Back in 1994, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote a book, The Bell Curve, pointing out an inconvenient truth: half the population has below average intelligence. While much of what they said was considered controversial for a variety of reasons, the basic concept is incontrovertible. Half the population is below average when it comes to intelligence. George Carlin said, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
In and of itself, that isn’t a major problem, as intelligence does not account for the main differences in human behavior. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence for a person to be kind or considerate, for example. I suspect that attitudes and behaviors toward others are also on a bell curve that doesn’t necessarily correlate with that for intelligence. Different people have different areas of expertise. I know a lot about nineteenth-century literature but very little about food and cooking, for example, while some are master chefs who know little about literature. Back in high school, I knew people who could take an automobile apart, fix everything that was wrong, and put it back together. Most of those with that kind of intelligence, however, did not do well with academic subjects. Societies need people with different skills and interests. Societies run into difficulty, however, when too few people understand their own self-interests and too few people respect the contributions of those with different skills.
From what I have read and seen on TV news coverage, we currently have too many people—not just in the States, but pretty much world-wide—who do not value the contributions of others. At the same time, we have too many people who do their best to take advantage of others, and that tendency is also on a bell curve. In 2002, Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point, in which he points out that a society needs people with different skills for social and cultural progress. I agree with much of what Gladwell says, while also recognizing that his critics are also partially right. The few can and often do sway the many. The Adolf Hitler we got to know in the Second Word War, for example, created his own tipping point primarily through his skills as an orator.
One of the things I’ve been wondering about lately is why some people are so prone to fall under the sway of demagogues. In any society, a certain percentage of people will have social and political biases available for exploitation. In the States, race and ethnicity are obvious examples. Those of primarily European descent have a tendency to be biased against those of primarily African descent. For years, not just in the States but also in Europe, Protestants and Catholics have mistrusted and often hated each other. Many of those with “Christian” convictions are biased against Muslims, and pretty much all religious people are biased against agnostics and atheists. A long time ago, a satirist named Tom Lehrer set many of the examples of such differences to song. Here’s an old, black-and-white video of the way he said it:
It is hard to say what Tom Lehrer might have had to say about some of the hatred we’ve seen more recently. The hatred and violence demonstrated this past summer in Charlottesville, Virginia, for example, would be difficult to satirize. You can actually see hatred on the march:
One of the things about the “bell curve” is that it measures what is at the moment. Human intelligence, for example, is probably not fixed once and for all. Some people have always been smarter than others (and some remarkably so), but in general people are smarter now than they were 100 years ago and a lot smarter than they were 1000 years ago. We have been exposed to a lot more information, and as behavioral psychologists have been known to say, “Even a rat learns.” In a previous blog post (“Enlightenment Now,” 28 Feb 2018) I wrote about the optimism Steven Pinker expressed in his most recent book by that name. In general, I agree with Pinker: We are a lot better in many ways than our ancient ancestors were.
My concern is that a better, brighter future is by no means guaranteed. Our morality is also on a bell curve, and it seems as though there’s no correlation between the intelligence bell curve and the curve for morality. Being smarter doesn’t guarantee being more moral. I am also not at all sure that morality can be taught. The bell curves for intelligence and morality do not necessarily overlap. Some pretty smart people are fundamentally dishonest, even if they are careful to avoid breaking laws that would put them in jail. On the other end of the scale, contrary to the old saying, “finders keepers, losers weepers,” homeless people have been known to demonstrate a high-degree of honesty.
The question now is, how do we get more of our politicians to do the same? We’ve known for a long time that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so it is imperative that we discover ways to limit the opportunities for corruption. The first thing that occurs to me is the need to get the money out of politics. I’m not sure how to do that, but we know that corporate donations to politicians influences legislation. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, pays politicians to write favorable legislation. Take just one drug, Humira, and compare its cost in the States with its costs elsewhere, and you can see the difference.
The US also allows untrained civilians to buy and use weapons of war, primarily because the National Rifle Association is allowed to buy the votes of politicians. That does not, of course, address the issue of why so many people in the States think they need combat weapons in the first place. Such weapons are not good for hunting—they weren’t designed for it, and they are also not especially useful for self-defense. They are, however, the weapon of choice for mass shootings. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution that makes it legal for civilians to own weapons, does not specify what kind of “arms” the Framers had in mind, and it implies the need for participation in a “well-regulated militia.”
Those who buy weapons designed for war also fall on a number of bell curves, including the curves for intelligence and decency The same is true for the politicians who support them. Greed seems a more important motivator for those who manufacture weapons of war and the NRA, which promotes their sale to civilians. Bob Dylan said it well:
It’s up to us—and especially the youth of today—to move the curve in the direction of peace and love. I confess to being an aging hippie, and I’m with George Harrison on this:
