COLUMN: Screw My IQ Test, Let's Play Missile Command

From Corin Brown's "Bonin' in the Bone Yard," Fall '94 Me neither. This question, and other equally preposterous ones, began occurring to me after catching wind of the debate over the recently released The Bell Curve, written by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein. To expose myself to the issue as best I could, I read Newsweek's typically left-wing and sparse 3 page dilution of the debate, and I read The New Republic's typically right-wing and high-minded 27 page dissertation of the debate. Now, I haven't actually read The Bell Curve but as far as I could discern from what I had read in Newsweek and in The New Republic and from what I've heard from other, more casual sources, the authors of The Bell Curve basically drone on for 850 pages about how black people are dumber than white people. That's the way it's been and that's the way it will always be. Period. After absorbing all of this largely pointless drivel, I began to consider an entirely secondary aspect of the whole "blacks-are-dumber-than-whites" melee. I dismissed, with blissful ease the entire empirical assertion in The Bell Curve that blacks are dumber than whites. And soon after my blissful dismissal of that point, I found myself questioning the entire notion of intelligence, IQ's and their impact on an individual's success in life, as well as their overall happiness. I asked myself to what degree, when I do meet someone new, do I judge that person based on their immediately apparent intelligence. Do I even consider someone's intelligence when I meet them? Do I even give any sort of shit at all about someone's IQ? No fucking way! When I consider people I know, whether they're friends, family or acquaintances, the only thing that makes a difference in my mind, is their personality and their character, not intelligence. And I don't think I'm alone either. It is true that most of the people you and I know probably have neither ludicrously high IQ's nor ludicrously low IQ's. That is just the law of averages. Most of us at Penn are of slightly-above average intelligence. But even though I usually do not come in contact with many people at either ends of the intelligence spectrum, that does not mean I have never met a mental midget or a mondo-brain or two. I have. And to tell you the truth, it's usually the mental midget who ends up being cooler than the mondo-brain. Way cooler. The fact remains that unless the person in question is absolutely retarded, no one cares too much about pure unadulterated intelligence. If this were not true, then the world would be run by geeks and not the typically well-adjusted, hard-driven personalities fueled by a much more useful tool for life: work ethic. You can have all the intelligence in the world, but if you're a lazy sack of shit you'll be nothing but a bum. For instance, my parents continuously admonish me, my brother, and our friends for being lazy underachievers with no work ethic. And to a certain extent they're right. My parents know that we are intelligent, but they also recognize that a good solid work ethic is the better attribute to possess, when considering one's future success. I remember when I was in sixth grade, and I complained to my mom that I was just too dumb to grasp algebra, and she drilled me over and over, working my ass off, until I knew algebra like I knew Missile Command and the Red Sox starting lineup. I thought it was a matter of intelligence, but my mom showed me it was a matter of pure desire and work ethic. According to Newsweek, the authors of The Bell Curve attribute personal success entirely to intelligence. If their axiom is so true, then nothing in this world would get accomplished. More often than not, personal success can be traced to a mixture of intelligence and work ethic, rather than intelligence alone. I can't even count the multitude of dumb people I've known through high school and college who succeed and excel solely based on their desire to succeed and excel. That desire coupled with their intense work ethic more than makes up for what they lack in inspiration and intuition. These less genetic qualities of desire and work ethic are what matter in the real world of getting a job and paying the bills. And these qualities (desire and work ethic) are usually ingrained in one's personality and character. I would like to see an actual IQ test. I have never seen one. Nor do I know any one else who has. Nor have I come across anyone who has taken one. And if by some chance I have met someone who has taken it and if by some chance this person scored off the charts, they have known better than to trumpet their score across the land. I guess even the geniuses among us are smart enough to know that in our world of social interaction, personality and character are the standards by which people judge each other. No one really gives a shit about anyone's IQ. Unless, of course they have no idea what the hell life is about. Corin Brown is a senior Political Science major from Newton, Massachusetts. Bonin' In the Bone Yard appears alternate Thursdays.