Something that has always bothered me about the attitude of some of the self-help industry is that it encourages everyone to pretend indefinitely. It’s the attitude that all mankind can achieve all things. If you aren’t achieving all things then you must not be saying it in front of the mirror enough. The more that I look at the injustice and inequality of life, the more I find this attitude towards the less fortunate naive. I am reading a couple of books that seem to help clarify some of the disadvantages which prevent people from becoming successful.

The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray explores the role of human intelligence in stratifying society. The
conclusion is that intelligence stratifies more than any other single characteristic, more than race, gender, social class, education, or marital status. The interesting thing about this book is that it explores an alternative explanation of why we are where we are. For the last 55 years the civilized world has tried to explain differences in society from an environmental perspective, denying any genetic factors, which grant someone advantages over anyone else. This explanation seems quite fair (as anti-egalitarian as I am), however, The Bell Curve aggressively challenges this conclusion.

They explain that we inherit some level of IQ from our parents and the amount of IQ we have highly correlates with our options for growth. The fact that social programs can’t easily level the playing field with inherited intelligence has been no small controversy among the liberal intellectuals. The most inflammatory part of the book isn’t that intelligence is partially genetic and that intelligence stratifies more than all other social stratifying factors but that The Bell Curve suggest that the top 5% of holders of high IQ come disproportionate according to race.

They report that their research finds that out of a sample of 100,000 Jewish descendants you will find the most geniuses (a person within the top 5 % of IQ) per 100,000 people. Asian descendants come in second, Caucasians third, and African descendants come in last. The problem with this controversy is that they argue that between 20 to 60 percent of ones IQ comes inherited. Which only leaves 40 to 80 percent to be developed by socialization.

Unfortunately, the political incorrectness of the findings have stunted the public discussion of the startling conclusions of the book, which are not necessarily why some races are smarter, but rather, why IQ is inherited and why IQ stratifies a society more than any other single factor. (To see both sides of the controversy click this link). Recognizing the value of high IQ in income earning potential isn’t as obvious as you might think. 100 years ago high IQ wasn’t nearly as stratifying. There were geniuses that were blacksmiths and genius farmers. Blue-collar workers and low IQ’s had no obvious correlations.

Since the study of intelligence began, however, the industrial revolution happened and governments became more systematic with training soldiers. They conducted basic IQ tests to quickly verify which soldiers could be trained on more complex courses. They began to weed out the smarter people and promote them. The same is true for factory owners. This trend has continued until today. Currently the IQ competition has intensified because of globalization.

The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman is a very insightful explanation of how the world is evolving, primarily that more and more knowledge workers are coming out of India and China. If those of Asian ancestry are on average more intelligent than Caucasians then America has something to worry about because not only are the Asian cultures globalizing and educating themselves in knowledge professions, they are more likely to be smarter too.

Does this mean sudden doom for the less intellectually endowed? I don’t think so. Personally, I don’t see the greatest money making opportunities coming from being an engineer or a programmer, but rather from relationship skills and from calculated risk taking. The thing that we need to get smart about (even though we may be genetically limited to how smart we can get) is to recognize the value of risk taking.

It is almost cliché to say that America is the World leader in innovation. If we as a whole are going to continue as a financial powerhouse, however, we need to not only encourage more specialized training, which is becoming more of a global commodity, but we need to encourage creativity and calculated risk taking. This trend isn't necessarily a nationalistic call to improve. Rather, its a wake up call to individuals around the world that are competing for high wage jobs.

Taking this direction seems to be a dead end route now that the world is flattening. The more access we have to Indian and Chinese professionals, the less capable 1st world knowledge workers are at being the greatest option for any particular service. That is why risk taking is so important. We have to look for niches and changes in the market place and accommodate them in new ways. That can't be instructed in any program because risk taking isn't intellectual. Its emotional. Unless, you want to start outsourcing your engineer's education to a psychology department you can't get close to educating someone on how to act against their fears and uncertainty.

Secondly, the ability to relate with other people gives insight into consumer habits, which correlate with profitability more than professional training or technical education will ever do. The more I hear the discussion about China and India the more I realize that I don’t want to compete against super-genius technicians. I would rather “level the playing field� by more equally distributed talents. That is to say that I much prefer relying on intuition, personability, virtues, and guts. I think that these are the stratifying qualities that will be the most wealth defining characteristic of the next generation. Seems to me that there is an increased level of fairness when we are left to those skills to succeed rather than just intelligence. After all aren't we all equal when it comes to our ability to choose to take risk? Maybe people skills has a level of genetic predisposition. Though, I would hate to find out for fear of being crucified by the propagandist that call all such inquiries racist.

If you want to play on a level playing field, smart or not, you need to recognize the comparative advantage that comes from highly efficient, high IQ, professionally trained laborers that are coming out of the developing economies—specifically China and India. The more that we compete against IQ, the more we are playing to our weaknesses. Of course no one can argue that 19 of the 20 top universities in the world come from the United States. However, Asian students dominate many of the science and technical departments.

Therefore, the comparative advantage for the less competitive IQ holders and less tech minded is going to grow out of cultures that encourage entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurs don’t need to be geniuses. They can import geniuses from the most comparatively advantageous countries. What entrepreneurs need are guts, people skills, and instincts. If you want to beat “The Bell Curve� and if you are ready to accept that “The World Is Flat,� then rather than trying to figure out how you can outdo China with your brains and your technical training, you might do well to work on skills that are less quantifiable which is exactly why they are the strengths that will govern success in the future.