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When I first wrote books on this topic a third
of a century ago, I never dreamed that most of our institutions
and professionals would still be insistent, all the way into
this millennium, that human intelligence is a fixed, frozen
given, essentially unimprovable — and that they would still be
maintaining, despite so much overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, that you are stuck with the (lack of) intelligence you
were born with, and that it's impolite at best to inquire too
much or too deeply into such matters.
I should have known. At the time I was starting to write in this
field, in the early 1970s, it was already approaching a quarter
century past the time when Alex Osborn, Sidney J. Parnes, George
Prince and others had first demonstrated conclusively and
powerfully how readily creativity could be learned or trained.
And yet the professionals of that time, and the same
institutions, were just as insistent then that creativity was
unimprovable, that you were stuck with the (lack of) creativity
you were born with! And you know well, perhaps all too well,
what a familiar part of the scene "creativity training," in many
different forms, has since become. Some of the very same
institutions which once loudly spat upon the very idea that
people could become more creative now sport their own
"Department of Creative Studies."
Why did it take so long on "creativity," and why is it taking so
long on "intelligence"?
Conscious/unconscious motivation
First, we have to understand the difference between conscious
and unconscious motivation. In every aspect of life, most people
are acting consciously from one set of motivations but
unconsciously are acting from very different motivations.
For a century, behavioral science has been familiar with the
phenomenon of people with poor self-image and self-expectations
who, when faced with imminent "success" (however defined),
drastically change what they were doing — for all kinds of
rationalized reasons — to ward off that success and to
self-sabotage themselves back to the familiar grounds of
failure.
Likewise, some of those who appear to be the very highest-minded
people are frequently observed to be involved with arguments
which serve their own stakes and beliefs and interests, despite
clear commitment in other topical areas to objectivity and even
to intellectual rigor.
The people of whom one would expect the highest degree of
objectivity and integrity, "above question," are often so far
also above self-question as to be especially vulnerable to this
effect. The more convinced, many times on many valid grounds,
one is of one's own rectitude, the easier it is to not notice
niggling contrary evidence or that one's own positions and
actions are flowing from a different, less high-minded set of
motives.
Behaviorally, it has become popular in recent decades to refer
to everyone's having, beneath their human and cortical mind, a
"reptilian" or "limbic" brain whose first concern is survival
and whose next, second, concern is to keeping things much the
way they already are. This "lower" brain pushes most of our
buttons even when we think we are consciously making
"high-minded" or objective, "rational" choices.
Those among our readers here who are into the self-help
literature have seen a lot of such discussion, and there is a
fair amount of truth to it. Behavioral science has known for
more than a century that the brain circuitry for every conscious
act and decision and even stimulus, however much it may involve
the "highest" regions of our cortex, also passes through such
"limbic" organs and structures as the amygdala, thalamus and
hypothalamus — the parts of our brain most concerned with
emotion and patterned-reflex responses.
There is no act of intellect or high logic in
human functioning which does not also involve, and which
is not also affected, consciously or unconsciously and
mostly unconsciously, by these organs for emotion and
patterned-reflex response. The less we are conscious of
this, the less we suspect the emotional biases of our
own reasoning, the less we factor this dimension into
account, and the more subject we are to acts and
decisions whose outcome stems not from our "high"
conscious minds but from our emotional reflexes.
For centuries, history has seen this in starkest form. Our
highest-minded organizations and institutions, the very
"worthiest" of causes, have proven the most susceptible. How
many charities have suffered from or even succumbed to
corruption in their leadership? How many human beings have been
brutally butchered, maimed, tortured, even burned at the stake,
on behalf of Christ or Mohammed or Krishna? Way too often, when
we know we are right we fail to self-question, we are least
susceptible to contrary evidence and most susceptible to being
pushed around by our unreasoning emotional reflex minds.
I'm afraid that even where evidence, questioning, and rigorous
intellectual inquiry are the strongest — the sciences and the
human-helping professions — matters in this regard are little
different. Historians of science note that paradigms (clusters
of theory and observation upon which everyone is agreed and
convinced of their validity) change in science, not during the
time when their bases are actually overthrown and new models
proven, but when the old scientists die who had been invested in
those old paradigms. And these are among the people most
committed to objective observation and intellectually rigorous
reasoning — and therefore most above question as to motives for
their choices, actions, judgments and beliefs!
Power relationships
Second, understand that any change, even the most innocent
change, in a situation means a change in the power relationships
within that situation. The people who presently enjoy the most
advantages in context of that situation might not always and
enthusiastically welcome that change. That change has at least
some likelihood to disenfranchise the people presently on top
and to go to someone else. This phenomenon is so general, it's a
given-by-definition.
Any change, even the most innocent change, in a
situation means a change in the power relationships
within that situation.
Ask not for whom the reptilian brain toils. It toils for thee
and me... and for our worthy but comfortable colleagues in the
professions, schools, clinics, agencies, and organizational
institutions all over our world, in the early 21st Century.
Mind you, not everyone who believed that you were stuck with the
level of either creativity or intelligence (or the lack thereof)
that you were born with had their reason and observational
evidence overpowered by motives of institutional and
intellectual convenience. Fifty, a hundred years ago, the
preponderance of evidence seemed to favor the "nature" side of
the Nature vs. Nurture controversy.
My own mentor, the late Dr. Virgil S. Ward, at the time one of
the world's two or three leading experts on special education of
the gifted, was four-square in the center of the "nature" camp
(but had the intellectual integrity and rigor to support my
questioning, and my beginnings of movement into very different
directions!!!). But that was before —
- All those rat-brain studies by Gopal, Das,
Rosenzweig and others showing the profound effects on
adults of being maintained in stimulating or in
non-stimulating environments.
- Those wonderful rat-brain studies by Marion Diamond
demonstrating the much earlier finding by the father of
neuroanatomy, Santiago Ramon y Cajal, that it's not even
stimulus: what mainly develops a brain and intelligence
is feedback upon one's own actions. Note that this is a
finding 100% congruent with and predictable from
psychology's main natural law, the Law of Effect ("you
get more of what you reinforce"), though few if any have
remarked it.
- The core of evidence supporting the "Nature" position,
that mass of separated-twin IQ studies which were
reported by Sir Cyril Burt and which were cited in
genetics and psychology and education texts all over the
world, turned out to be an admitted fraud, made up out
of Burt's head.
- A slow avalanche of studies on changes in IQ in adults,
those changes cumulatively resulting from the
stimulus-level of their respective occupation or
profession.
- The invention of modern high-speed, high-resolution,
live brain-scanning procedures. These "bloodless"
procedures meant that brains no longer had to be
"sacrificed" to be studied, and further could be much
more effectively studied in action than when no longer
living. Hence all those studies which have come along,
in the past two decades or so, show progressive changes
in the physical structures of the brain according to
which profession one is practicing.
- The fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War, which
meant that the Western world no longer had to defend so
tightly against any idea that mankind might be
"improvable" or "perfectible." (In trying to defend
against observations that Communism was too contrary to
basic human nature to be really workable, Soviet Russia
— and totalitarians generally, for similar reasons — had
argued that human nature could be re-shaped. The
beleaguered West's easiest response was to claim that
human nature was innate and unreshapeable, unchangeable,
and any form of "improvement" was flatly impossible.
This is why books and publications from the context of
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) itself
appeared which argued the "Nature" side of Nature vs.
Nurture. Now that Communism is dead, perhaps the West
can begin to relax its institutional absolutist position
on some aspects of this matter?)
- It became more and more evident to some reasonable
people that the bases of "I.Q." and intelligence are
dynamic, not only stemming from multiple causes but the
interactions of those multiple causes; that both
"nature" and "nurture" interact to produce whatever
levels and forms of "intelligence" emerge in each human
individual. That, of course, also means that through
"nurture," through manipulation of environment and/or
technique, "intelligence" can be significantly improved.
Protein sequencing is currently the latest scientific
field to discover the significance of dynamic
interaction, a matter perhaps most directly addressed in
general systems theory. (Please see also Complex
Homeostasis and my monographs on Systems Theory.)
Not all the fault has been in our scientific researchers. Some
may be found in their sources of funding and in their sources's
sources of funding. To practice scientific research, to be a
scientist in these heavily capitalized times, requires a lot of
money and a pretty steady such flow of money. If the flow stops
for whatever reason, you are no longer a scientist. So you
cannot afford research outcomes which are too surprising — or,
in this instance — too inconvenient to your funding sources or
to their sources. After the flood of evidence in the past twenty
years or so, the surprise may be wearing off by now, but the
question of convenience may yet remain a little longer.
A Subliminal Message: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I've a subliminal message for those of my professional
colleagues who are still stuck on the "nature" side of the
nature-vs.-nurture controversy. Don't read these next few lines,
so that their message can go more directly to the parts of your
brains that have been making your real choices.....(Just
kidding. — Or am I?)
When the preponderance of evidence is as overwhelming as it has
become in this instance (and as it did in the creativity
instance forty and fifty years ago), there may actually be more
advantage to demonstrating that you are on top of things than
there is to staying put. Several of the most tried-and-true ways
to so upgrade your position:
"Well, that's what I've been saying all along, only none of it
ever got into publication. That's the only reasonable position
possible, given all that's been shown to be the case in this
matter. You must have heard me say so, many times." Or:
"Well, we needed to be more certain of the evidence before
setting out to mess around with people's brains. We were just
being prudent to protect the public." Or:
"Well, one or two effects have been found, which conceivably
after much further research might become bases for one or two
specific techniques. Give it ten or twenty years, though, and
let us experts handle it. (Of course we will need funding to
investigate in this area. We are the ones on top of these
things....")
~ ~ ~ ~ End of subliminal message.
One Further Matter
This is an issue become increasingly evident over the years. I
am indebted to a good friend, Matthew Turco, for having first
brought it into full focus for me.
Purpose.
Many of the recurrent activities and practices for improving the
brain and/or for increasing intelligence — including some of the
techniques described in this site and in the Project Renaissance
books and audio courses — involve sustained work and effort and
attention.
After the first flush of enthusiasm, for heightened senses and
pellucid thinking and seeing and ingenious coups, has yielded to
these being customary instead of novel, "What's going to get you
out of bed in the mornings?" What is going to keep you at these
practices long enough to make a truly substantial difference?
There is, with some techniques at least, hard work involved over
a sustained period of time and attention. What will keep you
going?
What is your purpose for improving your intelligence? What is
your reason for doing so? What can you do or experience, when
you are more intelligent, that you can't do or experience now?
(Why can't you do or experience those things now already,
really?)
I strongly suggest—
-
that you write out for yourself, these and/or similar questions;
-
that you write out your answers to those questions until you are
satisfied with those answers;
-
that you post these up where you can frequently look over and
see them from time to time — maybe where you are practicing your
brain-building activities;
-
that you from time to time add to or improve on these questions
and answers;
-
that you really get inside the feeling of what it will be like,
doing or experiencing those things, so that prospect of their
achievement will in fact truly motivate you in continued pursuit
of their achievement. And,
-
that you check these things off, or otherwise visibly
acknowledge them, as you find yourself achieving them,
confirming thereby not only your progress as regards
intelligence-building but progress in demonstrating that you are
effectively in command of yourself and of your life.
Further purpose?
I am somewhat less than enthused at the fact that a half million
or so fellow members of Mensa, the high-IQ Society, are sitting
comfortably around in an organization which identifies itself,
even prides itself, on accomplishing nothing, contributing
nothing to civilization, serving no higher purpose than that of
sitting around with each other self-consciously and self-congratulatingly
identified as having an unusually high I.Q. "Chocolate orgies"
at their gatherings are nice, but are these the best, most
distinguishing use of their intelligence? Are these Mensa's
highest social function?
There is certainly no requirement that any of our readers here,
or our students and participants generally, as they improve
their abilities, their performance levels at all sorts of
activities, their quality of experience and enjoyment in all
sorts of pursuits and in life itself, must find or serve any
purpose above and/or beyond themselves. But I hope that some
will, if only because in the long range and on the large scale
it serves their own interests.
— Win Wenger
Anno Domini 2005
©2005 Project Renaissance
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