The Road to Equality: Evolution and Social Reality - Hardcover

Itzkoff, Seymour W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 027594400X ISBN 13: 9780275944001

Publisher: Praeger, 1992

Synopsis

Why does poverty exist? Why is there social pathology and human degradation? Is it always because of oppression and discrimination? No, says Professor Seymour Itzkoff of Smith College. The real reason is the tragedy of low human intelligence, and the consequent inability of humans to compete in highly complex and dynamic economic and social environments. The Road to Equality: Evolution and Social Reality, contains Itzkoff's highly controversial analysis of the failures of the welfare approach to helping the poor. It also contains his radical solution to the perennial problems of inequality in nations and the consequent turmoil and revolution. Equalize the intelligence of your nation, Itzkoff argues, and you will soon eliminate the tragic social and economic differences between large portions of the population. It is high intelligence in groups of humans that create civilization and prosperity in the first place. Merely placing individuals of lower intelligence in such environments has not ensured their success. And it never will, predicts the professor, because it violates the facts of our evolutionary and sociobiological nature. The 21st century will change the relationship of nations to each other in the most radical manner that history has ever seen. The requirements of technological competency have put a premium on high educable intelligence. Even today we see that nations of uniformly high intelligence of various racial and ethnic heritage are pulling away from those with lower national intellectual profiles. Itzkoff writes that many of the social pathologies in nations such as the United States, as well as their relative economic decline can be so attributed. The future of human equality, he concludes, must lie in an international resolve to face up to the most basic challenge to world peace, the variability of intelligence in the human species.

About this title

Review:

"A brave and honest journey to the frontier in an area which is not only little-mapped, but which travellers are positively discouraged from entering."-Peter Brimelow Senior Editor, Forbes

"Prof. Itzkoff sets off into intellectual regions where the map clearly says "here be dragons," and it is a fascinating trip."-Charles Murray The American Enterprise Institute Washington, DC

"The long season of hypocrisy has given us no workable solutions. May this book inaugurate a new season of constructive truth."-Edward N. Luttwak Arleigh Burke Professor Strategy Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington, DC

," . . A very broad-based and philosophic perspective informed by up-to-date research in mental testing, human genetics, and sociobiology in the light of modern thought about human evolution."-Arthur R. Jensen Professor of Educational Psychology University of California, Berkeley

"In order to appreciate [Itzkoff's] work readers should first of all throw their prejudices overboard, and try to look at the facts without wanting to punish the messenger because they do not like the message!"-H.J. Eysenck, Ph.D., D.Sc. Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of London

"must compliment [Itzkoff on his] courage to question assumptions that have taken on an axiomatic status and say things that need to be said . . . An excellent job of telling the emperor that he's standing naked before the masses."-Walter E. Williams John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics George Mason University

"An erudite, closely reasoned, enormously readable ramble through history, biology, evolution, IQ studies and quite a lot more, by a scholar who fears that America is slipping because its people are not intelligent enough--to name just one of the book's many politically incorrect' themes."-Daniel Seligman Columnist, Fortune Magazine

About the Author:

SEYMOUR W. ITZKOFF was trained in music, philosophy of science, and educational theory. He has been a professor at Smith College since 1965. Author of twelve books, he recently completed a four-part series on the evolution of human intelligence, which has elicited much praise as well as controversy. In 1991 Itzkoff authored Human Intelligence and National Power (Peter Lang). He is also the author of Ernst Cassirer: Scientific Knowledge and the Concept of Man (1971), Emanuel Feuermann, Virtuoso (1979), and How We Learn to Read (1986).

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 027594400X
• ISBN 13: 9780275944001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232