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inclusion

voted for Remain that people who voted so on that enhance our lives and which
to leave “were just too stupid to we value and appreciate so much.
understand the question”. This, in However, why confer power,
Nandy’s words, quoted in wealth and all the honours that
Sebastian Payne’s book society can offer on those
Broken Heartlands, “is deemed intelligent, while
deeply offensive and withholding them from
completely wrong”. everyone else? Why
Young’s 1950s create a situation
imagined vision of a where only people
revolt against the who are blessed
educated elite led with this form of
by the Popular intelligence feel
Party and located they truly belong?
in working-class There is no link
areas has started between intelligence
to seem eerily and morals. There are
farsighted. plenty of intelligent,
highly educated people
Ultimate outsiders who are morally deplorable,
What none of these writers or and plenty of people who would score
commentators has noted or probably low on an IQ test and who never read a
even been aware of is that A society based purely on a certain type book who are morally admirable.
there is an intimate relationship between of brain power creates a new, equally So intelligence certainly does not make
the idea of a meritocracy and the unjust class system you a better person, even if it might make
historical devaluation of people with you more adept at certain things and
learning disabilities. technologically sophisticated societies fluent and persuasive in your speech.
However seductively just and fair the valued, they could not belong. In the eyes
idea of a meritocracy might seem when of a meritocracy, they were without merit.
we first encounter it, it has deep roots in Once people with learning disabilities I didn’t notice any professors
eugenicist thinking. were effectively displaced and removed
In a meritocracy, people with learning from society and as their existence began of philosophy on the key
disabilities are by definition the ultimate to be forgotten, the eyes of the worker lists. Yet who is given
outsiders because they lack the very thing meritocrats fell on new victims.
– our idea of intelligence – that enables Nobel-prize winning physicist George the status and the rewards?
you to have any form of status or foothold Thomson wrote a book called The
in society. Foreseeable Future in 1957, which fretted
If there is a category of person who about “the future of the stupid”. There are many types of intelligence too.
simply cannot display or acquire what we With growing mechanisation, As we found during the pandemic, lowly
choose to call merit, then what is their supermarkets replacing shops and the valued technical and practical intelligence
place in a meritocracy? The answer is that possibility of artificial intelligence, what and skills kept the world going and saved
there is not even a place at the bottom for jobs could those he called the “definitely us all. I didn’t notice any professors of
them – there is effectively no place at all. stupid man, or even the man of barely philosophy on the key worker lists. Yet
When people with learning disabilities average intelligence” do in future? who is given the status and the rewards?
were dispatched to mental deficiency Maybe, he wondered, they could look We know that many people deemed
colonies (later mental handicap hospitals) after the aged. A new out group was being unintelligent in an academic sense,
throughout most of the 20th century, formed – the least intelligent of those left including those with learning disabilities,
where they were expected to linger from behind, once the learning disabled had will show far more intelligence in
childhood to death, the eugenic message been packed off to institutions and emotional matters, everyday life decisions
was precisely that – there was no forgotten about. and understanding of other people than
conceivable place for them in society. These attitudes have survived and fuel many of the academically gifted.
Because they were considered to lack many of the resentments that poison our If we prize only a very narrow,
intelligence, reason, will and all the other political discourse today. academically defined set of abilities, then
things that modern, progressive, we exclude the intelligence and value of
The wrong intelligence whole sectors of society.
Our problem is that we prize a particular A meritocracy in the end is bad for
Those who succeeded would type of academic intelligence above all everyone. A society that recognises and
delude themselves they did so else, and we shower rewards on those values what every human brings to the
who are lucky enough to have it. The
table, and which does not hand power
through merit, and have an obverse is that, often unconsciously, we and reward to a narrow intellectual elite,
overweening sense of self- punish those who do not have it. is a happier, healthier and more
Of course, we need such intelligence – it harmonious place to live in.
worth. We can all name a few gives us many of the great things from the Next time you hear praise for
world of science, technology, culture and meritocracy, think again. n

www.cl-initiatives.co.uk Community Living Vol 35 No 3 | Spring 2022 21