{"id":113683,"date":"2017-04-16T06:36:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T14:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113683"},"modified":"2017-04-16T06:38:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T14:38:42","slug":"whats-wrong-with-jews-emphasis-on-intellect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=113683","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s wrong with Jews\u2019 emphasis on intellect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The fact is, there is no correlation between intellect and goodness. In fact, a disproportionate number of intellectuals, in the 20th century and today, have been, to put it bluntly, moral idiots \u2014 and therefore disproportionately supported the greatest evils of their time. Almost all the support in the West for Soviet Communism came from intellectuals, not hard hats. Within Germany, the university was one of the most passionate pro-Nazi institutions. In America today, a Christian plumber is far more likely to support Israel than a Ph.D. in sociology, or in any other subject (including Judaic studies). And the number of bright, even \u201cbrilliant,\u201d college students whose moral compass is broken is enormous.<\/p>\n

Finally, intelligence not only is not as important as goodness, it is not nearly as important as common sense. A person of average intelligence with common sense will navigate life far better, by making far more intelligent decisions, than a brilliant person who lacks common sense. According to Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, in at least one important area \u2014 binge drinking and getting drunk \u2014 more intelligent people actually have less common sense. They do both more.<\/p>\n

Parents who overemphasize brains to the detriment of other positive values, such as character, common sense and the ability to deal with life\u2019s vicissitudes (think of all the bright college students who need \u201csafe spaces\u201d because they can\u2019t deal with speakers with whom they disagree) are doing long-term damage to their child. And, to return to my opening question about looks and brains, they are not doing their daughter any favor if they neglect looks. In real life, they matter, too. But you need common sense to acknowledge that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think he is right. Morality boils down to the ability to empathize. Empathy is a form of abstract thought and it basically correlates to brai power aka IQ. Civilization is only possible with an average IQ above 97. <\/p>\n

Philosopher Gedaliah Braun writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nMy first inklings about what may be a deficiency in abstract thinking came from what I began to learn about African languages. In a conversation with students in Nigeria I asked how you would say that a coconut is about halfway up the tree in their local language. \u201cYou can\u2019t say that,\u201d they explained. \u201cAll you can say is that it is \u2018up\u2019.\u201d \u201cHow about right at the top?\u201d \u201cNope; just \u2018up\u2019.\u201d In other words, there appeared to be no way to express gradations.<\/p>\n

A few years later, in Nairobi, I learned something else about African languages when two women expressed surprise at my English dictionary. \u201cIsn\u2019t English your language?\u201d they asked. \u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s my only language.\u201d \u201cThen why do you need a dictionary?\u201d<\/p>\n

They were puzzled that I needed a dictionary, and I was puzzled by their puzzlement. I explained that there are times when you hear a word you\u2019re not sure about and so you look it up. \u201cBut if English is your language,\u201d they asked, \u201chow can there be words you don\u2019t know?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d I said. \u201cNo one knows all the words of his language.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have concluded that a relative deficiency in abstract thinking may explain many things that are typically African.
\n\u201cBut we know all the words of Kikuyu; every Kikuyu does,\u201d they replied. I was even more surprised, but gradually it dawned on me that since their language is entirely oral, it exists only in the minds of Kikuyu speakers. Since there is a limit to what the human brain can retain, the overall size of the language remains more or less constant. A written language, on the other hand, existing as it does partly in the millions of pages of the written word, grows far beyond the capacity of anyone to know it in its entirety. But if the size of a language is limited, it follows that the number of concepts it contains will also be limited and hence that both language and thinking will be impoverished.<\/p>\n

African languages were, of necessity, sufficient in their pre-colonial context. They are impoverished only by contrast to Western languages and in an Africa trying to emulate the West. While numerous dictionaries have been compiled between Euro\u00adpean and African languages, there are few dictionaries within a single African language, precisely because native speakers have no need for them. I did find a Zulu-Zulu dictionary, but it was a small-format paperback of 252 pages.<\/p>\n

My queries into Zulu began when I rang the African Language Department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and spoke to a white guy. Did \u201cprecision\u201d exist in the Zulu language prior to European contact? \u201cOh,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s a very Eurocentric question!\u201d and simply wouldn\u2019t answer. I rang again, spoke to another white guy, and got a virtually identical response.<\/p>\n

So I called the University of South Africa, a large correspondence university in Pretoria, and spoke to a young black guy. As has so often been my experience in Africa, we hit it off from the start. He understood my interest in Zulu and found my questions of great interest. He explained that the Zulu word for \u201cprecision\u201d means \u201cto make like a straight line.\u201d Was this part of indigenous Zulu? No; this was added by the compilers of the dictionary.<\/p>\n

But, he assured me, it was otherwise for \u201cpromise.\u201d I was skeptical. How about \u201cobligation?\u201d We both had the same dictionary (English-Zulu, Zulu-English Dictionary, published by Witwatersrand University Press in 1958), and looked it up. The Zulu entry means \u201cas if to bind one\u2019s feet.\u201d He said that was not indigenous but was added by the compilers. But if Zulu didn\u2019t have the concept of obligation, how could it have the concept of a promise, since a promise is simply the oral undertaking of an obligation? I was interested in this, I said, because Africans often failed to keep promises and never apologized\u2014as if this didn\u2019t warrant an apology.<\/p>\n

A light bulb seemed to go on in his mind. Yes, he said; in fact, the Zulu word for promise\u2014isithembiso\u2014is not the correct word. When a black person \u201cpromises\u201d he means \u201cmaybe I will and maybe I won\u2019t.\u201d But, I said, this makes nonsense of promising, the very purpose of which is to bind one to a course of action. When one is not sure he can do something he may say, \u201cI will try but I can\u2019t promise.\u201d He said he\u2019d heard whites say that and had never understood it till now. As a young Romanian friend so aptly summed it up, when a black person \u201cpromises\u201d he means \u201cI\u2019ll try.\u201d<\/p>\n

The failure to keep promises is therefore not a language problem. It is hard to believe that after living with whites for so long they would not learn the correct meaning, and it is too much of a coincidence that the same phenomenon is found in Nigeria, Kenya and Papua New Guinea, where I have also lived. It is much more likely that Africans generally lack the very concept and hence cannot give the word its correct meaning. This would seem to indicate some difference in intellectual capacity.<\/p>\n

Note the Zulu entry for obligation: \u201cas if to bind one\u2019s feet.\u201d An obligation binds you, but it does so morally, not physically. It is an abstract concept, which is why there is no word for it in Zulu. So what did the authors of the dictionary do? They took this abstract concept and made it concrete. Feet, rope, and tying are all tangible and observable, and therefore things all blacks will understand, whereas many will not understand what an obligation is. The fact that they had to define it in this way is, by itself, compelling evidence for my conclusion that Zulu thought has few abstract concepts and indirect evidence for the view that Africans may be deficient in abstract thinking.<\/p>\n

Abstract thinking<\/p>\n

Abstract entities do not exist in space or time; they are typically intangible and can\u2019t be perceived by the senses. They are often things that do not exist. \u201cWhat would happen if everyone threw rubbish everywhere?\u201d refers to something we hope will not happen, but we can still think about it.<\/p>\n

Everything we observe with our senses occurs in time and everything we see exists in space; yet we can perceive neither time nor space with our senses, but only with the mind. Precision is also abstract; while we can see and touch things made with precision, precision itself can only be perceived by the mind.<\/p>\n

How do we acquire abstract concepts? Is it enough to make things with precision in order to have the concept of precision? Africans make excellent carvings, made with precision, so why isn\u2019t the concept in their language? To have this concept we must not only do things with precision but must be aware of this phenomenon and then give it a name.<\/p>\n

How, for example, do we acquire such concepts as belief and doubt? We all have beliefs; even animals do. When a dog wags its tail on hearing his master\u2019s footsteps, it believes he is coming. But it has no concept of belief because it has no awareness that it has this belief and so no awareness of belief per se. In short, it has no self-consciousness, and thus is not aware of its own mental states.<\/p>\n

It has long seemed to me that blacks tend to lack self-awareness. If such awareness is necessary for developing abstract concepts it is not surprising that African languages have so few abstract terms. A lack of self-awareness\u2014or introspection\u2014has advantages. In my experience neurotic behavior, characterized by excessive and unhealthy self-consciousness, is uncommon among blacks. I am also confident that sexual dysfunction, which is characterized by excessive self-consciousness, is less common among blacks than whites.<\/p>\n

Time is another abstract concept with which Africans seem to have difficulties. I began to wonder about this in 1998. Several Africans drove up in a car and parked right in front of mine, blocking it. \u201cHey,\u201d I said, \u201cyou can\u2019t park here.\u201d \u201cOh, are you about to leave?\u201d they asked in a perfectly polite and friendly way. \u201cNo,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I might later. Park over there\u201d\u2014and they did.<\/p>\n

While the possibility that I might want to leave later was obvious to me, their thinking seemed to encompass only the here and now: \u201cIf you\u2019re leaving right now we understand, but otherwise, what\u2019s the problem?\u201d I had other such encounters and the key question always seemed to be, \u201cAre you leaving now?\u201d The future, after all, does not exist. It will exist, but doesn\u2019t exist now. People who have difficulty thinking of things that do not exist will ipso facto have difficulty thinking about the future.<\/p>\n

It appears that the Zulu word for \u201cfuture\u201d\u2014isikhati\u2014is the same as the word for time, as well as for space. Realistically, this means that these concepts probably do not exist in Zulu thought. It also appears that there is no word for the past\u2014meaning, the time preceding the present. The past did exist, but no longer exists. Hence, people who may have problems thinking of things that do not exist will have trouble thinking of the past as well as the future.<\/p>\n

This has an obvious bearing on such sentiments as gratitude and loyalty, which I have long noticed are uncommon among Africans. We feel gratitude for things that happened in the past, but for those with little sense of the past such feelings are less likely to arise.<\/p>\n

Why did it take me more than 20 years to notice all of this? I think it is because our assumptions about time are so deeply rooted that we are not even aware of making them and hence the possibility that others may not share them simply does not occur to us. And so we don\u2019t see it, even when the evidence is staring us in the face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes: The fact is, there is no correlation between intellect and goodness. In fact, a disproportionate number of intellectuals, in the 20th century and today, have been, to put it bluntly, moral idiots \u2014 and therefore disproportionately supported … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12477,59,29582],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-ethics","category-iq"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t