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Unsmart JewsDisproportionate Jews & Ignorant IntellectualsThe Pursuit of HappinessAlmost two and a half centuries ago a group of fiercely independent men got together and created a document that cracked the foundation of monarchy that had dominated for 1000s of years. The document known as The Declaration of Independence not only denied the privileges of royalty, but disqualified the legitimacy of any government that failed to secure the happiness—yes, "happiness"—of its citizens. The Declaration claimed that all people are born equal with self-evident, inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Governments are formed to defend those rights. They have no other justification.The right to "Life" implied access to food, clothing and shelter. Today we would include medical care and education in the package of basics. Today however we don't speak of people's rights, "self-evident", "inalienable" or otherwise. The word Liberty in the declaration connected Life to the Pursuit of Happiness. People's needs form a basis from which to freely (with Liberty) go for their wants. Secure the needs and liberate the wants. Pursue happiness! The Pursuit of Happiness sounds like a quaint idea in an age saturated with lust for wealth, fame, power and possessions. The pursuit of happiness is neither a quaint idea or a moral position, but a guiding light in the adventure of community life. The Declaration of Independence was the fruit of flowering discussions under decades of the Age of Enlightenment. Although written in the New World (the Colonies; the emerging United States of America), it was the summary of European thought. This body of thought blossomed when moved out from beneath the shadow of feudal traditions and could produce fruit in the light of fertile circumstances. The Dim AgeIn contrast to the Enlightenment, today could be called the Age of Dimness (packaged in glitter), where discussions seldom deal with the essentials of life, the conditions of liberty or the requirements of happiness. In the Age of Dimness people discuss their individual problems, confess their desires for new products, gossip about people they don't know and comment on featured sensations and works of fiction (film & TV).We pursue money, not happiness, in the Age of Dimness assuming that money leads to happiness. This is a perversion. Of course we need money for the basics of life. Beyond that, however, more money is like more food to a well-nourished person. More than enough money fattens the soul the way more than enough food fattens the body. Beyond enough wealth to provide the basics of life, wealth provides little satisfaction while generating greed. Greed can never be satisfied and it fosters unhappiness. We even believe the myth that security can be bought; with enough money we can be safe, we can make it, arrive, lay back and enjoy life. The opposite is true. The greater the discrepancy between wealth and poverty (which results from the pursuit of money), the greater the insecurity. For the rich as well as the poor. Instead of the pursuit of happiness people try to drug their unhappiness with entertainment and varied forms of stimulation; any fix to dull the pain of emptiness, that hollow feeling of not being in control, of not playing a responsible role in the events of our times, of being alienated from the body of humanity. We stubble around in virtual blindness in the Age of Dimness. The majority of the intelligentsia—the assumed carriers of knowledge; those who are supposed to light the paths that lead to discovery - administrate the conserving ideas and opinions flowing down from the heights of the prevailing social structure. They are tools to maintain the status quo and keep the citizens entertained, frightened and obedient. They consider themselves informed and aware, but in truth, they are as blind, frightened and obedient as everyone else. Any questioning of the depth or quality of their knowledge or intelligence crashes into the walls of conventional wisdom with which they enclose themselves. Let's take a look at a typical example. A Typical IntellectualMr. Intellectual X has well-functioning mental facilities, highly educated and well-read; a grade A example of an intellectual. He prides himself on being intelligent and considers himself well-informed because he reads prestigious newspapers daily and "heavy" magazines regularly. Yet, in spite of his merits, he houses astonishingly ignorant ideas. Here's one of them.Like many of his peers (and almost all Jews) he believes that Jews are particularly intelligent. This prejudice is a sticky mess on the flip-side of anti-Semitism. The disproportionate number of Jews in successful positions forms the basis of this assumption. How could the Jews have achieved so much disproportionate success in intellectual and commercial enterprises if not endowed with prime intellectual abilities? The Jews don't constitute a racial group. Consequently, they can possess no extraordinary biological characteristics, mental or otherwise. They can have no inherent mental superiority. Talk of a smart gene belongs alongside flat-earth theories. It's nonsense. Intellectual X feels uncomfortable with uncertainty and lacks the knowledge to offer an alternative theory. He therefore swallows the explanation of a smart gene even though it's historically and biologically impossible. Three factors explain the disproportionate success of the Jews.1. Simple PedagogicsVariations of the following experiment are well-known to teaching professionals Select 100 equivalent school classes with 30 pupils each. One of the classes, representing 1% of all pupils, should be stocked with gifted children determined by a battery of intelligence tests.No one should be surprised to learn that the specially selected class of gifted children produces a disproportionate number of pupils with above average results. The class itself has the highest scores of all the other classes. You now ask, "So what?" I lied. The designated class had not been chosen for any particular reason. On the contrary, in order for the experiment to give relevant results, the class was selected at random among the 100 classes. But, the pupils were made to believe that they had been selected because of their unique learning abilities. They believed themselves to be above average intelligence and good at learning. The experiment gives equally positive results when the children are told nothing, but the teacher is told (lied to) that the class is specially selected after a series of tests. Conclusive pedagogic research proves that when students believe themselves to be intellectually superior, they perform better than other students. Even if the teacher alone believes a class to be superior, the class achieves better than average results. Extrapolate this pedagogic experiment to society at large. Make 1% of the population believe that they are God's chosen group, God's favorite people. This alone should produce disproportionate success from the "chosen" group. Should the remaining 99% of the people be made to believe that they are sinners, the degree of disproportionate success will be even greater. Today a massive industry engages experts, gurus and charlatans selling books and consultancy to promote the concept of positive thinking. The Jews have been locked into this affirmative frame of mind long before the think-positive trend came into prominence. This positive/chosen mindset has been augmented by a strong culture wrapped in a reverence for literacy and learning. A positive mindset and a strong culture embracing literacy and learning could alone explain the disproportionate success of Jews. There are however other factors at work here. 2. Forced into the FutureSince the Middle Ages Jews were allowed (at times encouraged) to settle in different countries at different times but were not permitted to own land. Rural living was off-limits. They were forced to settle in urban areas from a time when these areas were hardly more than harbors, market places or small towns; primitive commercial centers. Historical development favored the growth of trade and towns while diminishing the possibilities for farmers and peasants. Discrimination forced the Jews to live in places destined for development. They were confined to historically advantageous places; imbedded in the opportunities of growing commercial centers. They were motivated to become street smart when streets were little more than boards and stones. Today, other people are street smart. The ways of the cities became second nature to the Jews while 95% of the population were plowing away at the dead-ends of a farming way of life.Do the Chinese possess a table tennis gene or the Russians a chess gene? How about an Argentinean tango gene? What abilities do city life encourage. Intellectual and commercial enterprises have been common areas of interest among Jews the way table tennis, chess and tango have been part of the Chinese, Russian and Argentinean cultures. 3. Relatively out of the BoxAs the Jews didn't share the culture at large, they were outsiders. That which was self-evident to the general population was not obvious or even understandable to them. Everything around them was questionable and they had little respect for the authorities and customs that the rest of the population followed obediently. As outsiders the Jews were doubters, questioners. They thought "out of the box" because they were out of the box. They were exposed to perspectives that the dominant culture had difficulty seeing.Einstein is perhaps the best example of the outsider's perspective. His father enrolled him in a Catholic school. A single Jew in a Catholic school! Is it surprising that he went on to develop a theory of relativity? Wouldn't a single Catholic child educated in a Jewish school also become keenly aware of the nature of relativity? ConclusionThese three aspects:1- the (chosen people) positive attitude in a world of sinners 2- discrimination forcing them into centers of development pregnant with opportunities 3- the outsiders questioning perspective and lack of respect for the ruling authorities more than adequately explains the disproportionate success of the Jews. In view of these three aspects, one could even suppose that the Jews haven't been as successful as they could have been. Could it be that the Jews aren't very bright? Most of them can't distinguish between politics and religion. How smart is that? And how smart are the intellectuals who attribute such dimness to a smart gene? © Joel Miller/BenTarZ ⇐ Back - 04 The Word Israel Next - 06 Patriotism ⇒ |