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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

The Interesting Real World

[ 6 minute read ] - 280 words per minute

Opinion

In Simply Psychology, by Michael Eysenck, published by Psychology Press Ltd (1996), there is this, under Intelligence testing: 'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'

I won't pretend to know much on this subject; anything I did know has melted away or atrophied from lack of use, or I suppose lack of revision and maintenance. However, I do have an opinion that I allowed to come to my fore-mind during a conversation with a chap replacing my window panes yesterday. It is an old opinion yet it is based on something I read a long time ago, and I hold that opinion as being true for me today.

I am the youngest of three. That means that for a short period each day I was an only child while my siblings were at school, except that I had an advantage that an only child can not usually have; I had a mother to myself who had experience of caring for two other infants. I also had the opportunity to learn from my two older siblings who were trained to exhibit at least a modicum of discipline in an environment of their infant peers. In other words, they were no longer the 'bee's knees' or the favoured ones such as they might have been at home and this affected their approach to their young lives, you know, putting their hand up to ask to go to the toilet and such. I don't recall learning anything remotely academic or interesting from my brother and sister at any time throughout our schooling; no maths or English grammar or French. You know, what happens in school stays in school?

The important point I am trying to make is something I have so far failed to provide any basis for. There are two premises I need to introduce that by themselves are insufficient for a conclusion to be made yet are monumentally relevant in my leap to a supposition. I did not attend nursery school while my later infant classmates did. Apparently, there were no places local enough for me to be placed in one. Consequently, I was educated at home by my mum for that year. My mum had no realistic idea as to how much I needed to learn to be on par with my later infant classmates. This ultimately meant that I could read and write beyond the capability of my classmates in the infant class of my primary school. The important thing to remember is that there were no distractions from my older siblings, who were at school during the day. I distinctly remember reading, 'Here is Peter' and 'Here is Jane' in a Ladybird book. During those days I also spent a lot of time amusing myself, but not in the house; I had a three acre garden to play in with a whole bunch of scary goats to avoid and friendly chicks and ducks to draw. I became fairly good at drawing. Before I attended primary school I drew a picture of some scuba divers with a fish swimming towards the viewer and another fish partially obscuring one of the divers. This, I heard, is unusual for a four year old.

It doesn't take much of a leap of thinking to recognise that I may have been considered to be 'gifted', but I am not. My intellectual abilities were 'switched on' by the stimuli both my mother provided in 'one to one' supervision and my interesting home environment in the garden. In being 'switched on' I probably learnt stuff from my siblings that I otherwise might not have done. I have no idea what that might have entailed but surely I didn't ignore their attitudes or characters. I went on to secondary school and flew through the annual exams every year without any revision. However, by the age of eleven I had had an emotional breakdown and was what I call, emotionally catatonic, but psychologists say is 'detached emotions'. The upshot of this is that I had no emotional distractions at secondary school. By year 9 I was only attending school about two-thirds of the time I should have been there, yet I still kept up with my classmates. Whatever the teachers said, I encoded without extraneous information, stored it in a healthy and nutritionally well-fed brain, and accessed with no superfluous additions to the code.

After I left school, I didn't use my intellect for any work purposes and worked as a labourer. I later went to night school to study A level law because I wanted to provide for my young family by late gaining a degree in law, but I was not stimulated. I studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering but I wasn't stimulated. Years passed and I found myself divorced and living alone. I studied marketing, logistics and the supply chain and I was revitalised. The courses, although valid in their circumscription still gave me scope to explore the subjects, and the internet was at my fingertips. My vocabulary improved and people I met remarked, seemingly in wonder, that I present as 'well educated'. 

My intelligence or intellect, I propose, never changed from when I was four throughout all my compulsory schooling and the night schooling and college education. It is the same now, I suggest, as it has ever been. However, now I once again have no emotional distractions, and  I have the internet, instead of a large garden to explore. 

If I look deep into myself I think I can detect some deterioration in my focus towards study and my ability to recall information. I put this down to constraining myself to complying with The Open University requirements for study; to whit; write an essay on 'this' with 'this' amount of words. It is definitely hampering my intellectual stability. I am not studying a subject that has real-time applications. Experiencing my chosen subject area is done almost exclusively from books. I regard this form of studying as somewhat linear. However, at the same time I recognise that I am learning to use convergent thinking over divergent thinking; and I think it is that which I find dull.

The pace at which I am required to produce assignments is such that I cannot really disengage from the OU study sufficiently long enough to have my interest piqued by real-time surprises that I might otherwise be inclined to follow with a consequent journey of discovery and final satisfaction. The pace is also determined by my peers, in that I cannot submit Tutor Marked Assignments until I have demonstrated within those assignments, or by my presence on the subject or topic forums, that I have adequately interacted with other students through referencing what i have learnt within the modules. This causes me to be distracted since my impatience is triggered. This, in turn, affects not my intellect, but my ability to access it to a level that I have previously been able to do with independent study. 

Here is the quote from Simply Psychology again:

'Some of the people you meet from day to day seem very intelligent, whereas others seem much less so. How do you think we could best measure intelligence: are intelligence or IQ tests adequate? Do you think that people can be intelligent in several different ways? If so, what are the major dimensions of intelligence? Finally, and most difficult, where do you think intelligence comes from? Is it something we are born with, or is it largely determined by education and other environmental factors?'

Having looked a little bit inside myself I feel confident that I can give some form of an answer that addresses the thrust of the overall question.

I think intelligence should be measured in an environment that excludes any distraction. It is no good giving someone an appointment for an IQ test that may be the day after an emotional event; falling in love; birth of a child; losing a job or anything at all that causes any emotion to be prevalent. 

I think that intelligence comes from dedicated attendance to a fertile bed of redundant opportunities. In other words, the human brain has to be fed, but first, like any fire, it has to be lit. I saw animals grow up at home before I went to school. I heard and smelt foxes, tractors and bonfires. Sometimes I even saw them. I heard the clock strike in the village square a mile away. I walked to school past an orange bull and smelt the pub as I passed it and I knew that my parents sometimes went inside this mysterious building, while my siblings and I drank delicious Coca-Cola outside.

The question above, from the Simply Psychology book, is asking if intelligence comes from nature or nurture. It is an elementary question for psychology students and it is still widely disputed. Of course, it is both. But I strongly believe that we must be stimulated at almost any cost to other opportunities we might otherwise choose. We should not, I believe, choose to metaphorically sleep, or cruise through life, simply because it is comfortable. However, in saying that, throwing myself into danger has never had a lasting effect on my interest in my environment because it has not fed my intellect, it has only used it.

Ribbons of peculiarities

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or search for 'martin cadwell -caldwell' Take note of the position of the minus sign to eliminate caldwell returns or search for 'martin cadwell blog' in your browser.

I am not on YouTube or social media

Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Ribbons of Peculiarities

[5 minute read ] 

Opinion Mental health

I think one of the most difficult things in life is not only keeping track of all aspects of our lives but managing them successfully. I like to think that we have streams of existence; not so much as running bodies of water, more as ribbons of peculiarities. 

I think I am on fairly safe ground when I assume that most of us will happily stereotype successful people; some time ago it was bankers who were widely portrayed as being ravenous and uncaring beasts who set out to make personal financial gain at the expense of the known world and all its inhabitants. Yet, I feel we should understand that the only people who are devastatingly affected by 'bad actors' are those who have formed a fantasy world around themselves that has links to the same resources as the selfish and greedy monsters of the same world we draw our resources from, or even other worlds. Take for example having a mortgage on a home. What is the purpose of incurring a debt such as this? Somewhere and at some time in someone's thinking a fantasy was formed. Perhaps it was similar to this: 'If I buy a small house with a mortgage I can upsize as my family grows and eventually I will have no debt to pay, so when I retire I shall have more spending power and even downsize and have a lump sum to spend on holidays.' Pretty common I should think. But we might note that there are a lot of 'I's in there.

That is just one stream of existence, one ribbon of peculiar activity; although more accurately it is commonly called a lifestyle. To whit, the style of someone's life is devoted to securing sufficient money to pay debts, usually through work. To be honest, I am quite reluctant to use the word 'lifestyle' because to me it denotes a style of living that encompasses a whole life from beginning to end to the exclusion of everything else, and I am trying, here, to not only separate life into streams of existence, but also dissect it into manageable chunks. 

Single-mindedly aiming to pay a mortgage has opportunity costs; family time is reduced or fractured; deep relaxation is denied; and crucially to my mind, creativity is compromised; it might still be there but the outlet of it may be held in check. These are some other streams of existence. 

It doesn't have to be a mortgage, or a goal to feather a nest in another way, or even paying off a large debt. It might be attaining a degree or working towards self-sufficiency or aiming for owning a large business that is the goal. The overriding factor needs only be ambition. 

Ambition is one of the positive attitudes to have in life. Personal positioning in some kind of hierarchy is quite another. It is no wonder that fans of pop stars and actors express surprise that their idol seems really down-to-earth and friendly. There is an assumption that the position of the star has only been made possible by ruthless barging and guttersnipe tactics, including negatively framing other people. It should, of course, be noted that pop stars and actors are ambitious and  creative people. Meeting a multi-billionaire, on the other hand, might reveal some entirely different traits that were used to accumulate such huge sums of money. A loose conclusion to this paragraph might be that the accruing of wealth somehow attributes a positional stardom, at least among their peers. Taylor Swift - nice; Elon Musk - not so nice, perhaps. It is personal choice built with inadequate information, of course, that determines our feelings towards any other person.

I am a big fan of 'Black Swan' events. At risk of over egging the pudding because I am certain we all know what a Black Swan event is, I will just say it is an expected set of circumstances that directly affects our lives in an extreme form. Another way of seeing it is; any unforeseen event that disrupts our plans. And here is the nub of my thrust. Plans, and moving on from plans: 'systems'.

       'What would you like to be when you grow up?'

       'A refuse-collector!'

       'And how will you go about becoming one?'

       'I will go to school and learn about recycling and environmental issues.'

Its a plan but it needs a system for the plan to be implemented. 

John Gall, a systems theorist, (1925-2014) came up with the theory that all complex systems are derived from simple systems that worked, and that a complex system will never work without it first evolving through real iterative tests. That is why prototypes are made. Unfortunately, we humans cannot prototype our lives. How often do we hear the wail of regret: 'If only I could go back and start again?' Probably not often enough I cry; not that I embrace the idea that people should regret their actions or decisions.

It is easy to devote oneself to a simple system. Get educated while living with our parents. Get a job. Get a mortgage. Keep working to pay the loan. Retire. What a wonderful life! A psychopath might find that rewarding, but it really does demonstrate an empty mind to me. Where is the love and the social interaction? These are ribbons of existence most of us have that disrupt our simple systems of achieving a soul-less ambition.

I think, somewhat belatedly, modern businesses in the UK have determined that their employees need a good work/life balance. That attitude would be an absolute bane to me in job interviews because I don't have a plan with a system that is disrupted by work. I am so flexible that running water is positively solid when compared to me. My current constraints are only human fallibilities; I need to eat and sleep, and I cannot disassemble my molecules and reassemble them at any other geographical location.

There is inevitably something else that disrupts our dedication to our system; social hierarchy. We need to feel powerful. Most of us need autonomy. One of the first things we give up is indeed autonomy when we get married or have a romantic partner. We have to consider the feelings of the 'significant other'. How many of us ever considered how disruptive those emotions will be to our simple system? With emotional intelligence there comes a cost. 

Complicated and Complex are not the same.

On their website, the Simon Fraser University, a public research university in British Columbia, Canada,  offers 'Simple or Complicated' to be 'predictable; controllable and designable'. It gives 'Complex' as being 'Unpredictable, Self-organising and emergent'.

https://www.sfu.ca/complex-systems-frameworks/applications/complex-and-complicated-are-not-the-same.html

I would suggest that being in a romantic relationship instantly makes one's life complex, and 'complicated' and simple, has left the building. Only a divorce or dumping the partner brings autonomy back, quite simply because planning for a separation has a large degree of predictability and is indeed designable. For example, 'You have the kids at the weekend and pay x  amount of money for their upkeep.'  That is not what we want though, until we actually do. But that is the Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA); the tacit agreement was that child-rearing would be shared in a single home. Unfortunately, the goal of paying the mortgage to attain an imagined freedom, and positional wrestling for power in the workplace, or even in a social hierarchy, get in the way of another imagined happiness. Why imagined happiness? If one of the partners envisioned a mortgage-free home, there is usually a fantasy that the other partner will share in the fruits of long years of hard work. In other words the simple system, although it is not consciously considered to be changed has a different outcome. And there it is, really. A change in an imagined outcome is the driver for a change in a simple system. 

Life is unpredictable. Our needs change as we get older; other people change as we get older; the environment changes as we get older; our values change all the time - we decide what is worth more or less of our time. 

Maintaining equilibrium in a changing world is difficult. One of the prerequisites for good mental health is the ability to deal with, and adapt to, change. I find it incredibly difficult to understand many aspects of the modern world, not least is that I have never desired or sought to be rich or popular. I have never really had a simple plan with an absolute outcome. Some might call that feckless. I have to consider that I don't make plans because I know things will change and I will find it difficult to adjust. I am, in that respect, quite unforgiving.