, breeding, and filling our jails because their weak minds make them more likely to become criminals. He thought that retarded people should be institutionalized and, though treated nicely, prevented from breeding. Intelligence measurements were also used to restrict immigration so as to keep "feeble minded" people out of our country...and gene pool.

And I haven't even gotten to the chapter about the Nazis yet.

On a more positive note, as long as there have been IQ tests, there have been skeptics of IQ tests.

If you think I'm on an emotionally reactive rebellious tirade, you're right. This is a painful issue for which I've always sought some kind of resolution...usually, reassurance that I was plenty smart and had nothing to worry about. (And there has never been a way to completely reassure me, as there are always people who have done better on IQ tests, in school, and so on.) When I learned at 20 or so, via finding some of my mother's old papers lying around, what my IQ score had been at the age of almost 9, I was devastated. I was not "gifted" after all, as I'd previously assumed and hoped - my score was 120, above average but below the 130 cutoff for giftedness I'd learned about in psychology. (Granted, I actually remember getting nervous on the timed jigsaw puzzle section, and my verbal subscore was just above 130, but I don't have enough of the Normie trait of positive self-delusion to run with the higher subscore or blame my lower one entirely on performance anxiety. I've been a pessimist since childhood.) I was one of the Damned, not one of the Elect. Calvinism is my metaphor of choice because, emotionally, that's what it's always felt like. To be smart was "good" and to be dumb was "bad," in a very absolute and final sense, and either I was born "good" or I was born "bad."

Even though I was never taught about eugenics in school that I can remember - at least not in the formative years - somehow I caught onto the insidious idea that one's intelligence was somehow a measure of one's quality of being, one's overall worth. Issues of quality of being, and the fear that I may have been born without it, are a major source of self-harm for me.

A major reason why I've been so drawn to the world of disability advocacy and acceptance of difference is because it exposes me to anti-hierarchical perspectives. These provide more than just narcissistic fuel for an ego that at least wants to be good and just and fair in spirit if it can't be smart or great or special. They provide something that could help me heal some childhood wounds and build basic self-esteem regardless of how I "measure up."

My current experimental viewpoint is to view what's normally seen as "intellect" as a matter of specific skills and interests that, like any other skills and interests, are just neutral tratits and not some magical measure of human worth and worthiness. People who "aren't very bright" just don't have a lot of academic-type skills or interests. And there's no more point in envying people who have academic skills or interests that are beyond mine in a related area than there is of envying soccer fanatics. They're not "better people" than I am, they're just different.

That's probably the hardest part: letting go of the fear of being a "lesser person" than those who skipped grades or could win Jeopardy or who have studied and aced more academic subjects than I have. As a pessimist, it's easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being below my own and consider myself a human equal to the slow, but not so easy to obliterate the notion of classes of being above my own and consider myself a human equal to the swift. But if all humans are equally deserving of basic dignity, that means all humans. I don't think it's possible, at least not the way I tend to think of things, to value the smart solely for their smartness without devaluing the dumb solely for their dumbness. The people are to be recognized as people, their skills and interests are to be recognized as skills and interests, and their accomplishments are to be recognized as accomplishments. Nobody is more or less of a person than anybody else. Nobody is undeserving of basic rights, or a chance to pursue, develop, and use their own skills and interests.

Status fear is primal, but neurotic status fear leading to shame and angst is probably taking it too far, delving into self-fulfilling-prophesy territory.

The Illustrious and Mythical Order of Being

I've been reading a lot about disability rights abuses lately, especially in the following locations:

http://thiswayoflife.org/blog/?p=222
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=443
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=97

It does seem ridiculous to violate human rights under any circumstances. But it also begs some deep thought about beingness and the basis by which we assign rights. What does it mean to be human? Who gets to decide who and what deserves rights? If I think it's wrong to violate the human rights of people who are unable to communicate or use bathrooms even as adults, then am I not a hypocrite for not being Vegan and fiercely anti-abortion? For if it's hard to tell whether humans are sentient or not and to what degree based on their outward behaviors, couldn't all the animals I like to eat be just as sentient as some humans? And even though embryos can't communicate or breathe or eat independently yet, there's a better chance than not that they will be able to if they are allowed to survive to birth if they can, right?

Every attempt to find some intellectual or physical quality - besides the small portion of the human genome that differs from that of chimpanzees, and the closed breeding circle that defines a distinct species - that "makes us human" has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Complex communication (language), self-awareness, awareness of death and dying, high intelligence, and tool usage have all been found in other animals. So what have people done? They've simply narrowed the meaning of these in order to try to make them human-exclusive again. "Okay, other animals may have complex communication, but it's not language because it doesn't have all the features of human language." (Okay the, are plants not living because they don't have all the features of animal life? Some Buddhist philosophers have traditionally thought so, but modern biology says otherwise.) Or "They use tools, but they're not nearly as inventive as human tools are." Or "They may be able to recognize and seemingly mourn their own dead, but they probably can't anticipate death and dying quite the way we do."

And it isn't just animals whom we've sought ways to exclude and define as a "them," it's also other humans. Humans who were female, from other tribes/ethnicities/nationalities (especially tribes/ethnicities/nationalities unrelated to yours or with which yours waged war), from lower social classes, disabled, or "different" in any way that the society deemed repulsive have all, at some time and place (and sometimes even now), been considered to be a kind of non-human. That is, a "them" who are unworthy of full human rights.

So there's no obvious, undisputable place to draw these kinds of us vs. them lines.

Right now, I practically don't believe in "orders of being" anymore. I don't believe in evolution as a march of progress; it's just a matter of living things stumbling into new niches in an ever-changing biosphere. I don't believe that intelligence is either (a) accurately measurable via any single thing like test scores or academic ability or articulateness in communication or (b) an indication of a higher consciousness or order of being, although I used to strongly believe both of those things and always fear that I was not smart enough and thus not a high enough being. Emotionally, I'm still not over that belief: I still automatically envy people I perceive as "geniuses" or otherwise "smarter than I am" (e.g., people who skipped grades in school) and fear being "stupid" or inadequate before I have a chance to come to my senses.

Since I know how damaging the concept of intelligence as an easy measure of one's "order of being" can be via my direct experience with adopting that concept and beating myself down with it even though almost nobody other than myself has ever called me "stupid," I think it's something that ought to go. "Lack of intelligence" should never be used as an excuse for treating people like throw-away toys. And I don't even like the idea of making fun of people who aren't very interested or talented in so called "intellectual" realms, because there's really no reason to think of them any differently than you'd think of anyone else who just doesn't share your interests or just isn't on your wavelength. Even when aspies do it to the NTs who have discriminated against them, it's still not cool, because it continues to promote this idolization of the "intellect," which I think is in large part socially constructed anyway. (What is considered "intellectual" and why? Is the brain not also in charge of various practical skills and motor skills as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic?)

I don't think we need the amount of competition and hurt and egotism that's perpetuated by the notion of higher and lower orders of being, particularly within the human race. I'm tired of matters of consciousness, sentience, intelligence, and order of being not only being used to promote atrocities, but also inadvertently making even those of us who are as normal as the wall is to the floor feel bad about ourselves and anxious about not being valuable enough due to the quality of our "intellect." I'm not ready to be a Vegan, an anti-abortionist (though I think abortion should be minimized, done as early as possible, and not done eugenically), or a political organizer, at least not yet, but I want to challenge "order of being" assumptions as applied within the population of born members of the human race where and when I see them, especially in myself. I think there's a lot of room for improvement within my own life as I come to believe in a more heartfelt way that human beings are human beings no matter what they do. Yes, even criminals. Defense measures should be taken against them as needed, and if they try to kill you then it's not unethical to kill them in self-defense, but beyond that, well...they're not much different from the rest of us, and systematic indignities on the order of the Stanford Prison Experiment are not necessary to maintain our safety and community integrity.