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4 Recreating the World

If we wish to collectively behave in ways more consistent with the higher levels of our intelligence we should first change how we manage our institutions and governments. In order to do this we will need wise and determined leadership coupled with persistent social pressure. We will create this leadership only when we acknowledge that our intelligence is our only survival tool and insist that all of our institutions, including governments, reflect meritocracy, or our best intelligence, at all levels. Some would claim that we currently attempt to do this. But frequently we see the intellectual integrity of our institutions undermined by the corrupting influences of cronyism, political opportunism, and considerations involving race, gender, religion, and other factors not relevant to performance. Of course, complete objectivity in any selection process is impossible. But we should not use this indictment of human frailty as a reason for not doing our best to strive for a performance based society.

Not only do we often fail to effectively apply meritocracy in our institutions, we almost entirely fail to even consider it in several other important areas. Think about procreation, the right to vote, and immigration. There is little in the way of guidance or restraint directed towards influencing those who choose to procreate. We encourage all people to vote even when we are well aware of their limited interest and knowledge of the issues governments face. And we allow practically anyone with the physical stamina to surmount minimal barriers to immigrate. Knowing the significant relevance that each of these activities have with respect to the quality of process throughout our society, it would seem that the lack of standards in these areas would be considered glaringly irresponsible.

If we accept our science and current understanding of the world around us, it is obvious that those with the greater cognitive acumen at one time must have been able to push the gene pool in their direction. And the only way this could have occurred would have been for those with greater intelligence to produce more offspring that those with lesser. There are a number of suggested mechanisms that might have been involved in the relatively rapid ascension of the human brain. One proposes relationships between the ability to use language, tribal leadership, polygamy, and cognitive acumen. Those with greater intelligence would have presumably been able to use sounds more effectively and assume positions of leadership. In primitive societies leaders were often given the privilege, and even encouraged, to have multiple wives, and thus would have been able to spread their seed more widely. This would explain the evolution or development of language, and, assuming a correlation between linguistic ability and intelligence, the resulting expansion of intellectual potential. In any case, intelligence must have been naturally selected over time or it would not have evolved. But we need only view the trends in the world around us today and it is apparent that almost universally those producing the greatest number of offspring are not the ones at the higher end of the cognitive distribution curve. This incongruity between how we got to where we are and where we seem to be headed seems to escape us.

But from what we do know it appears that the natural selection process for intelligence probably began changing about 10 to 20 thousand years ago when crop cultivation coupled with technological innovation lead to a revolution in agriculture enabling relatively rapid increases in food production. And our "natural" tendencies for non-zero sum cooperation inclined us to provide for more of those unable to care for themselves. Our population began its exponential expansion. Increases in food production freed people to leave farms and congregate to cities swelling their populations. This fed even more rapid technological advances due to the synergistic effects of larger "communal brains", or knowledge banks. Developing technology enabled economies of scale in manufacturing, and the larger systems drew more people. Natural selection was turned on its head and the expansion of our population quickened. We had the ability to overcome limitations imposed by the natural environment and our procreative fecundity, driven by our innate compulsions to breed, exploded.

For many years the positive aspects of this seemed to outweigh the negative. People (at least in some developed countries) were living longer, healthier, more affluent lives, and natural resources were thought to be inexhaustible. However, in the relatively short period of time of the last century the picture has slowly inverted. It is now obvious that the synergistic relationship between wealth, well-being, and population density has limitations. Population growth can not only outpace economic growth, exacerbating poverty and all of the problems associated with it, but in can additionally overload stressed natural resources, roads and basic infrastructure, and stress people with feelings of anonymity and isolation from others and the presence of the natural wild. Not only does our sprawl detach us from each other and our natural world, but we are now threatening the biological richness of our small planet with the greatest of mass extinctions.

We have seen that with few restrictions on breeding, most people readily cave to the calls of their biology and act irresponsibly. When addressing this problem our social programs are upside down. We do little to discourage the child abuse and the social and ecological problems associated with irresponsible procreation, while providing only minimal support for children born to limited means. We should reverse this and provide well for all children in order to eliminate the abuses of poverty and level the playing fields of opportunity. But we should also do whatever it takes to minimize the number of children born to parents who are incapable of adequately providing for their welfare. The most effective aid we could extend to developing countries would be to make this thinking the guiding principle and cornerstone of our assistance programs in addition to demonstrating its application. With time this would not only reduce the costs and demands of poverty programs, but also greatly increase the welfare of the fewer numbers remaining in need.

In the past, our aid to developing societies has often seemed to feed the fires it supposedly was intentioned to suppress. We move to attack disease, famine, and internecine warfare without understanding that, due to customs and traditions, these unfortunate maladies were the factors keeping the population in balance with available resources. So we address one or more of these and exit feeling good about our intended altruism and ourselves. Populations explode, resources are stressed, and eventually the social malignancies worsen to levels that force on populations greater suffering than they experienced before our "aid" arrived. We should view cultures as holistically as possible before we insert ourselves in the name of providing assistance. We should make sure our assistance is designed to promote an increase in the harmony and balance people share with their environment.

Considering absolute democracy, history has shown that a participatory government based on constitutional principles is the most effective and civil way to organize a society. However, the leadership of any elected organization is only a reflection of those who elect it, and without quality leadership even the most well founded governments falter. If we want wise leadership we must take steps to create a wiser electorate by applying the principles of meritocracy to those who desire to be a part of it. No one should expect to participate fully and equally in any institution when they have not demonstrated the capability and interest to understand the basic issues relevant to the success of the institution. No organization or government thrives from the participation of those who care little about it.

The justification for a basic voters awareness or competency test, focusing on political, technological, and economic factors of relevance, should be self-evident. A government elected by exciting poorly informed people with sound bits targeting hot button emotional issues, while pandering to the largest sources of money and doing their bidding, cannot be expected to yield wise leadership.

In addition to using positive selection to influence those who give birth and those who vote, it would seem to make sense that we also screen prospective immigrants in order to assure preference is given to those possessing the greatest skills and who have demonstrated the interest to develop a basic understanding of the our language, and our systems of economics and government. Immigration is important. Nothing will affect the character of our population more in the near future than our immigration policies. We ought to be paying attention. Developing screening controls in each of these areas will be burdened by the challenge of clearly defining criteria that will be perceived as democratic, fair, and respectful of basic human rights.

Screening or judging people on the basis of their alleged ability or knowledge carries with it the stigmatization that results from the gross abuses in our past. One need only consider the corrupted policies of Hitler (and the many others of similar cloth that are still with us), where religious, racial, and other biases undermined any inkling of objectivity leading to the unjust discriminatory policies that led to the persecution of millions. Thus screening or discriminating in areas such as the above will be a tough sell. But we must continually articulate the fact that our cognitive ability is our only survival tool, and that no one, in the long run, profits from managerial ineptitude and corruption.

We need to use our brains more effectively, and we need to make this argument apparent to everyone. Instead of basing policies on short term yields and catering to political opportunism, we should think about what we want our country to be generations from now. What are the sustainable limits of population growth in terms of resources and quality of life? What groups of people, based on our world experience, best live together harmoniously and interact synergistically?