So Red Eye fan Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, emailed me this weekend to tell me about a paper he wrote, due out today in the scientific journal Social PsychologyQuarterly.
It’s entitled “Why liberals and atheists are more intelligent.”
Already I hate it.
See, according to Satoshi, humans are “evolutionarily designed to be conservative and religious, and it is unnatural for them to be liberal and atheists.” But he found that smarter people are more likely to go against their evolutionary design and become liberals and atheists. That kind of rebelliousness doesn’t show up in the rest of us dumb folk, apparently.
A conservative himself, Satoshi says he doesn’t like these findings, but as a scientist he has to publish them. Good for him. Of course, the findings will be trumpeted far and wide by the left – just as it would have been by the right – if the results were different.
Which is poo-hicky. I can safely say that I am smarter than most lefties – so smart, in fact, that I can use words like “poo-hicky” and get away with it.
And here’s why. Satoshi’s is really suggesting that smart people are more likely to experiment, take risks and question the status quo. This makes sense. But this link between intelligence and rebellion is only temporary.
It happens that I was once a pimply-faced liberal, a perfectly normal state of rebellion for a typical attention-seeking teenager. But, after awhile, I started rejecting the easy romance of leftism, as hard reality started hitting me in the face. So,while it takes brains to question the natural state of things, you need even more brains to later question the questioning. Smart people question their parents, but then smarter people realize that after a brief intellectual vacation, their parents were right all along (unless mom or dad is a Baldwin).
Bottom line: braininess isn’t reflected in rebellion against common sense. Instead, it’s rebellion against rebellion that is the proof of highest intelligence of all.That – and an acceptance that unicorns rule and griffins suck.
And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist leprechaun who eats babies.
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