07.+What+is+Intelligence+(February+2006) - Get a Free Blog

What is Intelligence? 87
Watching young children express their opinions to some interviewer
frequently produces hilarious jumbled and half-formed ideas, which
obviously did not ever originate in the child’s own mind, but demonstrate
to us clearly that he or she is learning already at such a young age that the
thing to say is what you think people want to hear, in accordance with
what you have already been told is the right thing to think and say.
The common factor in all these examples, as we have indicated, is that
we have taken on ideas or beliefs or carried out actions that bypassed our
reason. We never mentally engaged in properly assessing the suggestions
and ideas put before us.
As we have been at some pains to point out, the use of authority is a
major part of this.
After all, even in conventional “lie on the couch” hypnosis we are by
implication led to believe the hypnotist is an “expert”, and therefore an
“authority” who knows what we do not, and therefore we become passive
and submissive.
We imagine unrealistically that no idea could be put into our minds
without our knowledge or consent, but the reality is that since we were
knee high, literally thousands of such ideas have been placed in our mind
in exactly such a way.
We accept the authority of the scientist, the expert, for example.
We believe for instance that the earth has a crust that averages about 25
miles thick, and a molten iron core, though we have no way of verifying
either of these “facts” personally, and that the sun is 93 million miles
away, on the scientist’s say so, which again, unless we are scientists
ourselves we have no way of determining whatsoever.
We believe Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, at 29,028
feet (or thereabouts) but again, we only know what we have been told and
cannot possibly determine such a figure ourselves.
Many of us now believe that fatty meat is bad for us, but green vegetables
are good for us, but again, these views were not necessarily believed in
the past, and we are just following the views of the “authorities” and
“experts”, mindlessly accepting these ideas and telling our friends and
neighbours they are wrong if they don’t see things as we have been
programmed to do.