Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Coming Apart by Charles Murray

Now... My opinion on it.

The whole premise just sounds kind of weak when you sum it up. When you are reading it it seems so scientific and like he went to great trouble with his statistics, but he didn't convince me about the "virtues" he chose, even though I do agree that they correlate with an overall increase in how happy a person is likely to feel.


The main thing that struck me about this, was the part about how political correctness may be our undoing. We can't deal with social issues if we are unwilling to admit that some situations DO have better outcomes than others.

As long as we say things about single parent homes just being "different" from married parent homes or say that some children just learn "differently", but all should get the same sort of education... then I think we'll continue to make little progress as a society.

Most well-educated members of the new upper class shudder at anyone who acts self-righteous (like their Christian/heterosexual/whatever way is the only way).
That dislike for "close-minded" behavior partially comes from what is taught in a liberal university. And I think tolerance is fine, up to a point, but not if it degrades into something so ridiculous that society is just falling apart at the seams.

I really dove into that way of thinking when I was a teenager and started taking some college courses (like Women's Studies), but I eventually came up for air.

I decided that I don't accept that "all ways are equally worthy" or that "No way is better than another way." It started to seem to me like a serious cop-out. How EASY it is to just say that instead of asking some hard questions that might have some difficult to swallow answers? The political correctness is an extreme reaction to the stifling close-mindedness and racism/ sexism of earlier times. We have to find a balance now. Neither extreme is good!

(Unless this "play nice" society is just the new normal and it is OK if the divide between the upper and lower classes just keeps getting wider, as Murray thinks it will....)



I read another book awhile back - Dark Ages: The Case for A Science of Human Behavior by Lee McIntyre and I believe the author argued a similar case, but he left out the bits about preserving our great nation.

Dark Ages was all about how social scientists don't want to have to ask or honestly answer the tough questions that might have answers that we don't want to hear.

We don't want to hear that the sexes are BORN different and that it isn't all social conditioning (as Murray states in his book, we are beginning to find out that men and women are really hardwired differently, like in how they react to babies, and "nurture" doesn't seem to play into it. It is all nature.)

We don't want to find out that some people really do have a lower IQ and can't do the work...

We wouldn't want to come to the conclusion that some students (perhaps the gifted ones) would benefit society in far greater numbers if they were given a bigger chunk of the money pie...

We don't want to hear that two parent homes really are the best and that we, as a society, should aim for that...

We can't say formula feeding puts your baby at risk (You have to say - Not breastfeeding puts your baby at risk!)-- because formula feeding or breastfeeding is a CHOICE and whatever a mom chooses needs to be respected.

And it would be really bad if we found out that babies do better if mom stays home or that the whole family does better when gender roles are clear and traditional.

Now I'm just totally making some of that up, but no one really wants to find out anything that disrupts what we would currently like to be true.

We've worked VERY HARD for the right to choose how we want to live and work and we want to be able to make our own choices and not get judged. But what if it turns out some of our new "improvements" aren't good for the long-term outcomes of society, or children or even of our own happiness?

While "real" science has made all kinds of discoveries, social science hasn't yet been able to help us eradicate crime or child abuse and McIntyre blames it on us really being afraid of what we'll find.




Now I hope someone engages in a juicy conversation with me about this because there is NO way I have anyone in real life to talk with about this stuff at the moment! (And my husband and I agree on this stuff, so the convo ends quickly.)