By: Nikolaj Lunøe

What is a good society? In the spirit of benchmarking, Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene tried, in 1989, to establish a list of agreeable criteria to evaluate the quality of economic systems. The list included such things as the citizens' opportunities for self-realisation, which is to say the people's access to fulfilling their human potential.

Self-realisation, in other words, does not equal egoism, and altruism is not the opposite of self-realisation; alienation is. The symptoms of the realisation, or lack thereof, of an individual's cognitive potential are emotional, affective: If we are given the opportunity to use our abilities, we experience an awakening, joy and excitement, and our attention turns outwards. If we are hindered, on the other hand, we experience boredom or anxiety, both of which leads us to unhealthy reflection on ourselves: What am I doing here? Is there a life before death?

Is there anybody in there?
Some have theorised that all the talk about self-realisation is actually an indication that our sense of identity has been weakened. I doubt that. The primary barrier against self-realisation is poverty. Living in poverty not only prevents people from maintaining a decent level of consumption, it prevents many from putting their talents to good use by forcing people to accept or stay in jobs that seem meaningless and mentally debilitating in order to earn just a little money. One major reason for the social dynamism that characterised the nineteenth and twentieth century was, in my opinion, the rebellion against wasted talents.

In an economical perspective, however, this phenomenon has been observable as a legacy of the feudal society, or a 'market imperfection', i.e. as an inefficient mechanism for allocation that left key resources (human talent) untapped.

The growth in our economy changed this for a large and growing part of the population, because if it is true that knowledge is becoming an ever more important commodity, that is to say if society continuously produces an increasing amount of knowledge which is traded and priced in a market of its own, and if this market is growing, the production facilities that, so far are the sole providers of this commodity, experience an increased level of demand. These 'production facilities' are actually the human mind. If this happens, the production facilities with the best capacity will also be the ones in highest demand, and will therefore attract the best prices.

This capacity has a name: Intelligence. A number of economical and sociological benchmarks indicate that the demand for intelligence already surpasses the supply. It was probably different fifty or seventy-five years ago. In the near future, the wealthy part of the world's economies will therefore most likely see the paradoxical situation that while the supply of knowledge (the product) will increase, intelligence itself (the production capacity) will become a scarce resource.

The businesses and organisations that attract the most of this resource and create optimal collaboration between the people who possess this resource are therefore most likely to succeed in the long run.

To the extent that a certain part of the combined production facility is comprised of intelligence, it is no longer possible to claim that the employer owns the entire production facility. Rather, the employee owns a significant part of this facility, and the employer must pay for the right to use that facility. For some, this has transformed the relationship between employer and employee into something like that of a letter and lessee. This again changes the relation between those who make a living letting out their intelligence and those who sell their physical labour.

As wealth accumulates, more and more people find that the market not only provides an opportunity to accommodate their desire for goods and services, but also that it allows them to realise their potential as producers. This erodes any interest in experimenting with alternative organisational set-ups.

Different skill levels
Self-realisation is the realisation of difference, and psychology is familiar with two areas where people are born with a different potential: Personality and talent. The most valid personality indicators that we know are characterised by being mutually independent, statistically speaking. This means that even though we know that person A is more extrovert than person B, we still have no way to predict whether A is more or less emotionally stable. For that same reason, no statistician or psychologist has so far been able to identify a general 'personality indicator'.

So far, the most comprehensive analysis was conducted by J.B. Carrol in 1993, and this work demonstrated that we can discern 68 different personal talents; there is, however, a positive correlation between all of them. This means that if a given person is talented in one of the 68 different ways, there is a better-than-average chance that she is also good at many of the others.

This degree of correlation ranges from weak to very powerful, but it is always positive. Talents, therefore, can be described according to two dimensions, a horizontal and a vertical (dubbed the 'g-factor'). Findings from the past decade of occupational psychology research all agree: g is better than benchmarks related to more specific talents at predicting whether a certain job suits a given person, regardless of whether we evaluate this based on her objective job performance or her subjective job satisfaction.

In the educational sector, many people strive to increase awareness of the horizontal dimension, in the shape of Howard Gardner's 'multiple intelligences'. People try to identify which area each child's particular talents can be found in; an obviously positive endeavour. The economical reason for why this approach is gaining ground is probably that affluent societies are characterised by a high degree of specialisation. This provides a range of opportunities for people with widely differing talents. But among the largest international corporations, we can observe a fierce struggle to attract employees with the highest score in the general talent we call 'g'.

In the society we are forming right now, people with special skills will find it easy to carve out a niche, while those with fewer talents may find it more difficult. The real problem is no longer that some excel at sports, entertainment of handiwork rather than law or medicine, because an intelligence economy does not discriminate between athletes, entertainers or workmen, but provides them opportunities instead.

The real problem of integration is that we are currently establishing a society that prevents people with a low 'g'-score from participating on equal footing. Here is a hypothetical experiment: Estimates of the hereditary nature of g place this figure between 40 and 80, with an average of about 60. This means that the context-dependent part of the score is about 40. This influence from the environment comprises both positive and negative factors, the figure alone gives us no way to discern which is dominant. If every human being could be given the exact same conditions for development such as identical diet, stimulation etc., we would still see a variation in g-scores, both within and between certain groups. The source of this difference would in that case be purely hereditary, since we would have eliminated the social.

There are powerful indications that investments in the weakest are the most profitable in economical terms. But even if it was possible from the moment of conception to give those with the lowest potential the best conditions and vice versa, we would still see the same spread.

A predominantly genetically determined variation will, in other words, be the logical result of our attempts to improve the situation for everyone, regardless of the actual political and ideological means we each apply to achieve this goal.

It was of course just a hypothetical experiment. And then again, maybe not. According to some researchers, this is what is happening right now in the wealthy part of the world. Even in my childhood in the 1950s, the wealthy and the academics were two separate groups that often viewed the other group with suspicion. Now, however, the two are merging. Intelligence were always a kind of power, but now it is becoming the key source of power: If you have that, you are certain of eventually acquiring the other expressions of power as well.

Education to inequality
Three quarters of a century ago, it was difficult for gifted children from the working class to obtain a higher education. Many opted instead for a career in the union, or in the Social Democratic Party. Now, the same children can earn the highest degrees in political science, and end up in the highest positions in the land. This does not mean that they necessarily forget where they came from, but there is a difference in the solidarity born from compassion and the one born from a shared destiny.

Can we educate our way our of this dilemma? The answer would have to be no, and the reason is two-fold: One is that every member of a group that receives education becomes better. The other is that those with the most talent become much better than others. Education improves the average score and increases the variation.

There is yet some way to go before this social entropy has reached an end point. But the trend is evident: A high-tech society such as Denmark favours intelligence in a much more systematic way than previous ages. Social climbing due to high IQ is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

The sociological end result is that the gifted and less gifted stop intermingling. They live in different neighbourhoods, join different clubs and only meet at family reunions - that they grudgingly attend and hurry home from with a feeling of discomfort.

About Nikolaj Lunøe
Nikolai Lunøe holds an M.A. in Psychology and is a partner in the consultancy firm Capability. He has worked as a psychologist for a number of years and as advisor and course provider in the field of organisation and management.

Read more:

Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, 1997: Superhjärnornas kamp: Om intelligensens roll i samhället.

Arthur J. Jensen, 1998: The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability.

Michael Young, 1958: Intelligensen som overklasse.