The New York Times Magazine has a long review of various past and present programs to identify children with extraordinary intellectual gifts and guide them to careers of power, prestige, fame and prominence. Some of the projects have a strong eugenics influence, others are reminescent of Nietzshe, still others seem to feel the children will be "wasted" unless their gifts are harnessed.
The enterprise appears to have a history of disappointment. This matches my own limited experience with living among geniuses, my undergraduate experience at Caltech (note: I am not a genius). The geniuses I knew were exceptionally good at almost everything. They usually didn't study very hard, since they could excel with relatively little effort. They, were, however, not necessarily terribly ambitious. Indeed, I'm tempted to recall that the more balanced and well adjusted they were, the less driven and ambitious they appeared (even there, however, the numbers were small and memory is misleading).
Perhaps a truly brilliant deep thinker would conclude that many driven persons suffer from a lack of deep insight, and that they would be better to spend their limited days caring for loved ones and quietly contemplating the uncaring universe.
Update 11/20: One way to think about this is to consider Lance Armstrong. What made Armstrong one of the greatest atheletes of the past 100 years? Was it genetics? Sure. Was it luck? Definitely. Was it being emotionally well balanced and raised to be wise and mature? Uh, no. Armstrong was (he's mellowed a bit), by all reports, a bit of a nut case. He wanted to win in a "rip arms off", "sell soul", "pay any price", "crush the enemy" sort of way. He is even now not a nice man. A well rounded, well balanced, optimally raised person with Armstrong's genetics would more likely be a sunday school teacher than a world champion bicyclist.
Or consider Isaac Newton. Was Newton a nice well rounded man? No. Isaac Newton, perhaps one of the greatest human minds of all time, was a miserable, nasty, bitter, cruel, vengeful creep.
Genius is genius. It doesn't say anything about how the person will be, it doesn't even seem to correlate with insight. You may produce more Newtons by cruelty and spite than by wise instruction and compassion. Which is not to say we should torture our young geniuses, but we shouldn't imagine we'll produce great leaps in knowledge by making their lives more agreeable.
Showing posts with label eugenics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eugenics. Show all posts
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Sunday, January 09, 2005
The Kennedy Curse? Perhaps not all curses are mythical.
NEWS.com.au | Hidden Kennedy delivered from curse (January 10, 2005)
Rosemary Kennedy wasn't brilliant. I gather, from the limited description in this story, that she might have had an average to slightly below average IQ with some focal cognitive defects and learning disabilities.[1]
She was a disappointment to her ambitious father.
At the age of 23, in 1941, her father, Joseph Kennedy, had her lobotomized -- allegedly on the advice of one or more physicians. She spent the rest of her life in an institution. Over the next 40 years all of Joseph's children, save Rosemary, died a violent death.
I knew of Rosemary, I didn't know the story of her lobotomy.
This is a tale worthy of Shakespeare. At this point in my life I don't follow the theater, but a robot could write a play around this tale. Was Joseph Kennedy a complete monster, or only a very flawed human being? Did those physicians really recommend a lobotomy? What was their relationship to the American Eugenics movement, which flourished from 1905 to 1940? What happened to them afterwards? Did they ever face a sort of justice?
Josephy Kennedy suffered for his crimes. Was his suffering just? Even for his crimes, the punishments seem excessive.
[1] Caveat: It would not be surprising, given her age, if in fact Rosemary's true disability was the onset of schizophrenia. That would also better explain the recommendation for lobotomy, in the 1940s all manner of psychosurgery was being misapplied to schizophrenia. It would be typical of the media and many writers to confuse congnitive disabilities with schizophrenia.
Rosemary Kennedy wasn't brilliant. I gather, from the limited description in this story, that she might have had an average to slightly below average IQ with some focal cognitive defects and learning disabilities.[1]
She was a disappointment to her ambitious father.
At the age of 23, in 1941, her father, Joseph Kennedy, had her lobotomized -- allegedly on the advice of one or more physicians. She spent the rest of her life in an institution. Over the next 40 years all of Joseph's children, save Rosemary, died a violent death.
I knew of Rosemary, I didn't know the story of her lobotomy.
This is a tale worthy of Shakespeare. At this point in my life I don't follow the theater, but a robot could write a play around this tale. Was Joseph Kennedy a complete monster, or only a very flawed human being? Did those physicians really recommend a lobotomy? What was their relationship to the American Eugenics movement, which flourished from 1905 to 1940? What happened to them afterwards? Did they ever face a sort of justice?
Josephy Kennedy suffered for his crimes. Was his suffering just? Even for his crimes, the punishments seem excessive.
[1] Caveat: It would not be surprising, given her age, if in fact Rosemary's true disability was the onset of schizophrenia. That would also better explain the recommendation for lobotomy, in the 1940s all manner of psychosurgery was being misapplied to schizophrenia. It would be typical of the media and many writers to confuse congnitive disabilities with schizophrenia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)