As one of the few people these days that actually thinks for himself I have been grappling with the issue of intelligence for a while. Could it be that my intuition in nearly two decdes of life is right: are african-americans less intelligent than europeans on average? what about women?
By intelligence i mean IQ. Peoplle like to make a point about saying that "there are many different intelligences." well my reaction is mixed. If your talking about one's communuciation i'd say and i'd be backed by the evidence in saying that women are better at communicating. It appears east africans are better long distance runners than east asians. But these are not intelligences.
So i think that there is one identfiable thing that we call intelligence/IQ. IQ measures one ability to do things like invent a new technology, get a PHD in chemistry, etc. Some people who get very upset about people who ackowledge the black-white IQ gap often forget it seems or don't realize that IQ is by no means the be all end all. It doesn't mean that you are a worse person or an inferior person or that you won't get married.
Though the IQ gap between men and women is far, far less pronounced in the data and in life than the black-white IQ gap is, one sences a slight gap nonetheless. I certainly believe men are naturally more inclined towards poltics and the external world-poltics, war, sports- in general while women are far more inclined towards there direct surroundings-there friends, children, etc. But i also feel that men have a more robust intelligence that is better on average at seeing and sencsing complexties and articulating them. We know that men are less emotion in there thinking and that women are far more emotional and intuitive, more swayed by intagible breezes of emotion and feeling than men. Inturn men's temperment makes them more suited to not just war and more physically strenous occupations like lumbering, construction, etc but also, and this is more controversial, towards poltics and goverance. Now before i exsplain why i believe this fully, let me state the following:
Since men have large bodies and muscles more equipt for war and strenous farming work, women been the child bearers obviously for millenia have been the ones inside in the home with the children and men have been the ones outside, working, fighting, building. This much is obvious. Now evoultionarily her's why i think this set up has made men today more equipt and inclined toward goverance and poltics. Since men were the one's, as i said, outside, warring, they have also since ancient times been the ones governing communitys while there wives stayed in there indivual homes. The men went to war and thus after and between and before wars they were the ones who both ran the armys and naturally inturn ran societys, wheather that be in a dictorial manner or a democratic way.
And since men have, more or less, exclusively been running and governing there societys for time on memorial, it would be logical to think evoultionarily, that men's minds and temperments, over millions of years, became inclined and suited to the task of goverance than women who for all those millions of years where inside, by nesscity, in the domestic sphere while men governed. If you reject the religous view of divine creation of man and woman and all of earth, this would seem to be the obvious exsplanation for why men are so heavily and disportionatly intrested and involved in poltics and goverance.
And in addition, consider that the male temperment is much more suited for poltics, men are more domineering they want to be in control more and hate being under the control of women far more than women do vice versa, men are also far more competive than women and compeition is central to poltics as it is inherently central in sports and war (2 areas where men are unquestioned to be more naturally more equipt and inclined than women).
Feminists would claim as a responce, that women aren't less intrested and inclined and invested in poltics, they are just as inclined towards and intrested in poltics as men, but that men are oppressing them and preventing women from partxcipating in goverment and poltics as much as men. This claim may have been true in 1939 or 1956 but it's not true as of 2010 (aka now). Women are encouraged to parcipate in poltics and goevrnance as they and blacks have been encouraged for decades.
Now women are perhaps as passionate about poltics as men and women at the bottom of the IQ bell cover are, perhaps more poltically intrested than there male equivalents. But the nature of male IQ distruption is more polarized, with more people at the extreme ends of extremly high intelligence and extremly low intelligence. In fact the top male IQ's are higher than the top female IQ's as is the median male IQ and the lowest male IQ's. There are 10 times as many male autistics than female autistics.
Back to passion about poltics: women at all ends of the IQ/socio-economic spcetrum are very if not more passionate about poltics than man are. But they are not as intrested or informed about poltics as man are. This was something especially prevalent and observable just 16 months ago during the 2008 presidential election between Obama and McCain. Girls/Women (i never know which to say) where very often downright hysterical and delirous with emotion in favor of then Senator Barak Obama. Across the country for months, women fainted and weeped and shouted and wept at Obama rallies often at the very sight of Obama as he entered the stage. During, Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic nation convention, millions of Americans watched on TV as Obama spoke clip after clip of women and young women shedding tears in the audience , like so many clips of young women in the audience of Beatle's concerts and Elvis concerts in the 50's and 60's. Indeed, if there is a concert, a poltical rally of great size you can be assured if any one assembled there is weeping or shouting and crying in adulation in the bleechers it is a young sweet girl and/or smitten women. Women as i say, are mmore intrested in human stories, in people, in feelings than statstics and abstracts compared to men. Compared to men, women are far less intrested in debating about the federal deficit, but they are more intrested in the new episode of Desperate Housewives. Women are more inclined towards being nurses than mathemeticians. So while men in the audience can look admirably at Obama as he speaks because they support some or all of his policies, women weep because they adolize the man though they may agree with many of his policies. A polticians personality his "vibe" is more important to women than it is to men. Women are very intuitive. They get feelings about people, they read things on a man's face and make assumptions which are often right. One of my ex-girlfriends and i where reading the book "the Female Brian" and we got to a part on female intuition and we talked and she said that she and "all women" can see everything "in a guy's face. We know about things without being told. We can feel it." This is useful and helpful for women and girls (perhaps) when it comes to there intuition about the boy there daughter brings home being no good but it can get in the way and be problematic when it comes to poltics and deciding wheather to vote for Obama (handsome, charsmatic) or McCain (old, grumpy, un-charsmatic). And all this reflected in the inquires into the differences between men and women when it comes to politics. Many studies have just asked a large samples of men and women for the reason they voted the way they did and they all show the same thing. Which is that women when exsplaining, say, why they voted for Obama rather than McCain, cited factors unrelated to policys far more than men. In effect, women have answers like this to the question of why they voted for obama a lot more than men did:
"Um, i'm voting for Obama because i think that, well, we really like need a change right now and Obama has like a very good heart and i think he has like good intention for the country and everybody and really is gonna like put our country in the right direction. He really is a good man who cares for the people and i think he has a good heart and really like really really cares about the people and the disadvantaged too"
While on average men, as i'll these studies show, give answers like:
"I voted for Obama because i think we need to get out of Iraq and because he seems to understand the problems America has alot better than Bush did. Um.....and i think he's going to spend more money here in the US rather than abroad in wars and stuff more than Bush did which is good."
I'm not saying as you can see that the average male voter is super-eloquent and informed and that the female average voter is comparably so ditzy or uninformed, the average voter of both gender i=are both pretty un-informed and unarticulate but still on average women vote on superficialy reactions to poltician than issues compared to men which makes sence from an evoultionary standpoint: mothers have to be able to decide for thousands of years whether there daughter or son's potential mate is of good charcter, so they have to get good and devlope a good isntict at making quick superficial intuitive judgments of people/men's charcters and intentions while men for thousands of years had to do that but also had to judge/vote for men on a more cerberal, un-superficial basis while they ran society for thousands of years. In other words for thousands of years, the kind of judgments analgous to voting for a president today that women exsperienced was judging the charcter of there progenies potential friends or mates while men for thousands of years had to do both that and had to make judgments much more similiar to modern voting while they ran society and had to vote among there gender which other man should be tribeleader or whatever.
Thus it would make sence that women that having only in the last, more or less, century gained the right to vote would have a more primitive/superficial/visceral mode of judging/voting for or against polticians.
Men have been running societies and choosing which man should get the top job for thousands of years while women just started less than a 100 years ago.
So leaving aside wheather men have a more robust or complex intelligence than women on average, i think its clear, from a evoultionary stand point, that women have (on average ofcourse) minds less inclined and equpt towards poltics, voting and popular democracy. They may be better at decteting bad charcter or bad traits in men as potential husbands but they are worse on average at anyalzing the issues and voting on that basis alone for a candiate.
By the way, i forsee the criticism that "well, men are not enterily rational voters either, they vote on superficialities too." This is completly true. Men today as they have for centurys promoted/voted for other men on primitive/superficial basis' such as a candiate is bald or strong or weak or old or young or married or single. Ofcourse, this is human nature. I just think that men on, average, consider non-superficial aspects like issues, etc. more than women.
And finally, let me make clear that i am not calling women inferior. I am saying that evoultion is to blame and who knows, maybe women will take over and/or dominate the poltical spehere for the next thousand years and by the year 3010 men will be less inclined and equipt for voting on the issues alone.
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