A low IQ individual in a high IQ society

What does an individual do when faced with a situation which is beyond their experience or capabilities? Generally they panic at some level; at the least the person becomes very uncomfortable. The low IQ person placed in a society which is best suited to those with substantially higher IQs  is potentially at risk of suffering such stress far more often than the higher IQ individual. Most dramatically, low IQ is associated with mental illness, viz:

“Many people with psychiatric disorders appear to have a lower than average level of intelligence prior to developing mental illness, study findings suggest. Dr Erik Lykke Mortensen, from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and colleagues therefore suggest that poor performance on cognitive tests among psychiatric patients could reflect low intelligence rather than the effects of the mental health disorder. For their study, the researchers identified 350 men in their late 20s who had a range of psychiatric disorders, all of whom had completed an IQ test when 18 years old. In all, nine different groups of psychiatric diagnoses were represented: schizophrenia and schizotypal disorders, other psychotic disorders, mood disorders, neuroses and related disorders, adjustment disorders, personality disorders, alcohol-related disorders, other substance use disorders and other diagnoses. All the psychiatric disorders, with the exception of mood disorders and neuroses and related disorders, were associated with a low IQ score, with scores for patients with the average scores for patients in the other psychotic disorders group 8 points below average, while they were 13 points below average for those in the substance use disorders group. Neither the social status of the parents nor the presence of psychiatric illness in the parents could explain the low IQ scores seen in the men.” Low intelligence linked to a range of psychiatric disorders.

http://www.patienthealthinternational.com/ncm.aspx?type=news&param=9145 11 November 2005

It is conceivable that the stress low IQ people experience in a high IQ society may be in part the cause of this greater incidence of mental illness. That could explain why blacks in Britain are massively over-represented in the mental health system while in countries such as Jamaica the incidence is not abnormally high. I say could because the difference between the incidence in Britain and Jamaica could be simply a reflection of the vastly different mental health resources in the two countries. There may also be an issue of racial discrimination: the Black Londoner’s Forum claims African Caribbean’s are 44% more likely to be sectioned, 29%more likely to be forcibly restrained, 50% more likely to be placed in seclusion and make up 30% of in patients on medium secure psychiatric wards, despite having similar rates of mental illness as British white people.

The behaviour of a low IQ individual in a high IQ society will largely depend on two things: the opportunity to live a life within the limits of their intellect and the extent to which their lives are controlled by the group in which they live.

A low IQ individual with a secure job asking little by way of skill or intellect but paying enough to allow the individual to marry and raise a family, can live a life which is neither socially disruptive nor unfulfilling for the person or those associated with him or her. The stability of such a person’s life will be increased by support mechanisms such as a closely integrated community, civil society institutions such as unions and friendly societies and the universal state provision of such necessities as education, healthcare and welfare. If the low IQ individual lives in a community with those who are of generally higher IQ, their behaviour can assist the low IQ individual to exist by offering assistance through direct help, example and the fact that the higher IQ individuals create a more secure and efficient society through their general behaviour and abilities. In addition, such a community can directly shape the behaviour of the low IQ individual by setting socially beneficial standards and norms which would be less likely to exist in a community of low IQ individuals.

Where a high IQ society removes or diminishes the opportunities for those with low IQs to live comfortably their behaviour will become more anti-social. For example, policies such as mass immigration and “free trade” diminish the quantity of work and the level of wages available to the lower IQ individual through increased job competition within the domestic market and the export of jobs. In addition, immigrants increase competition for community provided social goods such as healthcare and this bears most heavily on those with low IQs because they are disproportionately found amongst the poor. In such circumstances those with low IQs will be more prone to crime, unemployment, welfare dependency, poverty and social alienation.

The propensity for anti-social behaviour is enhanced where the elite inflates the sense of victimhood of a minority group which has a weak IQ profile. The trait has four strands: first, there is the overt promotion of the group’s victimhood by the elite; second, there is the removal from public debate of criticism of the group, third, the operation of double standards when dealing with the “victim” group and the rest of the population and fourth, the creation of formal privileges (affirmative action) and covert privileges (equality laws).

American blacks are a prime example of what happens when a low IQ ethnic group exists within an advanced society and the reins of the high IQ majority are slackened. They have a much higher rate of anti-social behaviour now, especially in areas such as illegitimacy and single parenthood, than they did before Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” legislation, a time of overt segregation in the South and widespread  racial  discrimination everywhere. The anti-social behaviour of blacks on average was higher than that of the majority white population even before the legislation in the 1960s, but their natural tendency to produce antisocial behaviour was restricted by the white majority behaviour which neither fed a sense of victimhood nor diminished the number of jobs most blacks could do by allowing vast immigration, increased imports and outsourcing. Nor was there the vast panoply of publicly funded support, both at the federal and state level, to make not working a viable proposition.

Regardless of race, the lower the IQ the more dependent a person is on the support of the group. Modern advanced societies, especially those in countries such as Britain and the USA, provide an ever weaker system of social support as the natural support groups from the family to a person’s social class are actively undermined by the trend towards greater general affluence and the increasing withdrawal of the state from the control of economic activity through their elites’ commitment to “globalism”, which  is  a curious hybrid of the laissez faire  version of internationalism which extols the free movement of goods and services and people and the Left Internationalist ideal of humanity as a single social entity. This elite commitment, seen in its most extreme form in Britain over the past quarter century, undermines the opportunities for those at the lower end of the IQ distribution to gain and hold a job which is within their capabilities and which can  provide them with an income which will allow them to live an independent life.

The opening of national markets to imports from lower cost countries such as China destroys home based manufacturing, which however efficient cannot compete with producers who pay a tiny fraction of what a Western employer must pay both in terms of wages and in meeting the other bureaucratically imposed costs such as those relating to social security and health and safety.

Added to cheap imports are the mass immigration of cheap labour and the export of jobs such as call centre posts to low cost countries such as India. (Generally, employers who have to compete globally are ruthless in cutting staff). Finally, in the name of removing protectionist behaviour, governments are prevented by the treaties they have themselves signed from subsidising employers in their own countries.

The other side of the disadvantage coin is the movement towards the dismantling of the Welfare State on the ostensible grounds that it is “too costly”. In reality, this mentality is the consequence of globalism, which has greatly reduced democratic control in the First World  by  weakening the position of labour through the lowering of protectionist  barriers and the cheap labour produced  by  mass immigration and by the committing of nation-states to international treaties which restrict national action and impinge upon the sense of ethnic solidarity.

Mass immigration provides not only immediately increased competition for scarce social goods, but causes a weakening of the will of the majority to support social provision because there is a reluctance to fund social goods for those who are seen as ethnically different.

The upshot of the weakening of social provision and individual ethnic help is, of course, an increased inability of those with weak IQs to live comfortably or fulfilling in an advanced society. At best they risk being reduced to permanent pensioners of the more intellectually able members of their society.