sultan2075 wrote:[But what about left-wing egalitarianism? Do you really see a basis for that in reality? Recent studies have linked intelligence to biology, which is to say, then, that genetic make-up is in some sense destiny, which is to say, then, that we might maintain a moral equality but be forced by science to recognize a natural inequality.
Hold up a minute. You are touching on a topic that generates endless controversy in the social and biological sciences there - and seem to be presenting it as something that there is a broad consensus on. The findings of a couple of "recent studies", as I would think you'd know, can be used to argue just about anything.
Certainly within psychology, there have been recent studies which have pointed away from this kind of biological/genetic reductionism. I hesitate to say "this way lies eugenics", because everything is the thin end of some wedge, but a focus on any genetic component of intelligence strikes me as utterly futile, if it is not to be used for dangerous and unsavoury purposes.
And even if we remove the threat of eugenics, this focus remains a danger as it leads those who would define themselves as "intelligent people" into complacent attitudes towards those who appear to be less so - and for some reason seem to be overwhelmingly from disadvantaged backgrounds. It would be all too easy to shrug your shoulders and assume that their apparent stupidity- or at the very least, individual moral weakness - is the cause, not the effect, of their poverty and social exclusion. And I'm sure that's what many people with such right-wing views as yourself would do.
I am not necessarily arguing a complete tabula rasa standpoint - it seems to me that our understanding of these hideously complex issues are so poor that no-one can reliably determine the degree of nature and nurture involved in forming human intelligence. I'd tend towards the latter in almost all things but I realise it is not an absolute.
However, I do know that, when I board the bus I take into town, which cuts through a very disadvantaged area of town and which my mother affectionately terms the "Moron Express"... if I was inclined to the right (as I was very briefly, during a late teenage phase of pseudo-Nietzchean self-righteousness that would have embarrassed Ayn Rand), I would look at the people sitting around me, with their mouths hanging open, barely able to string a sentence together without a swear word, and I would think I was somehow superior to them. Maybe genetically, maybe morally... but I'd think we had reached our different places in life due to some inherent individual characteristics or personal efforts, not our vastly differing backgrounds.
As it is, I just look at them and think, "There but for the grace of god go I". I think that's a fundamental difference between left and right, and it's less a difference of cold, hard politics, and more a matter of how you look at other human beings.
