Many years ago, in what seems like lifetimes past, I used to work as a psychiatric aide. For the most part, my job was confined to assisting the mentally retarded. I was responsible for the care, training, and education of my charges, along with teams of other people. “Teams” of anything was big in the couple of places where I worked. My last stop in that career was a state hospital. For the most part, the state hospital was occupied by residents that the private sector didn’t want. It was an eye opener for me. Without being exposed to such beings, one misses out on some very important nuances which relate to intelligence and behavior and some bridges to both.
As I stated, these people, for what ever reasons (mostly behavioral) were not wanted by the private facilities. My charges had wide ranges in mental functionalities. At the time, and I don’t know it is still in use, we gave numerical values to the functional levels of their mental capacities, as opposed to the archaic descriptive designations, such as moron and imbecile. Instead we used levels numbered 1-5. One being what was described as being “normal functioning” and 5 being the lowest of functioning. It didn’t escape my notice that the professional had mislabeled some of them. The reason for this is because normative behavior isn’t only ruled by intelligence. For instance, just because a person can’t or won’t do things we think they should able to do doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re too stupid to perform these functions.
In a great example of this, we had one person who would periodically urinate on his room’s heater. It was assumed that he did this because he was confused by the shape of his heater and the shape of a trough urinal. In other words, they thought he was too stupid to understand the difference. “Joe” as I’ll call him, wasn’t confused by this. As it turns out, he related to me that he would do this from time to time because he believed president Johnson had told him to do so. Mind you this occurred circa mid 1980s. Joe had been labeled as a level 3. I’m not sure Joe had ever told this to anyone other than me. Joe wasn’t being mischievous nor malicious. Nor was Joe too stupid to understand where he should and shouldn’t urinate. Joe was insane. Joe’s history of institutional settings went back further than our records did. Joe adopted behaviors from other institutionalized people. This masked his insanity and made professionals tend to think he was retarded vs crazy. I have no idea if Joe would have been labeled “normal” were it not for his insanity. Now, most of us don’t have the “level” of insanity, for the lack of a better term, but all of us have idiosyncrasies.
But, crazy and/or stupid weren’t the only things which I observed. There was, in some, a certain maliciousness. And, yes, it exceeded obvious motives for self. Once a person understands that morality and intelligence are related, this is easy to understand. Morality, for most of us, is enforced until it is learned. Young children don’t know stealing is wrong. They are told not to do it until they intellectually mature to understand why it is wrong. Some, of course, never get to that point. Some are simply too stupid to understand the intelligence of morality. Yes, some can understand there are consequences to their actions, and possible punishment, but they don’t understand why it is wrong. In my work at the time this was easier to observe than simply observing normal people. While I did observe some with a seeming innate morality, this wasn’t necessarily common. What was more common was that most were given to a more innate maliciousness. Some of it was constrained by the knowledge of negative consequences, while others, regardless of their knowledge of negative consequences, their impulse towards malice removed the constraints.
So, why am I sharing this with the reader? Because in some people who carry a label of “normal” intelligence it’s very difficult to ascertain why they do what they do. But, there are some things we can discern from their behavior. For instance, for people who can’t understand why morality is preferred, we know they lack the intellectual maturity to do so, if they aren’t otherwise inhibited by some form of insanity. And if they lack the intellectual maturity to understand morality, then we can expect some very simplistic thinking in their other endeavors.
Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit
I believe these people, lacking insanity as an explanation, are too stupid to understand the lack of morality, or the malice of their advocacy, but, make no mistake, it is malice they are exhibiting. No person, above the age 16, or with an IQ above about 110 could possibly think this is a good idea. And, they are unconstrained by the belief they will suffer any negative consequences of their actions. They believe they are beyond the reach of consequences.
Read about the malice and stupidity here, here, and here.
h/t Lat
suyts space 
For those that had any lingering doubt that our Wealth Redistibutor in Chief was a clear and present danger…
Behavior that is reenforced continues. sometimes maybe
Alfred
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
That is a deep and heartfelt analysis, and I think true. The scandal in Italy with the Mafia owned wind farms is apposite.
I have observed it over and over that humanists and progressives seem to believe in an inherent goodness in man. They seem nonplussed when this doesn’t work in practice. The Mafia wind farm example is one of these, since who could possibly seek to rort a program which is trying to save the world?
Of course wind farms don’t save the world, but the greens believe they do, so they have blind spot when it comes to malicious intent.
Just as seeing free money being ripped off by the Mafia in Italy, it is inevitable that free money from this program will be ripped off too. And, if not monitored it will be huge. Ninja loans upon ninja loans.
You can do this stuff reasonably successfully if you keep a watch rigorously. People tend to behave ever so much better when they are watched. No internal moral instinct is then required. But progressives never seem to put in the checks and supervision that is required to deter bad behaviour. I don’t know why this should be when anyone with eyes can see that some people cannot be trusted to do the best even for themselves. But they can sometimes behave reasonably well if watched and with a degree of imposed discipline. But progressive pollies never seem to do this, they just want to shovel out the money. Which results in Chicago and Detroit.
At the bottom of everything your comment Suyts is worth remembering about our own selves. We all are crazy in some way. If we keep this in mind we can gate-keep our own thoughts. Not always successfully, but perhaps enough to avoid inappropriately peeing on the heater in our own particular way.
When they are watched closely, it seems all of a sudden there is a statistically insignificant
determination with the temperature. And then they want to move the goal post, yet again!
So true. I think I posted on that once. When did the temps start to level out? When skeptics became engaged in the climate science.
Yep, it makes sense, but is doesn’t stop them globull warmers from trying as they keep shoveling it out. 😆
Thank you, Bruce. I was hopeful my insights were not glossed over. I wanted to go into much greater detail, but, realized it would be too verbose for a blog post.
I should say, I, too, believe there is an inherent goodness to man. But, there is also an inherent malice, as well. I write this, not for your benefit, but for those who may be reading our comments. I think you already believe this, as well.
It is that I find the malice wins out more often with the less intelligent, because they are incapable of seeing the benefits of morality. As you note, people are so much better behaved when being watched.
Yes, its the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whatever anyone believes this is a good empirical philosphy to use. Simple things like supervision do work. Conversely relying on some sort of inherent goodness is not supported by visible reality.
I had an alpha male cat once who would behave fine when I was around. He knew the rules. But he would wait until I was gone and pound on my other cat. Once I caught him…cats don’t like being hosed! And that’s what he got, the nuclear option. It is not so bad an idea to think of humans as cats from a naughtiness perspective, and engineer accordingly.
“I believe these people, lacking insanity as an explanation, are too stupid to understand the lack of morality, or the malice of their advocacy, but, make no mistake, it is malice they are exhibiting. No person, above the age 16, or with an IQ above about 110 could possibly think this is a good idea. And, they are unconstrained by the belief they will suffer any negative consequences of their actions. They believe they are beyond the reach of consequences.”
I think they are right in this belief. While the leaders of various authocratic regimes of the past have suffered personal consequences, the general rule is that authocrats get away with what they do, or at least manage to escape with bundles of loot. A rational assessment of the risk indicates that it’s a risk worth taking.
After SHTF, they can always say they had good intentions.
“No person, above the age 16, or with an IQ above about 110 could possibly think this is a good idea.”
Here is the fatal flaw in your logic. You have to assume they have an IQ above 110. Why? We are told that Gore is so smart (I actually believe he is smart enough to know that he is running a scam), Kerry is so smart, and Obama is so smart, yet Bush 43 is so stupid. Why?
The people parroting that nonsense are merely projecting their own beliefs onto intelligence. While many smart people do go to Ivy league schools, they do not have a monopoly on smart people, nor is everyone who goes there smart. It is an assumption to think otherwise.
The truth is none of them are very smart, and some (like Kerry) are actual morons. But you have been told they are smart, and so you have to assume since they are smart, then their actions are malice.
When the truth is probably that they are just morons.
Functional morons. Some of the dumbest people I know have PhD’s. Earning a PhD requires zero original thought.
Parrots
have
Degrees
As to evil, one need not know one is evil, to be evil. Skeeter probably thinks he is doing ‘good’. And because leftists lack principles, they are forever self-justifying their means to their end.
I am going to disagree with you here, gator, for leftists have faith, principles, and rituals they adhere to. They’ll fight and fight and fight for them far longer than nearly any other group of ‘religious’ people I know. What they don’t accept, though, is that their faith, principles and rituals are all evil because they deny God. Indeed, some of their principles blaspheme God. They are, in many ways, Satan in human form.
I agree they have faith and rituals, but not principles. You are confusing ‘principle’ with ‘agenda’.
Definition of PRINCIPLE 1 a : a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption
b (1) : a rule or code of conduct (2) : habitual devotion to right principles
c : the laws or facts of nature underlying the working of an artificial device
Principles would prevent the left from achieving their agendas, and may be why they have wholly abandoned them.
And yes, they are Godless.
Okay, they do have 1.a., in spades; but they have to hide them. They also have 1.b.1 but not 1.b.2 nor 1.b.3. Not the same thing as not having them. Agendas, I definitely agree with you there. To implement them, the underlying principle 😛 is to lie, loudly and repeatedly, then deny that they are promulgating lies.
“fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption”
They change direction with the wind, absolutely nothing grounds or guides them other than agenda. There is not a rule or assumption they will not break, self imposed or otherwise.
Hot/Cold
Wet/Dry
More or less snow
Drought/Flood
Etc…