My mother is one of 6 daughters in her family. Four of the 6 married Ukrainian and Russian alcoholics. One married a Ukrainian dentist and another a Jewish linguist.
I’ll let you guess whose children are now a stock trader, a professor, and a CEO and whose… are not.
I also have to mention that 5 of the 6 husbands were total shit, and again, let you guess which one wasn’t.
Your Mom was the one who didn’t marry an idiot? Genetics is interesting in my line of work, when I worked at a preschool the same parents who were glued to the phone during school events and dressed really sloppy had the worst-behaved, dull-witted kids addicted to screens and didn’t know how to play.
It’s clear that the parents were themselves dull-witted and sloppy and had equally dull-witted kids, no one wants to admit dumb people have dumb kids. These kids are the sort who in high school classes refuse to put away their phones and blast obnoxious rap music in class, these kids also cannot speak a sentence without using every variant of the F-word and call each other “nigga” and “bitch”.
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Yes, but how did you guess? 🙂 🙂
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Very good points. I also fully agree that genetics plays a waaay bigger part in a lot of things than unfortunately society is not comfortable with discussing. Charles Murray ‘The Bell Curve’ is an example.
The bad thing is not acknowledging an uncomfortable reality is what prevents us from fully tackling the problems we have.
Because you’re a university professor and you’ve mentioned your dad being Jewish, it was a process of elimination. Since I work in public schools, I rarely encounter Jewish kids outside of preschool and kindergarten after which they often go to private schools. I’ve had random people ask me if I’m Jewish because I have a big nose, wear glasses and read a lot of advanced college level history books, but I am all Cuban Spanish Gentile 😂 As far as I know, I don’t have any blood relatives in the tribe, it would be cool, though
Of course, if a kid who has smart parents is raised in a terrible environment, they are not going to be very successful or even sane. At best they might end up the head of their local crime syndicate or join the military, at worse they could be a serial killer. But the smarts will come out sooner or later, unfortunately usually not in a way that benefits society
IQ is one of multiple factors that determine outcomes. Others are health, time preference, ambition, self-control, and yes, upbringing. Connections matter, too.
On the other hand… IQ may make the biggest difference when it comes to whether or not you can overcome a lousy upbringing.
“IQ is one of multiple factors that determine outcomes”
As a species humans are engineered/evolved to display a wide variety of fitness markers (brains, brawn, cunning, openness, resourcefulness, looks) and no person has all of them.
Modernity has chosen one, IQ, as the biggest single determiner of certain kinds of economic success needed to exist in non-chaotic environments.
This is a really new phenomenon and it’s not…. healthy.
We are living in a world that’s gaining in complexity and that is pushing down the importance of other traits. As we’ve seen recently, for example, extraordinary physical bravery gains you nothing even when it’s broadcast live on TV. Kamala will win because she has high-IQ wordsmiths manipulating the less cognitively gifted on her behalf.
“she has high-IQ wordsmiths manipulating the less cognitively gifted”
Apparently her handlers have decided on a Rorschach campaign, mostly just based on empty banalities and people can read into them whatever they want.
To be clear, that’s what Trump did (and is doing).
Part of the deification of IQ is to actively dumb down public dialogue…
I hate every part of the modern US national political process so much….
Reading old political speeches, and comparing them to whatever passes for political discourse in the Insta-soundbite age… makes one long for the collapse of mass communications.
Those pre-TV candidates weren’t talking to just the smartest and most educated, and they talked at very great length! These days hardly anyone has either the attention span or the verbal comprehension to understand them.
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Or they’ll find a high-paying job, hire an analyst and get rid of the consequences of that bad parenting. That’s my husband’s story.
People always have agency but some don’t exercise it.
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This is a very good point again. Sometimes you do wonder about all those cartel leaders that came from nothing to control basically entire pieces of a country, if not the entire country. I imagine under different upbringing they would be an Elon Musk or some high up executive or politician.
“under different upbringing they would be an Elon Musk or some”
That’s where things like cultural institutions come into play and other factors.
An underappreciated fact is that some things that can be valuable on a micro-level don’t scale up.
Family values are good but….the smaller the family the better. A country where prioritizing family trumps everything else…. falls into dysfunction so that bright driven kids without the right family connections end up as criminals.
Religious observance is good to a certain degree, but a society built around religious observance will fall into stagnation and oppression.
Atheism can work for individuals but society wide enforced atheism leads to decadance and nihilism.
etc etc etc
I agree on personal choice, to quote the band Rush in their song Freewill:
A planet of playthings, we dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive
The stars aren’t aligned or the Gods are malign, blame is better to give than receive
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that’s clear, I will choose Freewill
There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand
The cards were stacked against them they weren’t born in Lotus Land
Sorry for the lyric dump, but I love how the lyrics reflect on how people have free will to live their lives instead of just going along with whatever happens. I agree that people can choose to screw up or do good, even if a person comes from a crappy family and is dull-witted, they can still choose to good instead of just being buffeted by chance.
My brother and I chose celibacy as a reaction to the mess that was our mother’s second marriage, instead of wanting relationships we swore would be great. What people don’t realize is that if one grew up in a dysfunctional family and everyone else did so too, there’s a very strong chance you won’t have a functional relationship.
Instead of dealing with all that, we just decided to be celibate and read a lot instead. He lives with two dogs he dotes on like children and I read a lot and go to church, we’re both teachers. When I see friends and cousins dealing with drama and freaking out over partners and kids, I’m glad I’m single and can read history books in peace
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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