"majority is society's steam roller that slowly levels everything in its way"

 some people are smart and some people are stupid. most people are just mediocre. there's nothing wrong with that. but why does it happen? can we do anything about it? disclaimer: this is not a get-smart-quick do-it-yourself kit.

nature's greatest evolution effort produced what we know as mammals: from tigers to dolphins and from monkeys to elephants. then, in a final attempt, evolution took one step further and produced man. in many ways man is similar to other creatures to be found on this earth. in many ways he is different, indeed.

man's greatest advantage over other creatures is his far more advanced brain. properly put to use, the brain comes with fascinating ideas ranging from roasting meat of hunted animals and inventing the wheel to space exploration and the internet.

with all these accomplishments and everything, man still is a biological entity, for what it's worth. we're still made of various types of cells. and when we know that we can't find two perfectly identical ball bearings in the world, than it's only understandable that we find high degrees of variation across human beings as well. you have tall people and short people; different skin colors; fat people and slim people; different eye colors; and so on. so you are unique. just like everyone else.

no two people are identical, and that's usually a good thing. you wouldn't want everyone to look like yourself. then there are some differences that are not so apparent - variations in features of organs and components of the human body. usually there's one source of variation in people that's overlooked. the brain, probably the most interesting organ of all, supports high degrees of variation as well.

to put in plainly, some people are stupid and some are smart. most are somewhere between these extremes. in today's age of hardcore political correctness, we don't usually acknowledge differences in intellect. still, we look at world champions who can run 10 times faster than the average person. we agree that's possible. but we are somewhat reluctant to see differences in brain output. the brain is an organ itself - it can produce higher output or lower output. it has some inherited features. and it can be trained and improved. really.

now, the brain is such a complicated thing, that we're just beginning to understand the way it works. what we can study and interpret easier is the output that the brain produces - tangible results, behaviors and so on; causes are usually more elusive.

i'm not going to get into details about human anatomy now. we'll just focus on the following issue: human abilities tend to be distributed across a bell-shaped curve. this is an interesting idea, but what does it mean? we'll take intelligence, for example. just for the sake of this example, we'll use the IQ level as a means of evaluating intelligence, even though this might not be the most accurate measure we have.

imagine there's a survey, and we get the IQ scores for all people on this planet. when looking over the results, we find that 35% of the population has an IQ of 100, 20% has an IQ of 90, 20% has an IQ of 110, and so on. what i'm saying is that if you graph these results, you get something like this:


that's a bell-shaped curve; the x axis is the IQ score, and the Y axis is the percent of population having a particular IQ score. the red line is the average IQ score, which points to the highest spot on the Y axis - the highest percentage of the population. towards the extremes, a decreasing percentage of the population has an increasingly higher IQ score; similarly, a decreasing percentage of the population has a lower IQ score. as you can see, most of the population has an IQ level in the middle range. medium. average. decent. mediocre. we also have two extremes: a small percentage of the population with a really low IQ and an equally small percentage with a really high IQ. what does that tell us about most people? figure it out.

please note there are scientific studies that show a very strong correlation between intelligence and success in life, measured by status, job, money and education. life is hard.

if we go on and graph the distribution of all human abilities, we'll get similar bell shaped curves. most people have average drawing skills - i.e. when asked to draw a car, they'll do a decent job; a few people will have very good drawing skills and turn out to be car designers, while a few people will actually have no clue on how to draw a car that resembles a real one. and so on for everything you can imagine: math skills, people skills, analytical skills, foreign language skills and so on. it's all in the brain.

so now for the eternal question: stupidity - genetic or environmental? can you do anything about the way your brain is laid out? there are some genetic influences that you can't do anything about. but let's go on. when you're born, your brain resembles a computer hard disk, the moment it comes out of the assembly line. it's empty. the brain can perform basic functions which are prewired into it, such as breathing. everything else it has to learn.

in the early stages of your life, the brain learns and gets wired for all kinds of skills and abilities through connections and paths between neurons. so when you reach around 16-18 years old, you turn out to be good at math. or smarter than others. or incapable of learning a foreign language. or socially inappropriate. and that's that. it's a combination of genetic and environmental factors that determines the way you turn out to be, with your strengths, weaknesses or mediocrity. as seen above, most people will turn out to be averagely intelligent. averagely intuitive. averagely good at math. most people will a do a decent job at learning foreign languages. write decent essays. and so on.

so that's what you have to start with. there's really nothing wrong with being average, as long as you're taking a shot at self-improvement. how many people do that, by the way? maslow, in his famous hierarchy of needs, stated that just about 2% of the world's population is what he called "self-actualizing". sad isn't it?

if you really care about anything, you'd want to improve yourself. and that's difficult, since everything is already wired in your brain. so you have to work really hard. reading, courses, practice, will, patience, experience, experimentation, innovation, breaking norms. it's hard. and that's what most people won't do, because they want order, stability, and an easy life. when 80% of people are roughly as smart or as skilled as yourself, why would you want improvement? you all get along just fine.

over the centuries, society has come up with a mechanism for organizing its affairs called the rule of majority (also known as democracy). and i'm talking about democracy in a generic way, not just as a political system. it's not the best of systems, but it's definitely an improvement over others. imposing the will of majority is used for settling many issues in today's society. in one way or another, majority decides what's good and what's not. what's fair and what's not. what's legal and what's not. think about it: majority decides how you should live your life. the main problem, which is not easily apparent, is this: what you get with democracy is the rule of the average.

remember the bell curve? most people are average. with the majority rule, you get average results. remember, i'm not talking just about politics here, but everything that society says is good, fair, legal, accepted and moral. these rules have been laid out for the majority, by the majority. since "that's the way things are", where do you get social progress from? that's the tough part. inertia of any social system kills society's progress. majority is society's steam roller that slowly levels everything in its way.

society is configured right now to preserve mediocrity. take a look at modern culture - tv, papers, music and so on. take a look at the educational system. the political system. mediocrity and uniformity. society is configured in such a way that it's hard for any one individual to make a significant difference. generally accepted norms and principles do not allow for that.

why would we want individuals to make a difference anyway? because history has showed that it's society's elite that promotes progress. all the great inventors, leaders, artists - do you think they were at the middle of the bell curve? we will never know, but i bet they weren't. so what do you do to ensure progress? society's leaders have a really simple job: to ensure that everyone's talent, small or big, is allowed to develop and put to use. so you give people the chance to use their talents for the benefit of everyone. you don't standardize expectations. dreams. goals. values. options. education. politics. society. economy. culture.

the bell curve situation is bad enough already, so there's really no need for society to make it worse.

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