Fifty-nine

I had a conversation yesterday with someone online (these are the only conversations I have nowadays) who called Ronald Reagan a moron because his IQ was reportedly only 99. I said that psychologists define a moron as someone with an IQ between 50 and 70, and told her I went to college with someone whose IQ was 70 (I didn’t mention that he struggled, even with my help, and eventually dropped out). I also pointed out that 99 is only one point below the average. She replied that she recently learned something about the average IQ that appalled her.

A psychologist told her that people with an IQ of 100 are considered ignorant by psychologists. Apparently she didn’t already know that the average person is ignorant.

I had many conversations in the past with average working class people whom most members of the middle class scorned to talk with, and usually found them more interesting than the conversations I had with people of what was then my own class. In those days working class people knew they were ignorant, and were therefore eager to learn, more so than middle class people who usually assumed that, while they didn’t know everything, they knew everything worth knowing. Now that has changed. 

Our rulers have decided they no longer require the services of the middle class, so it is disappearing, and its former members are struggling to learn what workers have always known: how to survive under adverse circumstances. Seeing the educated lose confidence in themselves, the ignorant have decided that, while they don’t know everything, they know everything worth knowing.