The two human intelligence levels
There are two intelligence levels at which humans can function. The first is the default level. It is the result of millions of years of evolution. It responds instinctively to stimuli. Level one people function best and naturally in small tribes and groups as their animal ancestors did. These people are jingoistic and favor a stratified society with a royal class. They typically are blindly, mindlessly, faithfully obedient to their tribal leaders and priests. On the other hand, if they rebel, they can be independent and brutal and tend to be lawless and unruly. They don’t have a solid foundation of values. They hold others to high standards and themselves to low or no standards. They are attracted to religions and rituals, which artificially satisfy their conscience needs.
The second level consists of those who are enlightened. Advanced reasoning, morals and critical thinking are possible at this level. At the second level, humans are capable of supporting broader societies and universal ideals, principles and values. They are able to rise above their innate animal instincts. They’re capable of judging right and wrong independently. They hold themselves to high standards and others to lower standards. They comprise no more than eight percent of the American population.
Level one humans respond most readily to visual stimuli since thought takes place in the optical cortex at the back of the brain. The location of the thought center is an insight into the priority of thinking in humans. It is the last priority. Automatic reflex action is critical to survival. For instance, the sight of an object hurdling toward a person requires a person to duck or dodge immediately to avoid injury or death. If a person takes time to consciously analyze what to do, it might be too late to avoid harm.
Just as a person reflexively lets go of a hot object long before the conscious mind says the object is too hot, so the visual sense needs to be processed in the subconscious brain before the message is relayed to the conscious segment of the brain.
At level one, a person can hold contradictory views, and deeply believe both equally. Psychologists call this phenomenon “cognitive dissonance.” When Bill Clinton was involved in a questionable $60,000 real estate deal, level one people were morally outraged and went ballistic. When George W. Bush, who they believed to be part of their own tribe, paid over $16 million of their tax dollars to Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted embezzler and international con-man, there wasn’t a peep of protest. The disclosure that misinformation was all Bush got for his large payments also failed to generate any outrage. Rank and file people can imagine $60,000 and probably have a net worth equal to or slightly larger than that amount. It’s difficult for them to imagine $16 million. The larger the amount, the more amorphous it is to a level one mind and the more difficult it is to visualize and therefore comprehend.
Ronald Reagan’s handlers decided to instill in him an image of $1 trillion, the amount of the U.S. national debt in 1980, so that he could attack Jimmy Carter for fiscal irresponsibility. The handlers knew they needed to reduce the debt to an image for Reagan, a level one thinker, to understand it. They calculated that $1 trillion in thousand dollar bills stacked on top of each other would make a 67-mile-high pillar. With this image in mind Reagan went on the attack stating: “President Carter, if you can’t balance the budget, step aside because I can.”
Carter should have asked: “But, will you?” Reagan didn’t. It took 200 years to run up $1 trillion national debt. It took Ronald Reagan one term of “Reaganomics” to run up another $1 trillion in debt. In his second term, Reagan ran the debt up to $3 trillion. Not one complaint came from level one followers of Reagan whose brains are incapable of grasping amounts that large even in the image of three pillars of 67 mile high stacks of $1,000 bills. To his credit, in 1980 George H. W. Bush correctly labeled Reaganomics “Voodoo economics.” However, when Bush became president in 1989, he continued “voodoo economics” and added $1.5 trillion to the national debt.
Jean Rostand observed this level one phenomenon decades ago when he wrote: “Kill a man, you’re a murderer; kill millions, you’re a conqueror; kill everyone, you’re a god.” Level one people can visualize a dead person and see themselves there. They can’t visualize millions of dead people. Joseph Stalin said it more simply: “To kill one person is murder; to kill a million is a mere statistic.”
Every person with normal intelligence is capable of thinking at the second level. However, it’s like learning a language and must be done deliberately and with determination. Like a language, it’s likely that the brain reserves a window of opportunity at which it is most receptive to advanced intellectual development. Like language, the window most likely occurs during adolescence. Recent studies reveal that the closure time is near age 25. Advanced thinking and ethics, as opposed to moral relativism, are closely related.
Religion not only does not implant moral behavior, it more often is the source of immoral behavior. Christianity, the world’s most practiced religion is responsible for more murders than all other religions combined. European Christians killed tens of millions of natives in the American New World alone. World War II was mostly Christians killing Christians. Over 60 million people died in that madness.
The natural animal order strongly resists development of higher intelligence. Nature is conservative and prefers that which has stood the test of time. Higher intelligence is relatively new in the five billion years of our solar system’s existence.
Level one humans have a pack mentality. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the survival of the herd. That’s why they make good soldiers. They believe in total subordination to the alpha member of the herd. They identify more closely with jingoism, or blind, mindless obedience to tribal leaders, than with patriotic loyalty to high ideals, principles and values.
In the U.S. about 90% of the people are level one thinkers. Consequently, they are not at the mental, moral or maturity level necessary to sustain a democracy. It’s unlikely that Americans ever will reach that level because their religion and economic system, which glorifies greed and selfishness, counter any movement toward the selflessness and altruism necessary for a civilized society. The innate animal behavior dominates any humanitarian inclinations.
Rulers do everything in their power to preserve the bi-level structure. While the rulers are aware of the enlightened and non-enlightened order, they, with few exceptions, belong to the non-enlightened order. The most corrupt of the first strata have the greatest drive to become leaders of the peasants and proles, and they are the most willing to exploit, bully and dupe their fellow humans. The tribal propensities of the peasants allow them to be stampeded into whatever adventures, usually misguided, serves the desires of the rulers.
The “enlightened eight” percent of Americans who have developed the ability to think at level two can’t communicate at that level and get through to level one people any more than someone who speaks and writes only Chinese can communicate with someone who speaks and writes only French. Only when the level one belief system destroys itself, as happened in the economic collapse of the 1920s and 30s, will those people be able to question the flaws and contradictions in their beliefs and be able to advance to level two.
The question remains, can the majority of people be educated into the enlightened level?
The second level consists of those who are enlightened. Advanced reasoning, morals and critical thinking are possible at this level. At the second level, humans are capable of supporting broader societies and universal ideals, principles and values. They are able to rise above their innate animal instincts. They’re capable of judging right and wrong independently. They hold themselves to high standards and others to lower standards. They comprise no more than eight percent of the American population.
Level one humans respond most readily to visual stimuli since thought takes place in the optical cortex at the back of the brain. The location of the thought center is an insight into the priority of thinking in humans. It is the last priority. Automatic reflex action is critical to survival. For instance, the sight of an object hurdling toward a person requires a person to duck or dodge immediately to avoid injury or death. If a person takes time to consciously analyze what to do, it might be too late to avoid harm.
Just as a person reflexively lets go of a hot object long before the conscious mind says the object is too hot, so the visual sense needs to be processed in the subconscious brain before the message is relayed to the conscious segment of the brain.
At level one, a person can hold contradictory views, and deeply believe both equally. Psychologists call this phenomenon “cognitive dissonance.” When Bill Clinton was involved in a questionable $60,000 real estate deal, level one people were morally outraged and went ballistic. When George W. Bush, who they believed to be part of their own tribe, paid over $16 million of their tax dollars to Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted embezzler and international con-man, there wasn’t a peep of protest. The disclosure that misinformation was all Bush got for his large payments also failed to generate any outrage. Rank and file people can imagine $60,000 and probably have a net worth equal to or slightly larger than that amount. It’s difficult for them to imagine $16 million. The larger the amount, the more amorphous it is to a level one mind and the more difficult it is to visualize and therefore comprehend.
Ronald Reagan’s handlers decided to instill in him an image of $1 trillion, the amount of the U.S. national debt in 1980, so that he could attack Jimmy Carter for fiscal irresponsibility. The handlers knew they needed to reduce the debt to an image for Reagan, a level one thinker, to understand it. They calculated that $1 trillion in thousand dollar bills stacked on top of each other would make a 67-mile-high pillar. With this image in mind Reagan went on the attack stating: “President Carter, if you can’t balance the budget, step aside because I can.”
Carter should have asked: “But, will you?” Reagan didn’t. It took 200 years to run up $1 trillion national debt. It took Ronald Reagan one term of “Reaganomics” to run up another $1 trillion in debt. In his second term, Reagan ran the debt up to $3 trillion. Not one complaint came from level one followers of Reagan whose brains are incapable of grasping amounts that large even in the image of three pillars of 67 mile high stacks of $1,000 bills. To his credit, in 1980 George H. W. Bush correctly labeled Reaganomics “Voodoo economics.” However, when Bush became president in 1989, he continued “voodoo economics” and added $1.5 trillion to the national debt.
Jean Rostand observed this level one phenomenon decades ago when he wrote: “Kill a man, you’re a murderer; kill millions, you’re a conqueror; kill everyone, you’re a god.” Level one people can visualize a dead person and see themselves there. They can’t visualize millions of dead people. Joseph Stalin said it more simply: “To kill one person is murder; to kill a million is a mere statistic.”
Every person with normal intelligence is capable of thinking at the second level. However, it’s like learning a language and must be done deliberately and with determination. Like a language, it’s likely that the brain reserves a window of opportunity at which it is most receptive to advanced intellectual development. Like language, the window most likely occurs during adolescence. Recent studies reveal that the closure time is near age 25. Advanced thinking and ethics, as opposed to moral relativism, are closely related.
Religion not only does not implant moral behavior, it more often is the source of immoral behavior. Christianity, the world’s most practiced religion is responsible for more murders than all other religions combined. European Christians killed tens of millions of natives in the American New World alone. World War II was mostly Christians killing Christians. Over 60 million people died in that madness.
The natural animal order strongly resists development of higher intelligence. Nature is conservative and prefers that which has stood the test of time. Higher intelligence is relatively new in the five billion years of our solar system’s existence.
Level one humans have a pack mentality. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the survival of the herd. That’s why they make good soldiers. They believe in total subordination to the alpha member of the herd. They identify more closely with jingoism, or blind, mindless obedience to tribal leaders, than with patriotic loyalty to high ideals, principles and values.
In the U.S. about 90% of the people are level one thinkers. Consequently, they are not at the mental, moral or maturity level necessary to sustain a democracy. It’s unlikely that Americans ever will reach that level because their religion and economic system, which glorifies greed and selfishness, counter any movement toward the selflessness and altruism necessary for a civilized society. The innate animal behavior dominates any humanitarian inclinations.
Rulers do everything in their power to preserve the bi-level structure. While the rulers are aware of the enlightened and non-enlightened order, they, with few exceptions, belong to the non-enlightened order. The most corrupt of the first strata have the greatest drive to become leaders of the peasants and proles, and they are the most willing to exploit, bully and dupe their fellow humans. The tribal propensities of the peasants allow them to be stampeded into whatever adventures, usually misguided, serves the desires of the rulers.
The “enlightened eight” percent of Americans who have developed the ability to think at level two can’t communicate at that level and get through to level one people any more than someone who speaks and writes only Chinese can communicate with someone who speaks and writes only French. Only when the level one belief system destroys itself, as happened in the economic collapse of the 1920s and 30s, will those people be able to question the flaws and contradictions in their beliefs and be able to advance to level two.
The question remains, can the majority of people be educated into the enlightened level?
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