Intelligence and Excellence – Mankind’s Hope
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin – more even than death… Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
- Bertrand Russell
Part 1 – The Current Situation: Unintelligent Dominance
Perhaps you have heard the classic epic song 2112 by Rush. If so, you may remember that it tells a tale of a future world where an oppressive totalitarian government rules the world, and restricts excellence and individual expression so as to establish a culture that ‘serves’ the needs of the common people. In reality, we know that this is just a device whereby they may perpetually hold power, by preventing exceptional people from rising up from the masses to prominence of any kind. In the song, music other than official government issued material is outlawed and the instruments themselves are removed from society.
One day a young man discovers a guitar hidden away in a cave, left mute and dusty from a past age, and he teaches himself to play. As he does so, he taps into the long-forgotten pulse of individual expression and creativity, and becomes enthralled by it. Ecstatic at his discovery, he wants to share this wondrous experience with everybody else.
He goes to tell the leadership of his discovery with the innocent joy of a guileless man. He shows them his music, sure that they will be awestruck as well by its power and confident that they will quickly proclaim this happy discovery to all the people. He seeks no acclaim or reward for himself. Rather, his intention is simply to share this new flame of expression with all, and to revel in the creations of others his discovery could spawn.
But the leadership are not only unimpressed, they are hostile to him. They tell him that this discovery is 'just another toy that helped destroy the elder (former) race of man’. He is told to fix his mind elsewhere, away from exceptional pursuits and individual expression, and instead to ‘think about The Average; what use have they for you?’.
The Improper Supremacy of The Average over The Exceptional
Though this is a fictional account of a future world, there is a modern truth to be found here. There is indeed a conflict between The Exceptional and The Average, and in modern times our culture is geared towards serving the desires of The Average and is lead by them as well. Those who are exceptional are made to serve, instead of the average people serving the plans and works of exceptional people. Genius scientists are made to exert themselves upon tasks that average people want and decide to pursue. ‘Make us more food from the same land so we can continue to reproduce’ they say, instead of letting the scientists decide what is best to do and then getting the labor of the masses in support. Brilliant artists and composers would make wonderful new creations if they were the true cultural masters of our world, but the masses in their stupidity fail to comprehend and so say ‘We want music with a good beat – music we can dance to.’
By letting The Average people be the masters of our culture we are becoming a retarded species. In former days, exceptional people would set lofty goals for us and the masses would rise in support of these goals. The Apollo Program is such an example of the difference between Exceptional leadership and Average leadership of our society. Even though there were political motives from the government, our decision to go to the moon and the efforts to do so were executed by brilliant people pushing the envelope of human accomplishment, in both America and the Soviet Union. Many common people nobly served the visions of these Exceptionals, and with this proper symbiosis we touched the face of another heavenly body less than 10 years after deciding to go, and only 12 years after the very first satellite was put into orbit. Such was the capacity for human achievement when our society respected Exceptionals, and followed their plans for the future.
But with the cultural changes of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and the making of The Average to be masters and The Exceptional to be servants; we reverted to stupidity just as fast as we previously had ascended to brilliance. The Average saw the Apollo mission only as a stupid race to beat the Russians, like some kind of futuristic Olympic Sport where we could cheer and gloat upon our victory. ‘First one to the moon wins!’ was the sum total of their vision. Because of this, once we reached the moon they became bored with the whole project, and with space flight as well. They began to complain that there were ‘problems here on earth that we should address first, like poverty, war, and jobs’ and that this was somehow a reason to abandon the space program entirely. The petty ephemeral needs of The Average, like making $0.20 per hour more at work or getting more funding for welfare, was seen as a prudent justification for completely gutting the life-dreams of our most brilliant minds, and for closing the cosmic door that humanity had only recently succeeded in opening for the first time. And if it were not for the needs of defense, we would likely have not even followed Apollo with the Space Shuttle, nor have any manned presence in space at all.
This philosophical rulership of The Average over The Exceptional is the single most barbaric force in the world today, and if not corrected, will ensure our extinction.
Noble Reader, what makes a person valuable to humanity? This is an important question because it is the only way we have of deciding whether The Average or The Exceptional should be master and who should serve the other. The Average are defined by their needs. They need jobs, housing, health care, and support and accommodations of all kinds. The Exceptional are defined by their accomplishments, or by their potential to accomplish.[1]
The Average feel that their rights revolve around assistance from the nation. They feel that when they are sick, the nation should provide them access to healthcare. When they are old, the nation owes them a pension. The Exceptionals are usually quite different. They feel that their rights involve freedom and being left unmolested by the nation’s demands. Opportunity and freedom are the rights they desire, not assistance. This is hardly a complete black-and-white distinction. Exceptionals certainly see the value of some kinds of social programs, both for themselves and others. But it is the overall attitude between Exceptional and Average which is quite different. Exceptionals crave opportunities. Averages crave support.
The Average cannot survive, when looked at as a whole, without utilizing the creations and work of The Exceptional and so they exist in an overall parasitic manner. Without all the inventions in agriculture, transportation, energy production, and medicine that previous Exceptionals have contributed, there would be no way at all that this many Averages could even live upon our world today. The very lives of billions of people would be swept away in a few months if our technology (provided by Exceptionals) was somehow removed back to a state of 200 years ago.
But what would happen if we removed the ‘work’ of The Average for the past two centuries? Their activity consists of little more than consuming and reproducing, or in providing the labor to fuel Capitalist enterprises that do so as well. And so if we set the clock back 200 years our population would be well under 1 Billion and we would have an abundance of resources back upon the face of our world. Huge forests would cover large sections of the Americas, the oceans would teem with many times the fish there are today, and oil, gas, and coal deposits would remain in abundance. When matching this world with our 21st Century technology, we could virtually eradicate poverty upon our world and mankind would have an ample abundance to reach for the stars today, or to do any other wondrous thing we imagine. Our environment would be clean, our people would be happy, and our future would be gloriously bright. We need to remember that the common people take more from the world than they give to it, and that this basic fact becomes problematic when we allow our population to grow beyond sustainably low levels.
If we allow The Exceptional to decide what humanity should do, they will have us accomplishing one great achievement after another. When crises appear, their intelligence will prescribe the smartest remedy and so the suffering for all will be minimized. Art and culture will be promoted. Mankind will truly advance from year to year and our world will become more humane, prosperous, and peaceful with each new dawn.
If we allow The Average to rule our actions, all our labors will be used to feed their needs so that they can consume and reproduce yet further. Population will grow as fast as accomplishments will decay. Our scientists will spend their days working on tasks of dubious long-term value like formulating more advanced Sports Drinks, curing male baldness, and finding ways to cram 100 airbags into our minivans so that none of The Herd need be hurt in an accident. Nobody will be working on Fusion Power, Space Flight[2], or anything else that looks to the future. Crises will be handled in illogical and fanatical ways, and the scientists will be held as scapegoats when the stupid policies of the leadership fail to work as desired. Each day, humanity will become more fat and stupid. A state of Idiocracy[3] will ensue.
Notice that the rulership of The Exceptional provides greater prosperity and success for nearly all, and how the rulership of The Average results in unsustainable, foolish policies that benefit none, other than the irrelevant appetites of The Average today. If The Average run things, and their needs are paramount, we will eat and breed like the herd of cattle left in their field without Man to control them. If The Exceptional run things, though the needs of some of the Herd may go unfulfilled today since the Herd is overly large, the overall long-term result will be the best outcome for our species and the only means possible for us to actually progress.
And so we have answered our question about who should lead and who should serve. It is in the interests of the majority of humanity to give the leadership duties to the Exceptional minority. It does not just benefit those few who lead. The rule of these few makes life more peaceful and prosperous for The Average, and so those who truly seek the welfare of the many must support this course of action. Those who instead talk about giving the leadership to the Average, to prevent tyranny, are actually those very demagogue tyrants who seek to rule in the absence of Exceptional leadership and oversight. They are like a deceitful Regent who supervises the rule of a child king, seeking to take over the kingdom for himself. But this case is even worse since they know that the common people will never grow up to be a true regal lord, and the constant flattery will keep these false regents in power forever, even without the necessity of murdering the child king as past regents have done. This makes the legitimacy of the regent’s rule eternal since the people will never die, and they will never mature to full ruling capacity for themselves.
The tyrant, and traitor of the people, is truly the man who advocates the supremacy and rule of the people over themselves.
Anybody who objects to this statement must prove that The Average are superior rulers than The Exceptional, and must show corresponding historical proof of their superior accomplishments and record.
I believe that Average people do not understand power and leadership, and that this fundamental incomprehension ruins the way power is wielded and viewed in the world today. The power of rulership is nothing more than a job. It is a task that must be performed within a whole system that employs many tasks. Just as in the human body, many functions are performed that make us what we are. And in the body, the brain is the undisputed dictator. This is essential, for we cannot have a contest of wills between the liver, spleen, and brain causing turmoil and inefficiency. Instead, our bodies rely upon the sole discretion of that organ which is most specifically adapted to successfully apply discretion. With this clarity of command, our bodies can then be free to let each part fulfill those functions for which they are innately qualified. And in this way, each member of the body is benefited by living under the leadership of the organ who can provide it competently, and for the benefit of all. This strict specialization is necessary for all to prosper. We do not ask the brain to bear weight – the bones and muscles do that. We do not ask the bones and muscles to circulate our blood – the heart does that. And in like manner, we do not ask the heart to act as the central governor – the brain does that.
Notice how this domination by the brain is not tyranny. It is true that the brain has full say over the conscious actions of the body; no other opinion or voice is heard. But the brain uses its control to go about controlling everything in such a way as to provide fulfillment for all parts of the body. The brain would not be successful if it told the legs to walk into fire or made the mouth swallow poisons. It gains nothing by doing so. It seeks to steer all the parts into actions that result in success for the whole body. And since the brain is objectively seen to be a superior decider of such actions than any other of the parts, none of the parts has any basis for complaint and should simply obey the brain.
The exact same relationship should exist between the ruler and the people of a nation. He or she who would rule must be innately qualified above the rest to do so. And just as in the body, it is the intelligence of the leader that distinguishes his superiority over the others in this ability. As long as the ruler is manifestly more intelligent than the populace, he is clearly more innately qualified to apply discretion, and so should be trusted to govern all. In actual practice, a group of similarly qualified people working cooperatively is superior to having just one person decide all. And I shall describe this system of Sophiarchy in a later chapter. But the main point is that a single, specialized entity is required to govern, and the input from far-flung regions is of no positive value in governance.
The brain does not want to hear what the toes have to say about whether we should do A or B tomorrow; only the brain’s opinion is sufficiently rational as to be of any value. Likewise, the kidneys should not have any say in what we have for dinner, where we go, or what we do today. And this is because the kidneys and the toes really don’t have any way of coming up with a good suggestion that the brain couldn’t figure out by itself. They are not built to do such things. Likewise, as long as the rulers are extremely intelligent, no input from any other quarter would provide any constructive suggestions or unthought-of rational ideas to be considered.
But Average people do not understand this. They view the possession of rulership only as a license to abuse everybody else. To them, it is a fundamentally anti-symbiotic thing. When a president is elected or a king is crowned, this simply means that they now have permission to oppress their opponents and enrich themselves. And so because people see things this way, power is a bad and dangerous thing to them. Power is only used to hurt.
Because the Average sees power in this way, those who rise to power within populist systems act this way. If they were to act according to the noble symbiosis that I describe, they would disadvantage themselves versus their opponents who are not bound by such scruples, and so would overcome them with barbarism.
Most tragically, it is this fundamental incomprehension of power, leadership, and dominance that makes Averages look upon any proposed system involving them as merely a scheme to exploit and abuse people. But this is precisely why we cannot allow the Average to be involved in deciding anything at all. We can never implement the more progressive and humane system I envision, or any other noble power structure, as long as they wield power. Why? Because they always wield power according to their barbaric ethic I described. And this because they are simply too stupid to perceive any other way of doing things. As long any anybody within the leadership is following this barbaric mode, nobody can safely implement the humane symbiosis that I describe, and which is the correct and progressive way in which power should work.
So if we are to change our government and culture away from its barbaric and inefficient tendencies, we must exclude the Average from all control and input precisely because they cannot comprehend power as being anything but a means of enacting selfishness. To them, a humane situation is one where there is a nearly evenly-matched contest for power, so that nobody gets to use it very directly or very long. In this way, the damage that any one leader causes is kept to the minimum possible. And since the leaders know that their day in the sun is short, they won’t go overboard in wielding power for fear of the inevitable payback coming in the future.
Like a flock of seagulls fighting over a hamburger, they see power as being made safe by the fact that no one bird gets to take a very big bite, or hold onto the food long before another bird swipes it away. But this is utter barbarism. We should not conduct ourselves this way! We should give the hamburger to the one who will give a portion to those birds who need a piece now, or those who will benefit the whole flock by being fed today, with an eye to the well-being of the whole flock. Perhaps some birds get nothing. So be it. But this also happens when we let the seagulls fight it out, so we can’t really say that the ruler’s excluding some is more unfair than what would happen naturally anyway. As long as this decision is the optimal one for the success of the whole group, who can complain about the validity of the decision? Is there any other qualification a leader must possess other than he makes nearly-optimal decisions for the whole group, and that he acts without selfish motives?
When people misunderstand power, and how it should be possessed and wielded, it is impossible to get them to agree to any system whereby they are excluded from it; simply because they automatically equate power with selfishness, tyranny, and oppression. But we cannot get anywhere as a species if we continue to follow the Seagull Paradigm for power. The only way forward is to find the few individuals who perceive more than the rest, and who care about the welfare of the whole group. We must find those of us who are capable of being our brain, and then we must give them control of our nervous system, and entire body. Else what shall we do? Shall we take a vote among the lungs, liver, and pancreas and follow their consensus? Where shall we end up if we let unqualified voices determine policy?
The Average, however, don’t believe that such individuals exist. To them, the Exceptional are actually Averages who are deficient due to an overabundance of arrogance and pretension. Averages think that there are no smart people, or that their smartness isn’t a superiority. To Averages, intelligence is a quirk, not a power. Empowering intelligent people, to them, makes no more sense than empowering left-handed people or people with curly hair. And this is why our current mindset is so far off from reality. Average people’s stupidity and vanity makes them incapable of embracing the truth, and this can be seen from history. And when Exceptionals, who are prone to egalitarian notions and are less inclined to selfishly cling to power; when these Exceptionals extend magnanimity to the Average and seek to empower them, as happens from time to time in history, only disaster is the outcome.
A look at history reveals to us that America in the ‘50s and first half of the ‘60s was experiencing possibly the greatest expansion of power and prosperity that has ever been witnessed in any nation, at any time, in human history. But when we look at the subsequent years, we see the most astonishing collapse of morale and national unity and will that has ever occurred within a nation that has not been conquered in war. There were brief respites in this collapse during the early Reagan administration and immediately following the attacks of 11 September 2001, but overall we see an astonishing and immediate reversal in national success and morale pivoted about a central time point clearly fixed in the late ‘60s.
Some may point to the Vietnam War as the cause of these problems, but America suffered a similar number of casualties in the Korean War and also failed to achieve any kind of clear victory in this conflict. And yet these problems didn’t impede the boom of the ‘50s. It would seem that the disparity in the fortunes of the nation subsequent to these wars had less to do with the casualties, costs, or lack of victory, than with the philosophical orientation of the nation and how this affected our reaction to these events.
This would indicate that a philosophical change occurred in America in the late ‘60s that caused a massive shift in the fortunes and morale of the nation, and which can objectively be seen to be destructive. And an immense part of the changes of this time was the end of respect for excellence and the beginning of widespread respect for mediocrity. Populist sensibilities are widespread in the philosophy and art of this time, where average people are seen to be the only genuine, real people; and where leaders, scientists, and all others refined or distinctive are viewed with suspicion or outright scorn. Science itself was seen as a dangerous, out of control monster that threatened humanity, and the scientists were seen as evil geniuses[4] bent upon unnatural knowledge and control that would ultimately grow beyond the bounds of their prideful power and escape to ravage the whole of humanity.
Such unwarranted extrapolations were made primarily upon the real problems of nuclear weapons proliferation, which can hardly be seen to be sufficiently conclusive to support such a sweeping negative view of science. Indeed, the scientific community had long been the most strident dissenters of the superpowers’ policies of escalation, and the misuse of science itself. Examples of this can be seen in both America and the Soviet Union. In addition, we can see that science has a multi-century history of being one of the few bastions of human reason and sanity.
Thus, the culture which had previously held Exceptionals in great esteem, and which had been successful and strong in so doing, suddenly flipped its sensibilities into a new destructive mode that glorified The Average and made them masters over the perceptive members of our society.[5] Since that time, America has progressively slid into enfeeblement, philosophical insanity, and apathy.
The Moral Basis for Empowering the Perceptive Few
A person is not truly valuable to humanity unless they do something that creates a permanent advancement to the state of our knowledge or culture.[6] Human beings consume much, and by our very presence we create friction and competition with each other that can lead to violence and loss. The cost of our basic existence must be offset by some permanent contribution to humanity that justifies all we take from the world. If we fail to do this, this in no way is a justification for us to be killed or harmed. But it does mean that since we do not exist as an engine of humanity, that we have no intrinsic right to consume its fuel, or to have our agenda seen as an imperative for human activity. The needs of such people, even though they may be dire, are not those of first importance since the outcome of fulfilling those needs does nothing reciprocal to help humanity as a whole. The investment in the welfare of these people is often unwise unless we have reason to believe that our investiture of resources will be recompensed by a superior service rendered by them to all of us. And since we know that geniuses are born and not made, there is often little practical reason for such investment. Our humane sensibilities should prevent us from taking this logic to excess so as to be unnecessarily unfeeling when we can be charitable. But neither should we come to think that fulfilling the needs of non-contributing people is either always necessary or noble.
This is true because of a paradox that is clarified if we think about things more broadly, and incorporating time into our ethics and logic. Some may say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, which seems to be in opposition to what I have just stated. But in reality, I do feel that the welfare of the many is one of the highest responsibilities and imperatives of the leadership. Indeed, it is the leadership’s capacity to benefit the masses which forms a great portion of their moral right to rule[7], and their rights to the material advantages which come with power. To stand up for the helpless, and to wield the Sword of Righteousness in defense of the simple people subject to their power is a holy and unshakable obligation of all those who would rule. And though these exertions may be tiring, they cannot abandon this ethic without also abandoning honor, justice, and civilization itself.
People have an intrinsic value separate from the brutal calculus of their ability to contribute. And this is part of the duality of reality that I have spoken of before. We must look at both the functional and intrinsic value of people to find wise conclusions. We cannot take one truth, that of the intrinsic value of each person, and let that trump the other truth which pertains to their functional value. On the other hand, we cannot say that people who are functionally useless to humanity have no value
But in times when population is high, and resources are scarce versus our needs, we inevitably must exclude some from abundance simply because there is not enough for all to have it. At these times, such as now, the functional elements of people’s value take a much higher significance over their intrinsic value. This is because our situation of resource scarcity explicitly indicates that we have a deficit of functional power in our species versus our numbers, compared with a balanced state. If we do not correct this imbalance, and take societal steps to advantage functionally superlative people over the rest, the imbalance will only get worse and cause yet further suffering for all.
In modern times, we do the exact opposite. We strive to help those below average become average, and we utterly neglect the Exceptional even though these are the only people who can actually make a positive difference in our world. In our ‘education’ systems, remedial kids have all kinds of resources to help them become average, but the brilliant kids have no such investiture because they ‘don’t need help’. From this we see that we are utterly disinterested in launching our bright young minds to heights of excellence, and instead view success as the remediation of the remedial and the maintenance of the mediocre. We bet only on net losing propositions, and ignore sure winners.
We must take steps to propel those with a chance of high achievement instead of boring them to death while they wait for their classmates to muddle along with the uninspiring curriculum. What we have now is a system that dumbs down the brilliant and boosts the remedial, making a whole crop of homogenized, uniform people. This does nothing to help humanity achieve anything. It only benefits the purposes of capitalism, socialism, religion, and demagogues ruling democracies; who seek a world full of uniform people as close to robots as possible.
There are further moral bases for advantaging the Exceptional if we believe that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. The needs of the many DO outweigh the needs of the few, if we define ‘the many’ to be our whole species now and into the future, and define ‘the few’ as the multitude of non-contributing or under-contributing people who exist only now. It is unethical for the people of today to clamor to have all of their needs fulfilled if in doing so they leave greater problems and misery for others in the future. And if our actions retard future progress for our species, by spending our finite resources on merely filling bellies today, then we are actually just serving the selfish few who exist today and harming the untold multitude of our kind who are yet to be born.
One can hardly fault the intentions of a starving child in Africa in its desire to eat, but if we are to survive and grow as a species we cannot let our policies be determined by likewise thinking like a starving child. And if we are repulsed by the pathetic sight of flies swarming around tiny little bodies with distended stomachs, then we should take care to not multiply the suffering by blindly heeding our first natural impulses to comfort the suffering.
Notice how this harsher ethic is based upon reason, and not greed as many would suppose. And this is required of us only because our population is too high. If population was much lower than today, and our resources were plentiful compared to our numbers, then we could hold to a gentler philosophy where the intrinsic value of each person would far outweigh their functional value. We wouldn’t need to think twice about whether the people deserved to be helped, or if our assistance would only breed greater future problems.
But alas, we cannot take this more beautiful path because it no longer serves the needs of humanity. And if we are to truly be wise leaders, we owe the people intelligent and courageous leadership, even if this duty is fraught with sadness and loss. Our mandate is, and ever will be, to serve the people through intelligent leadership since they are incapable of doing this themselves. And so even though the policies we must employ today must be harsher and less obviously admirable than as in past times, it is still our duty to serve the people even if we may no longer have their acclaim. Service no matter the cost must be our credo, not simplicity and popularity. And this is just the modern implementation of the time-honored ethic of wielding the Sword of Righteousness in defense of the helpless.
Noble Reader, we can see that The Exceptional are the only people who are capable of this kind of complex thought and ethic, and are therefore the only people who can safely rule human culture and government. We also see that The Exceptional possess a greater functional value to humanity than The Average, and so this is additional support for returning them to power. We must expand their rule over philosophy beyond that which has been present in the past 200 years, and completely reverse the collapse this has caused in government and culture during the past 40 years. For it is the gradual erosion of their influence during these times which has led to the great problems we face today.[8] If we seek to secure a humane and prosperous future, we must establish a rulership of The Exceptional that is resistant to such erosion, but which is not susceptible to corruption and depravity like the monarchies of the past. Happily, this is entirely possible, as I will demonstrate later in this book.
Even without specifically associating the rule of the Exceptionals with the enacting of the above ethic, it is still quite clear that The Average cannot rule society without causing it to degrade.
Part 2 – Defining the Gulf Between Us and Them
It is essential that we clarify certain facts about intelligence and the intelligent that we have touched on previously. The first of these is the definition of intelligence itself:
Intelligence is the ability to process data so as to determine meaning from facts and sensory inputs.
To achieve meaning, the mind must stretch so as to achieve a state of union between itself and truth. That is, one who discerns more meaning from data can modify the shape of his mind to adapt to the form of the truth, and is thereby empowered by incorporating the truth into himself. We can think of data as little self-contained bubbles of truths that exist all around us. We are born separate from these truths. But as we go through life, intelligence makes us aware of these bubbles around us, for they collectively are actually the totally of the universe beyond ourselves. As we embrace these bubbles, if we can derive meaning from each experience we learn the warm hidden truth embedded within these seemingly pointless and disconnected facts. And as we do so we become changed and enlarged so as to contain within ourselves a greater store of wisdom and truth. Intelligence is, at its core, the ability to become aware of the universe and then to integrate it into yourself. It is the ability to become more than you are, and to walk down that road that leads total awareness.
It is important to point out that this definition implies a startling fact. If we look at the situation carefully, we see that at a certain crucial threshold level of intelligence a person tends to expand ever larger into the universe as time goes on. They naturally become greater than they are today and would eventually achieve nearly-total awareness if they lived forever. Below this threshold, a person remains as they are. They exist forever fixed in the form they now maintain. This separates people into two distinct classes: Those who are static and those who grow. And this is an excellent delineation between the Brain class and the Brawn class I described in Chapter 6.
Understanding this, we can see that the people who grow could be thought of as gods[9] when compared to the static people who remain forever the same, just as animals do. After all, they have the ability to become something greater than they are today, and they operate with a wider comprehension of things outside themselves than the static people do. And so even those who advance in awareness slowly are full peers of these gods because they are at least aware of the imperative to do so and are steadfast in pursuing it.
“Never discourage anyone… who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
- Plato
The static people know and consider only themselves and those people and things which immediately interact with them, and they will forever operate thus. They remain basically constant, just as animals do. They are fixed in this way because they do not integrate external data into their operating routine and agenda so as to be capable of growth. They only process data in a way so as to be able to navigate the treacherous waters of day-to-day life in the here and now – not use this data to revolutionize the way they think and live overall. They fear this kind of self-revolution, and are content with their own familiar ways. To them, the status quo (for themselves) is actually the only way for them to exist, and if they encounter problems with the world in doing so they will seek to fight these problems from this strategic position instead of reconsidering their own strategies. Whether they are a blue-collar worker, blue-blooded trust fund brat, or any other kind of person; they will conduct their lives entirely in the same mode always. They are forever what their origins say they are.
A barrio gangster will always live like a gangster, even though he may tire of the bloodshed around him and even though he may eventually leave the gang. A rich trust fund brat will always spend his days in frivolous revelry, even though he may recognize how empty and pointless his existence is. These people will never learn the truths that other kinds of people know and never grow beyond what they are today because they are unable and unwilling to imagine life from any other perspective than that which they already have. For these people, being open to new understandings is destabilizing and frightening, and therefore is actively opposed. They have the opposite interaction with the universe that the intelligent do – they strive to deflect the universe away from themselves to avoid integrating any more of it.
This is where we get all of the prideful notions of the masses. These people tend to feel that their country, town, and even street is the best and that others are deficient simply because they are different. They feel this way automatically, even though they may know nearly nothing about any other nations, states, or towns. This is also the root cause of racism, sexism, and contributes to religious strife.
Averages automatically think they are the best kind of person, and that all who are different are deficient simply by virtue of their difference. This is a key component of their innate Herd mentality - any individuals not similar to the Herd must be deficient. This is not always recognized or consciously considered, but it is an eternal constant nonetheless. Even caucasian men of the Big City will feel this way about white Country men, and vice versa, even though they are the same age and religion. The masses find innumerable irrational ways to divide themselves into different groups, and they do this so that their intrinsic vanity will have some channel for expression. One cannot declare oneself or one's lifestyle superior to others unless some kind of distinction can be made between people. And so even though Averages are generally a very homogenous group, they will struggle mightily to establish any distinctions they can so as to have some basis for declaring themselves superior to others. This is to serve their vanity, which is a universal constant among them. And this vanity is so powerful within them because they have no means of actually becoming or doing anything truly superior to others. In the absence of true accomplishment, their frustrated ego demands feeding via vanity.
But all of this is merely an artificial construct. Averages are all remarkably similar, though they may be different races, religions, and genders. These surface differences are miniscule compared to the enormous difference between Average and Exceptional.
This is the rule, but there are exceptions to the rule. And when this happens, and we find one person among the Average who has transformed himself or herself into a new creation, we have significant evidence that this person is actually an Exceptional who has simply been obscured by his surroundings and upbringing thus far in his life.
Exceptionals are aware of things far beyond themselves, or if they have only recently become Exceptional they are at least awakened to this life of growth. They know of great and strange things in far distant places, and they deal with the past and the future just as easily as the static people deal with today. They can imagine life from many different perspectives. They seek to actively integrate the outside universe into themselves instead of deflecting it away. They become progressively more and more aware of everything, and as they do so their perspective on the world changes over time. As their perspective changes, they change to reflect the newfound wisdom they recently acquired. The overall trend of such constant acquisitions of wisdom and personal rebirths is the achievement of a godlike state versus the static people who have done none of these things. This godlike state starts as an enhanced awareness and understanding of things, and in due time this perception leads to a greater ability to understand and wield power properly.
The Characteristics of High Intelligence
Those with significantly high intelligence (genius) exhibit the following characteristics:
1) Enhanced ability to comprehend what the data means – to perceive its import and relevance. This can be thought of as fully feeling the data, or experiencing it more poignantly; a more complete visceral immersion in the reality of what the data implies causing both intellectual and emotional impact.
2) Enhanced ability to fix this comprehension in one’s mind with some persistence so that it can be compared with and integrated into other data as well. To have a sufficient memory like a workspace in one’s head so as to be able work on items of complexity, like having a table large enough to hold at once all the documents one needs to look at simultaneously.
3) Enhanced ability to process multiple data streams simultaneously; the ability to think about multiple things and determine correlations, interactions, and consequences of these things both together and separately.
4) Enhanced ability to remember and retrieve data over the long term.
5) Enhanced ability to use data from past, present, and future in a combined format showing no temporal bias for the present alone. The ability to analyze data based on more than short-term memory with only quick fixes in mind; to see the big picture and the overall view, unrestricted by temporal distortions.
6) Enhanced ability to perform these mental operations rapidly; to execute mental activity more completely and thoroughly like a CPU in a computer operating at a higher clock speed and with a wider data bus. Enhanced throughput.
7) Real joy from the performance of these mental operations. Like an athlete who feels a high from their physical exertions, intelligence itself and those who possess it derive joy from the vigorous pursuit of these endeavors.
8) Rationality and respect for Reason – the constant striving to be governed by logic, and a respect for those similarly intended.
9) Spontaneous Creation. The ability to invent, compose, construct, and imagine brilliant things that did not exist before.
10) Admiration for Brilliant Creation – the recognition of brilliance in others’ brilliant creations, and the craving to experience the same.
11) Enhanced Empathic Perception – the state of considering the emotional needs and states of others’ nearly as impactfully and immersively as one’s own emotional state and needs.
12) Enhanced integration of empathic factors into one’s own reasoning and actions. The trait of voluntarily limiting one’s own scope of action so as to instead pursue courses which bring about a greater combined benefit to the self and others, even if such actions are suboptimal when considering the self alone.
13) Strong sense of Moral Necessity – the notion that people ought to self-restrain themselves so as to adhere to standards of Reason and Empathy. Respect for civility, honor, decorum, justice, freedom, personal grace, intelligent and benevolent power, humane conduct; and outrage against those who violate these principles. The willingness to forcibly oppose those who show a consistent or malicious disregard for these principles or who subvert them either for personal gain or so as to cause an erosion of the ubiquitous appreciation of these principles.
These characteristics define genius, and those with lesser degrees of intelligence will exhibit some of these traits as well, and often to a lesser degree. In general, the more completely one exhibits these traits, the more intelligent he or she is. As a baseline for our reference, when we consider people of normal intelligence we see no more than 2 or 3 of these traits in most people and then usually only to a mild extent.
It is surprising for some that I include empathy in this definition of intelligence, and that a person’s kind-heartedness would be related to intelligence. It is.
First of all, we need to separate the true empathy of feeling another’s feelings from the pseudo-empathy of behaving kindly to people simply in blind obedience to some cultural or religious expectation. I take it as a given that my noble readers are sufficiently wise as to understand that people will say and do all sorts of things that reflect naught about the true state of their heart. And so we must not read more into behavior than is truly there. The kindly old granny we have known may actually behave this way because this was expected feminine behavior in her time, and now she simply cannot behave any other way. The friendly pastor at church might not be so warm were it not an expectation of his profession to be so with all God’s children. So it is important that we not confuse ‘being nice’ with empathy. Strictly speaking, salespeople and politicians are experts in ‘being nice’ and yet we know that they are not motivated by empathy. And even when people do great things of significant personal cost to alleviate some suffering, sometimes this is motivated by guilt or fear of divine displeasure should they fail to do so.
Empathy can be inferred from behavior sometimes, but overall it is best to define it in abstract terms apart from any behaviors it engenders. Empathy is nothing more or less than the sensation of emotions arising from the experiences of another person and in harmony with their emotional state. A person with empathy will become sad by being in the presence of another person who is sad, even if the underlying cause of sadness has nothing whatever to do with them. This works for happiness as well, as long as the emotion is genuine and innocent. An empathic person watching a person on TV or film who is experiencing some great triumph or tragedy will be moved to emotion just as if the events were real and they were the focus of the action.
If I may take a moment to add a more personal touch to all this, let me tell you of some of my experiences with all this. People can question my possession of all the other traits of genius, but the one which I will strenuously declare as truthfully my own is empathy. It is the defining characteristic of my personality, and the one common thread in my history.
This can be hard to believe, given my forceful writing style which can appear cold or heartless to some. Others have sometimes questioned how I don't always accomodate their own needs and desires, for they confuse empathy with being a doormat. Just because I can feel what they feel doesn't mean that I am going to either like them or want to help them. If they are an offensive person, my empathy isn't going to make me accept them, like some kind of pacifist martyr. I am aware that my words and ideas have a sharp edge, and that my writing style is aggressive. But where is it written that positive emotions must be weak, or that heartfelt words must be smooth? It is precisely because I care so much about humanity that I strive so forcefully, and that I contend for the truth with the weapons at my disposal. This is one of the hidden characteristics of empathy – those who possess it more abundantly feel more obliged to fight furiously in defense of those one cares about, and to oppose those people who are threats. Indifference breeds soft passivity; empathy breeds Spartan contention.
And so I must say that I cannot see a poignant movie without shedding a silent tear at some point in the program, unless it is either a raucous comedy or just a bad film. This can occur with good TV documentaries and even a few kid’s shows. How could one not do so when seeing such an emotional masterpiece as ‘How The Grinch Stole Christmas’, or when seeing the history of peoples besieged by some epic struggle? When I watch the TV news, if they show some mother or father overseas crying over the death of their child killed in some disaster, I cannot help but shed a brief tear.
But these are not the tears of a feeble soul afraid to act. There is no shrinking cowardice here or lack of anger when appropriate. Neither am I unstable, and weakened by a constant inner agitation. It simply means that I care about what I observe, and that my heart is impassioned. Impassioned hearts are prone to strong action and are therefore a potent force. Would that we all have a bit more of such passion burning within, and such affinity with the feelings of those around us.
“Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony.”
- Seneca
Anyway, this brings up a key point in defense of my theory that empathy is related to intelligence. Empathy means having a more active, visceral, and potent immersive engagement in the events going on around you. Clearly, this would not be possible without having a thorough comprehension of these events, which is a function of intelligence. In fact, we can see that the more completely one understands some event, the more one experiences an emotional response to it.
If I tell you that a young man goes into a liquor store to rob it, and that the owner’s son shoot and kills him, you will feel only a mild emotional response from this data. But if I proceed to show you (like in a movie) the whole life of our young robber, and to show the tragedies that led him to this act of desperation, your caring and emotions increase. If I then tell the tale of how the owner’s son became traumatized by the experience of killing a person, and how this led to him forgoing medical school and instead being a liquor merchant all his life; even more emotions are evoked. And on and on this goes along a standard path. The more completely one understands all the facts of a matter, the greater one’s emotional response to it. In this way, empathy is inextricably liked to intelligence. One who is truly intelligent must be more empathic unless he is afflicted by some mental or emotional disorder beyond his control.
Another way of looking at this involves intelligence’s relationship to perception. The greater one’s intelligence, the more one is aware of objective reality and the less bound one is to subjectivity. Normal people are highly subjective, and don’t have the capacity to look at themselves or the world in a detached manner. They are actually unaware of that aspect of reality, for they define reality by how they perceive it from their distinct viewpoint only. This is why when I discuss the need for population control with them, they are unable to provide any reasons why increased human population would be good for our species even though they strongly advocate this. They are focused entirely on the facts that they don’t want to be told to not have more kids, or the supposed mandate of god to ‘replenish the earth’. They ignore the entire objective universe, which poses the question is population increase good or bad for our species. Instead, they focus on extrapolations from the subjective 'I don’t want to be restricted in my reproduction' or 'God must be obeyed'. From this they clumsily conclude that population increase is good because they want to reproduce more, or that God wants them to do so.
In this way we see that they are utterly unaware of objectivity, and actually think it is just the widespread implementation of their own subjectivity. ‘I want to have more kids, so everybody having lots of kids must be good.’ They are utterly unaware of any level of perception other than from themselves looking outward, and so just as man once viewed the cosmos in a geocentric way, they draw inferences about the realm beyond themselves using only the apparent motions visible from their perspective. And in like manner, their conclusions about reality are highly flawed, drawn into faulty cul-de-sac complexities much like epicycles.
With high intelligence, this is all changed. These people have the capacity to transcend their own subjective view and see the objective whole, or at least they pursue this ability and acquire it measure by measure. These are minds that can grasp the heliocentric model, and are aware that the sun does not ‘rise’ but that the earth merely makes it seem so by its rotation. And they do this with the full spectrum of their thoughts.
Because of this ability to view things from outside perspectives, they can see things from the perspective of another person in a way that the normal people cannot. They can shift their view to match that of another person, and in this way they can then feel the emotions that would result from living within this spot in existence. This is Empathy. And as we can see, this is impossible to do unless one has the philosophical capacity to transcend subjectivity. This is impossible without high intelligence.
This is hard to see unless you have known people of exceptional intelligence. This is the target audience for this book: People with an IQ above 160. It also includes those people who may score somewhat lower on IQ tests, but who exhibit most or all of the previously described traits of genius. The effects I describe do not really become visible in people with an IQ below these genius levels, and we must examine those above this mark to see how all this works in real people.
This can be hard to do since people with an IQ at this level become increasingly disadvantaged in our society. Their Societal Effectiveness, or the measure of their ability to thrive and prosper in these conditions of society, becomes markedly reduced as their IQ advances above this level. The only exceptions here are those few who are lucky enough to find themselves born into families dedicated to their genius, and whose early years were not filled with as much scorn and ridicule from Averages as is usual. And since IQ levels below 140-150 strongly correlate with increasing Societal Effectiveness, people assume that this relationship continues in a linear fashion that does not actually exist. In this way, the smartest people are esteemed to be merely average, or even below average in intelligence by the masses.
The reason for this dropoff of Societal Effectiveness is precisely the same as the abrupt increase in Empathy. Somewhere around the 160 IQ level, human intelligence crosses a threshold where a new quantum level of comprehension exists. Above this level, people are vastly more aware of more and more levels of objective reality, and can see things from many points of view beyond their own. This is what triggers the increase in empathy. But it also reveals how barbaric the rules of our society truly are, and how barbaric one must be to prosper within this system. Success is accomplished by ignoring certain imperatives of life (non-materialistic issues) and by taking advantage of people (employers, employees, customers, anybody & everybody actually) in more and more pervasive and complex ways.
Almost all business is based upon theft, and even good business practices can be called a kind of fully-disclosed acceptable theft. This is because all business, even good business, is a kind of arbitrage involving products, services, and labor. The business owner charges his customers more money for the goods and services he sells that they are strictly worth. He pays his employees less than their labor is strictly worth. And it is the spread between the real values and the transacted values of these factors that makes profit. When this is fully-disclosed to all parties, or not pursued to an unreasonable extent, we have good business. But even here we can see that this could be described in terms of a kind of morally-acceptable theft, seeing as how neither customers nor workers are getting full value.
But most business does not operate under these rules of full disclosure, voluntary consent, and humane balance. The most profitable businesses must go further to increase their margins. And to do this they must steal more and more from their customers and/or their employees. They do this by adding complexity to the system, or by using their capital advantage to simply mandate take-it-or-leave-it conditions to their employees. Excellence in modern business is defined by three factors:
1) Stealing the most you can from customers without causing them to become aware/angry
2) Stealing the most you can from employees without causing them to strike or quit faster than they can be replaced.
3) Paying the least possible in taxes by using tax loopholes and political influence
And so today, those who can do this most deftly and in a way so as to ruffle as few feathers as possible are the absolute pinnacle of the business world. The aesthetic here is like a group of thieves admiring brilliant crimes, successfully executed and causing the least collateral damage.
Once a person becomes aware of this reality, it becomes very hard to enthusiastically strive to work hard within this system. Or, as has happened with me, you begin the question your superiors about the morality (and even legality) of the policies you are ordered to implement. This does nothing except labels you as a troublemaker, and so your own success is thwarted. This is how and why IQ above 160 causes a marked decline in Societal Effectiveness.
Society itself is built upon predation. And as IQ in people rises, they become more and more capable of being successful ‘hunters’ of their fellow men. This rises to supreme heights around the 140 IQ level, just below the point where empathy increases. It is these people who are the most capable and cunning in executing their plans, and are the primary power-brokers of the world. But as IQ increases beyond this, one becomes aware of how this predation and competition is not truly bound by any civilized rules, and therefore is intrinsically evil. The system could be made honorable by enforcing certain restrictions upon taking unreasonable advantages. But it is precisely these modes of taking excessive advantage that these 140 IQ people are experts at. Those around 100 IQ are not smart enough to understand the intricacies of these complex thefts/business practices, and so the 140 IQ people want to keep their advantage over the masses. And since they are incapable of seeing the true barbarism of what they do, they see no reason to stop.
These 140 IQ people are also not smart enough to know that those above 160 IQ are smarter than them. Because we choose to not behave so unrestrainedly predatory, the 140 IQ people assume that we are simply not smart enough to understand the complex thefts/business that they do, just like the 100 IQ people. I have had such people say much the same things to me in person. They cannot believe that a smarter person would not do as they do, and be better at it than they are.
And so it is essential that in considering the link between intelligence and empathy that we understand the IQ threshold required. For it is true that the people around 140 IQ include some of the most hard-hearted and venal people in the world. It is these people who run the businesses and governments, and who see no problem in oppressing millions of people for their own personal advantage.
In a surprising way, and because of these factors just described, morality itself is linked to intelligence. Morality is not the blind adherence to some arbitrary religious code. It is the abstract concepts of Reason and Empathy made manifest in practical application in daily life. Moral principles are and must be those which conform to Reason and Empathy and nothing else.
Reason contributes to morality by providing a logical framework for action. People should interact in ways that make sense and that follow some logical balance of fairness, and they should also be truly grounded in reality. Reason requires that the code of conduct we follow be one that truly reflects a realisitic process, and not just a desired outcome. Wanting people to be happy is not a reasonable plan of action, it is simply a desired outcome. And so Reason is essential for keeping us on task, and not swept away into dreams or illusions.
Empathy contributes to morality by ensuring that we do not just starkly pursue some optimal path for ourselves only; that we strive to behave in ways that are optimal for all and not just for the self. Logic alone could become unbalanced so that our morals reflect the cold decisions of a computer only. Empathy alone would have us trying to soothe all the ills of the world without any balanced and reasonable plan. Only by combining them do our morals achieve balance and sanity.
Since we know that Reason is related to intelligence, and we have established that Empathy is related as well, we can rightly infer that Morality is also related to intelligence. I understand that this thinking runs counter to conventional wisdom. But I would ask you, how else can we perform this analysis? Can caring truly exist without comprehension? Is blind obedience to a memorized code of conduct the highest form of morality? How can we esteem a person to be moral if they do not fully understand the nuances of the code of ethics they practice? They may be behaving in accordance with moral principles, but is not the person who also comprehends why they are doing so the more moral person?
This leaves us with the stunning conclusion that the most caring and moral people in the world are likely to be the most intelligent.[10] This is counter to what the masses think, for they believe intelligence precludes emotion and makes a person cold and mechanistic. But this is only the last refuge of their insecurity – they must convince themselves that the intelligent are crucially flawed in some way that would make an unintelligent existence preferable and more honorable.
Another reason for this misunderstanding of the intelligent stems from this useful axiom which explains much:
The true nature of intelligence, its telltale signs, and its behavior is only knowable by those who possess a full measure of it. And lacking a full measure of intelligence, one must have at least a significant brilliance to have even a rough comprehension of its nature. The masses define it to be that which it is not, and assume characteristics for it that actually opposes its true nature.
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
- Bertrand Russell
And so it is pointless to argue with Normal people about intelligence because they don’t really know what it is or what it can do. To them, it appears as a defect in the person’s ability fit in with the group, and a cause for ridicule. This is another example of the ubiquitous Herd mentality among Averages. One who is different from the Herd is inferior. This is why nerds and geeks are ridiculed. They seem weak, weird, and generally deficient to the rest of the world. And because the rest of the people do not value or even understand the unique things they can do, they see no upside to being a geek or nerd. They feel utterly superior to them.
And so we see that there is indeed a wide gulf between us and them. We Exceptionals must be on guard to prevent wishful thinking from entering our ideas and rhetoric. It is precisely because we are more intelligent, and therefore more moral, that we entertain all of the humanist ideals of The Enlightenment. We want to believe in the worth of each and every individual, and we can scarcely believe that any person could exist within a personal universe so miniscule and savagely curtailed as most people’s truly are. The thought of such an existence is both frightening to us, and also implies a real pointlessness to such a life. Since our very nature tends to oppose nihilism, as intelligence promotes the notion of purpose, though it may be hidden, to virtually every aspect of life; we are loathe to believe that people truly exist like this.
We must remember that they do. And more than this, we need to see how their existence is not without purpose, and how they can have lives of significance. It is just that their purposes and significance are not those that we are accustomed to thinking about for ourselves. Averages can indeed have rich and worthy lives, and are completely capable of being significant persons who do great good for the world. They simply are not prone to behave this way on their own, without the leadership of Exceptionals. We need to respect them for the excellence which they can do, and not revile them for what they lack. And so we need to keep to a balanced course, neither utterly devaluing them as mere vermin, nor falsely believing them to be just like you and me. Until we come to this frank understanding of the reality of humanity, and how most of them differ from us, we can have no hope of really understanding what is going on around us. And without this understanding, we have no hope of ever organizing mankind into a humane symbiosis.
Conclusions
We have seen that intelligence is the single most important factor in determining a person’s functional worth to humanity, their capacity to lead, and also the degree of morality they can exhibit in their lives. Now intelligence does not, by itself, guarantee that a person will exhibit these traits and values. Rather, it sets the upper bounds of their ability to achieve, should they choose to do so. Average people can be functionally valuable, show leadership, and exhibit great morality. But Exceptionals can do all of these things to a superlative degree, should they develop their natural talents to do so.
In addition, it should be clear that the duties of leadership are analogous to the role the brain plays in the body. To properly fill this role, a leader must show great nuance of thought, natural curiosity, lack of fear when encountering the unknown, assertiveness tempered by thoughtfulness, and above all, an unshakable love born of empathy for those whom he seeks to lead. Without these traits, a leader will fail to provide any real service to those under his power. And in such a case, the leader becomes a force for evil in the world.
By understanding the true nature of intelligence, and how it is expressed among humans, we can see that the only people who can consistently fulfill this mandate are the most superbly intelligent people on earth. No other type of person possesses these talents. And these abilities are not easily found in people in general, or in any other kind of person other than High Genius intelligences. Because these abilities are rare, it is essential that we empower these High Geniuses only.
When we fail to do so, we get a suboptimal situation. Either we get the barbaric excesses of Kings and Priests, or we get the equally barbaric stupidity of the masses dictating the course of our culture. When human leadership is suboptimal, human society and culture is as well. And by having culture and society configured suboptimally, our species fails to advance as rapidly, continuously, or completely as is required for us to preserve ourselves from extinction. Or, we develop dangerously unevenly, developing powers though technology without a corresponding advancement of our wisdom. This scenario, specifically, is caused by the intelligent members of our society developing these technologies within a world run by Averages. And so in this case, we are the greatest danger to ourselves. All of this danger could be utterly eliminated if we simply empowered Exceptionals only.
We must recognize the gulf that exists between us Exceptionals and the Averages, and how it is impossible to convince them of our superior abilities. We prefer to deal in truth, and to let the brilliance of our reasoned ideas convince others of the rightness of our view. But when our audience for such logical displays cannot fathom even the basic workings of rational thought, and are instead prone to being convinced by brute pantomimes of primal emotionalism; we have no hope whatever of convincing them of anything this complex. Their own brain structure, being less advanced than ours, makes them utterly unaware of the value of our ideas, like a deaf person who cannot comprehend the intricacies and beautiful order of a symphony.
And so we must conclude that any such restructuring of society cannot be accomplished by a broad appeal to public opinion. We certainly can influence many, and we should strive to do so. But in the end, we will never achieve any democratic mandate for our ideas simply because the ideas themselves are beyond the comprehension of the majority of people.
So we must take other actions. And these will often go against the course we would prefer to follow. In this I mean that it is our natural preference for total honesty and openness. We often look at the powers of the world and feel disgusted by the way in which they pander to the vanity, fear, and the stupidity of the masses so as to rule. We feel superior to such powers, considering ourselves more moral and pure because we do not stoop to these dishonorable games so as to gain power, even though we know how.
But let us look at the situation in another way. Our squeamishness to ‘dirty’ ourselves is simply allowing our enemies to win without us even putting up a fight. The scenario we face is like a room wherein a powerful but incredibly stupid giant child resides. We are in the room, and we want to both not get crushed by the child, but also in some way to protect the child. We care about the child, and want to help him be happy and gradually progress. Along comes other people into the room, and they tell the child fantastical and flattering tales that seize the child’s attention, and which convince the child to do what the tale-tellers suggest. It is as if the child is assaulted by salesmen who pretend to be his friend, all for the purpose of using the child’s massive fist for their own personal advantage, and to crush their opposition.
So when we step forward and, with reasoned arguments, point out how the salesmen are lying, the child simply becomes angry with us because he doesn’t understand the basis for our logic. Indeed, he doesn’t really understand logic at all, in any context, even though he thinks he does. So our appeals are utterly ineffectual, and can only serve to make us appear to be enemies of the child since we have shown opposition to the plan the child wants to pursue.
From this you can clearly see that this book is not intended to be read by a mass audience or to influence common public opinion at all. I have not written this for the child to read. I have written it to reach those few Exceptionals out there who can make a difference in the world, if they would but become aware of what is happening around us and take action. I have written it to reach you.
If we just stay silent and let the child go off unknowingly serving these salesmen, who knows what damage this will cause? This is precisely what happened in Nazi Germany and in Soviet Russia. We can’t stay on the sidelines, but we can’t intercede with logic alone.
So it is clear what we must do. We must communicate with the child in the only format he understands. We must tell stories and parables so that he can see what we are meaning, and use these as a means of keeping the child on a more rational path. We must fight fire with fire, even though we feel squeamish about doing so. We must remember here that the outcome is more important than the process. Certainly, if our activities involved atrocities I would not so simply say that the end justifies the means. But that is not what I am suggesting. I am only suggesting that we fight for the mind of the child following the same rules that the other players are already following. Propaganda to oppose propaganda is completely justified, and seems to be the only possible efficacious means we have of contending for the truth. What an odd paradox. And since we shall always be fighting for an outcome that adheres to truthful principles, unlike our opposition, we shall have less of a need for excess and ridiculous hyperbole than they do. But we must start playing by the rules of the game, and not consider ourselves too pristine to engage in such rough-and-tumble machinations.
Humanity is worth the fight. We need to stop cowardly hiding in the corner, all the while providing as an excuse that we are ‘better’ than those liars out there because we are above such low conduct. With such an attitude taken by its most intelligent members, mankind is doomed. We need to understand that the fate of our species is in our hands and nobody else’s. If we sit out the game, because we detest the game, we all lose. Humanity has no other protectors. There are only a few thousand or tens of thousands of them on the entire planet. And you are one of them. It is time for you recognize exactly who you are, and to enter the fight.
How shall we do this? How can we fight? Read on, for the remainder of the book details these very plans.
ENDNOTES
[1] It is a myth that every person is similarly capable as the Exceptional, but is disadvantaged by lack of education or economic opportunity. Geniuses are not made – they are born. No matter how much education we may provide the masses, they will never be capable of (or even desire to be capable of) the same kinds of brilliance as we see from a Beethoven, a Salk, or a Jefferson. There are indeed geniuses hidden within the masses whose talents are hidden by lack of opportunity. But our providing education does not make them become geniuses; it simply allows them to do what comes naturally. However, this is rather rare. Most of the masses are both incapable of and insensitive to the works and manner of genius no matter how much effort we may put into them. If we send every child to mandatory intensive basketball instruction all throughout their childhoods, will they all end up good enough to play in the NBA? If such a thing is not possible in athletic pursuits, why do we think it is possible in intellectual or artistic pursuits?
[2] This is an inevitable need of humanity, both for defense and so that we can grow as a species.
[3] I highly recommend the Mike Judge film ‘Idiocracy’ for a view of this future.
[4] Or, they were seen as not really very smart at all – a collection of pretentious vain fools.
[5] This is the great failure of the generation born between 1935 - 1955. Those people who inherited the greatest treasures of materiel, power, and morale went on to disavow the philosophical source of all their advantaged origins and squandered this abundance. But not only did they just go through a youthful period of excess and indiscretion (which is forgivable and common), but they then went on to completely obliterate the very philosophical machinery of prosperity and success that had spawned their own creation, and which had taken centuries to evolve into being, thus destroying the future itself. The forced imposition of their false notions of fairness and freedom upon our culture imperils our very civilization.
[6] This is a functional evaluation of humanity. But in addition to this logic, all people have an intrinsic value simply as humans.
[7] Notice how the rule of The Average is immoral since these people are not capable of leadership that leads to long-term success, even for themselves. They will surely enact policies that benefit themselves today, but these same policies will ultimately break down leaving future generations bereft of such advantage.
[8] In my view, these problems began with the adoption of some faulty aspects of the philosophies of ‘The Enlightenment’. The American, French, and Russian revolutions then put in force these faulty philosophies and created societies which were doomed to undergo a slow philosophical decay, like the edge of a glacier melting and fracturing as it reaches the sea. In time, the decay finally causes a sudden break into a new degraded mode, like when the iceberg breaks away from the glacier and crashes into the sea. This is what happened in the 1960’s. Many of these philosophies of The Enlightenment are Anti-Exceptional mindsets, and are massive over-reactions to the excesses of the monarchies and clergy of previous days. It is true that some of these monarchs and clerics were not worthy of their power, and probably weren’t even true Exceptionals as I define. But the harm we have suffered from this over-reaction of The Enlightenment outstrips even the damage caused by these unfit rulers.
[9] I use the term ‘gods’ because this reflects the fact that these people are unbounded in the power they can wield and the wisdom they can possess, given time. They are infinite beings, not because they possess an infinite amount of any particular thing, but because they are capable of perpetual growth. Their natural state is expansion. And so the term ‘gods’ reflects the fact that they are an altogether different being than those people who remain finite and static forever. This is not meant to imply that they are necessarily strikingly more powerful or wise than the static people today. Rather, it simply indicates that the passage of time tends to cause them to become more so, and that they are capable of many things utterly beyond the reach of the static people. Unlike animals and normal people, these gods have the ability to become a new kind of being through time and effort, and this is a profound philosophical distinction. They are most properly considered a different species from average Homo Sapiens because of this striking difference in behavior and capacity, if not in other physical ways.
[10] If we define morality as sanity (following REALITY), caring about others, and having the courage to implement these principles in daily life, we can scarcely find another subset of humanity that could have these attributes equal to geniuses. This is not to say that all geniuses are moral. Should some lack in courage, or exhibit other deficits, then certainly we can say that their morality is less also. And a Normal person who exhibits these same traits or reason and empathy is certainly moral also.
