The Creative Intelligence Problem

If you read my last blog post on The Physiology of Psychic People then you know that psychic ability has its basis in biological and neurological differences largely stemming from a less strongly lateralized (LSL) brain which is commonly referred to as “right brained.”

But this goes deeper than mere psychic ability; this same difference also produces creativity and genius.  And here lies a basic problem in modern society; children and adults are not tested for creative intelligence; we are tested for analytical intelligence.  A whole portion of society is completely ignored by testing and their career potential and status in society is limited by a lack of acknowledgment of their strengths.

Intelligence testing is designed to probe the ability to conform to and master ordinary learning styles that center on logical-mathematical and linguistic abilities.  These tests gauge a person’s strengths in recognizing and recalling information and a degree of problem solving.  These tests do not address creativity, innovation or invention at all.  Those with LSL brains are having their weaknesses measured as opposed to their strengths.

Society, as a whole, regards linear thinking as advanced, and holistic thinking as primitive.

Schools, of course, teach accordingly, creating classes and curriculums that pander to the three “r’s”.  Reading, writing and arithmetic.  Unsurprisingly, LSL brained children have a great deal of difficultly meeting the learning demands of the standard classroom.  In particular, standard learning methods do not conform to ways in which these children learn best.  Their talents are rarely explored, rarely rewarded and they are often considered to be low achievers, sometimes getting low I.Q. scores.

An all too common problem for example, is when children arrive at correct answers in math, but do not follow the ordinary steps to get there and are unable to explain the process that they used.  Ironically, while these children struggle with the linear nature of ordinary math, their holistic simultaneous thinking is absolutely required for the highest levels of mathematics.

Linguistic intelligence poses similar problems.  LSL brained children have difficulty with the meaning of words as opposed to the sense of them.  Naming things serves to objectify and categorize them for external analysis.  It is a strategy of separation and differentiation, whereas the linguistic abilities of LSL brains are more in the subjective, emotional realm of linking things together through jokes, puns, alliterations, rimes, similes and metaphors.

Some of these children get diagnosed as having learning disorders, which compounds the problem of feeling stupid and slow and not very smart.  Albert Einstein fell into this category by the way.  David Ritchey speculates that people who are LSL may simply be slow starters who need longer to fully realize their neurological potential where their brains are continuing to build complexity and specialization long after their peers have ceased development.

The main problem that all of this creates is that by undermining the success and status of people who are creatively intelligent, we are left with a world dominated by people who excel at secondary, (logical) thinking and who lack the holistic thinking necessary to deal with long term, highly destructive world problems.

For starters, LSL brained people are generally not strongly motivated by power, position and material wealth, but rather by ideas and concepts.  In other words, they are far less corruptible than is normal. By not focusing the majority of their energy on the trappings of wealth and power, they are more likely to propose and implement solutions to problems that serve the greater good rather than themselves and a small group of insiders, which is what we have now.

LSL brained people also are more likely to conceive of and implement long term solutions to long term problems because of their naturally holistic thinking process.  Because we lack these types of people in government and business in any significant numbers, problems such as global warming, oil wars, overfishing, poverty, global pollution, wealth inequality and a host of other extremely complicated, large and very destructive problems are not dealt with in any meaningful way. 

By ignoring the differences of these people in the classroom from an early age, society is denied the benefits of a large, extremely altruistic minority by not acknowledging their strengths and developing their skills.

In the end, we all suffer for this because the people who are rising to power lack the ability to effectively deal with the problems they’re confronting and make the hard decisions.  How much different would things be if we had a lot more people in charge who had the vision and the will to make the world a better place for everyone?