SDHF Newsletter No. 283 Book Review Becoming less intelligent

At Our Wit’s End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent
and What it Means for the Future
Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie
Imprint Academic, 2018
Reviewed by Tadashi Hama

July 27, 2020

A previous book by Woodley of Menie, Rhythm of the West (Council for Social and Economic Studies, 2017), outlined the rise and fall of general intelligence in the West, extrapolating from historical, behavioral, psychological and phenotypic data obtained from Britannics (meaning the British and those descended mainly from British colonists overseas). The current book, co-authored with Edward Dutton, reiterates the observation that general intelligence is currently declining and demonstrates the decline with data that did not appear in Rhythm of the West. The current book goes further than the previous book, addressing the source of the decline, lucidly spelling out what is in store for western civilization if current trends continue unabated and suggests what could be done to halt or at least retard the decline.
The authors demonstrates that general intelligence is decreasing and has been in decline since the Industrial Revolution, particularly in the number of “macro-innovation” or elite geniuses who are responsible for the “significant innovations” in science and technology that have led to fundamental changes in our lives.
The book’s overall message, that the West will fail due to its own success, should be remembered upon reviewing current events, particularly the political turmoil in the US. As intelligence in post-industrial humans is in decline, as suggested by recent studies in European countries, there appears to be greater adoption of “anti-rational ideologies”. The more intelligent, the cognitive elite, are most affected. They are caught by the foolish and highly divisive idea that everyone is equally capable were it not for “racism” and “sexism”, which need to be suppressed using old-fashioned totalitarian methods pioneered by the likes of Hitler and Stalin.
In any event, it seems that some but not all East Asian countries understand the root of the problem as outlined by the current book.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/1569/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Whye.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact