The online edition of the Weekly Standard has an interesting rumination on intelligence in leaders and morality by Joel Engel. Essentially it boils down to a restatement of the notion that there is nothing so stupid that an academic (or brilliant intellect) will not believe it. Much social policy seems to confirm the inverse of this, as well: anything simple and effective will be dismissed out of hand by the right-thinking. This is why we are told that abstinence doesn't work, and teachers have graphic discussions with pre-teens about every sexual act imaginable before handing them condoms and maps to free clinics -- and then are astonished at sky-rocketing rates of teen pregnancy and VD. This is why so many truly well intentioned politicians are blind to the corelation between welfare rates and the number of people on welfare. High intelligence is like any other gift of the gene pool; just as we don't expect musical virtuosi or people who are 6' 8" automatically to be blessed with clarity, wisdom or morality, neither should we assume that bright people are necessarily possessed of any of these other, in many ways more important virtues. The Clintons are not people who have ever been accused of lack of intelligence, no matter what else their foes may say about them, and yet his intelligence didn't help him to realize that he should keep his, er, hands off an employee his daughter's age, and she wasn't smart enough to see the moral problems in her wilful blindness and collusion in years of lies.
Charles Murray, in his study of IQ and its corelates, finds a superficial link between high IQ and lower incidence of what is generally considered immoral behaviour: bearing or fathering children out of wedlock, frequent divorce, criminal convictions and so on. From this he doesn't conclude, though, that IQ automatically enhances morality. Rather, he speculates that those with higher reasoning abilities can, in a society which penalizes immorality or criminality, make better decisions. A bright man might badly want a new TV, but realizes that the consequences and problems of stealing it are on balance far worse than working for the money for it or doing without; someone less intelligent doesn't make the same analysis. An intelligent teenager is more likely to balance the risks and consequences of promiscuity against the needs or desires of the moment, and is therefore more likely to avoid unwed parenthood; less bright children don't. The great lesson from this is that by getting rid of consequences, we create a world in which neither virtue nor reason are rewarded. When high schools have their own day-cares and the government will rent you an apartment, it takes an especially bright and calm teenager to decide rationally not to risk pregnancy. When immoral and adulterous behaviour is tolerated and considered amusing at the highest levels of society, the stigma that used to regulate behaviour will influence fewer and fewer people. And when, as in England, a homeowner defending himself from violent criminals is more harshly penalized than the criminals themselves, and indeed is sued by them for the wounds they received while attempting to rob him, even the most intelligent may have trouble understanding why they bother to be law-abiding. The great majority of religious precepts that place boundaries on human behaviour have counterparts in logic and reason, at least in a society that rewards good and penalizes wrong-doing. As we destroy these social and legal boundaries, though, we face a world in which people are bound only by their conscience, a terrifying prospect.
Posted by Clio at June 5, 2003 04:16 PM