IRE5B: INTELLIGENCE

Berkeley Battle

Respond to BOTH of the following: sets of questions:

1. Think of intelligent people whom you know well. What unintelligent things do they do? All of
them are bound to do some unintelligent things, so why do you consider them to be intelligent
people? Were you emphasizing some factors at the expense of others? Explain.
2. Did you ever consider that the homeless shelter might be filled with people of tremendous
potential? There might be a world-class archer, a great poet, a magnificent violinist, and a great
president. However, the archer never happened to try the bow, the poet never tried writing, the
violinist ignored music, and the president never ran for office. Instead, they worked at other
things and weren't very good. Some might think of themselves as failures, although they would
have been successful if they had only tried these other things. What argument is being made by
these statements? How would the concept of a general intelligence refute this argument?

In my own family I can think of some interesting, or not so intelligent things, that seemingly intelligent
people did. A few examples: relatives that both have Masters degrees got divorced and then remarried
each other only to get an even nastier divorce the second time around. Another relative that worked for
NASA and UCLA went to one of those huge tent evangelical healing events and was supposedly cured
of the desire to smoke; I tended to want to give him the credit and figured it was a nice placebo effect, at
the right time, for the right person who obviously had qualities of self-control and determination and
planned to quit but for what reason he wanted to credit the traveling snake oil guy instead of himself is
a reason beyond me. I simply said thats great Uncle Bob, good for you, I bet you feel better now; what
else are you going to do now to replace that habit with? Like are you going to take up tennis again or
swimming or hiking now that you feel better? Im really proud of you, thats a good example youre
setting. Of course his wife took her child to one of those tent healing events on one occasion instead of
to the doctor and ended up with a lengthy ER visit the following day for postponing medical treatment and
narrowly missed a DCF intervention as well so perhaps Uncle Bob had other motivations such as
avoiding a confrontation with his extremist spouse; as his reason for believing in his healing. The

interesting thing is that his wife was a mid-school teacher who also spanked their children at home and
withheld medical treatment yet never displayed any of those tendencies at the schools she worked in so
on some level she was smart enough to hide her behavior from the public but it did not go over well with
the rest of the family, of course. Bob had an extremely high IQ and performed exceptionally in academics
but his personal life and communication skills were nearly handicapping. His wife was the same,
unfortunately.

To the second question, absolutely yes; I mean I did not consider that recently and dont often ponder
why the homeless are in shelters; but of course after watching the Jamie Fox movie about the violinist I
definitely thought there had to be so many people whose lives had been stifled before they even began.
When I drive by the homeless person begging with their cardboard sign on the freeway onramp I think
about things like this and at what point in that persons life was the breaking point. As children were they
poor? Malnourished? Neglected? What happened prior to them becoming unemployed and why were
they not resilient enough to get another job instead of that one thing leading to the spiral that ended them
up in the disheveled mess at the street corner? In the text it is said that accumulated stresses over time,
including minor ones, are more devastating than an isolated major stress (Berger, 2014, p. 287) and I
can only imagine how many stresses daily it took to cripple those individuals. There must have been so
little structure, consistency, food, care and basic needs met that higher functions like education, music
and social activities were foreign concepts.
General intelligence would refute the idea that any of those homeless people could have been
successful; it would argue that they had an intelligence factor that would prohibit it; not that they could
have been pushed into other directions and found something they were amazing at. I would think that in a
way that argument is correct, or is at least a half truth in that perhaps one of those individuals wouldnt
have been a savant or professional at something but that at least they could have been competent at
enough things to hold a small, steady life together. I know many people who have lived paycheck to
paycheck for decades and yet they are pretty happy as they are always employed, always have leisure
time, and always continue on their same path with a roof over their heads and safe schools for their kids
to go to.

If there is a general theme in this course it could be that every little experience matters in the life of the
growing child; especially more so if any of the big things are off course. So while that one thing that
happened at age 4 doesnt 100% of the time mean that at 34 this other thing will always happen; Freud
was awfully close in his predictions; it just matters if anything is off at the baseline and the repetition of
that one thing that will predict how adversely (or positively) that other thing will effect an otherwise quality
life.