I am just stupid enough to be clinically useful. One of my sons, who is brighter than I, fits poorly into the university. Bruce Carlton and Edward Dutton note that this is now common.

The university had one purpose: to be a sheltered workshop for geniuses. Those of us who are not such (and I know a few such: I am not one of them) act as support structures for them. But now it is about getting on and getting grants.
The very bright are bored with both.

Grants are not pure science: they do not go to those who make breakthroughs. The modern university, therefore, has lost its purpose.

Based on representative samples, the authors show that reaction times are getting longer and have been getting longer since about 1900. Between 1900 and 2000, IQ–using this proxy–seems to have gone down by about 15 points. This means that the doctors of today are the high school science teachers of 1900. The result of this is that for purely genetic reasons there would be a far smaller percentage of Turing-types today.

But this has set off environmental factors which are making things even worse and here the rise of atheism plays crucial role as well. Intelligence is correlated with a trait known as ‘Intellect’: being open to new ideas and fascinated by intellectual pursuit. Until the 1950s, this kind of attitude underpinned the British university and perhaps even the US one–the book focuses on the UK. Academics were under no pressure to regularly publish or obtain grants. They were expected to teach and were given vast amounts of time to think and research based on the hope that some would produce works of genius. Religion was part of the reason that universities were created along these lines. Their purpose was to reach a greater understanding of God’s Creation. If this involved frittering away money–with most academics not publishing anything–this didn’t matter. Some things are more important than money, such as the glory of God.

Since the 1960s, the authors note, universities have become bureaucratic businesses. This reflects the anti-intellectual, anti-religious attitude that their purpose is to make money. Academics contribute to this by getting funding, publishing frequently, and attending conferences. All of this is anathema to the genius, who wants to be left alone to solve his problem. He also won’t tick the bureaucratic boxes that get you an academic position–Francis Crick, discoverer of DNA, was rejected from Cambridge, failed to get a top mark in his bachelor’s degree, and dropped out of assorted PhDs. As such, universities are less likely to appoint genius types. They will appoint what Dutton and Charlton call the ‘head girl’ (at UK schools)–quite intelligent, socially skilled, conscientious; absolutely not a genius. This person will be excellent at playing the academic game and will make a great colleague. But they won’t innovate; won’t rock the boat. Once upon a time, they note, a ‘country vicar’ had lots of free time to research, but with the shrinking of the Church, the days of the Victorian ‘scholar-rector,’ are long gone as well. The genius has no institution to nurture him and his potential will not be fulfilled.

And with the downfall of religion, life is no longer serious. In a world in which people have to struggle, the genius could be tolerated because of the benefits his innovations would bring to society. Also, society was inherently important–it was blessed by God–and so we needed to make sacrifices for the good of society, including tolerating the difficult people who seemed to solve problems in crises (the ‘shaman’ figures), because crises will surely come. But we have reached a point where our lives our so secure, and where death is so remote, that we no longer believe that our lives, or our society, has eternal significance. Indeed, many believe quite the opposite: Western society is selfish; the human race is damaging the Earth. In addition, our high level of comfort means that the problems with which a genius may now grapple are either too theoretical to care about or too long-term to think about now. He will cause offence and question the dogmas which give us the comfort of certainty all for the sake of a problem so distant that most of us can postpone thinking about it. In this context, of life not being serious, we would expect the genius to be pilloried. And geniuses are more sensitive than most.

Accordingly, Dutton and Charlton’s book predicts that genius will continue to decline and civilization will collapse because it is ultimately underpinned by intelligence and genius.

What can one say? The very bright need more time. They need to find a niche. The old niche — as C.S. Lewis’ tutor noted, the lad who is useless at anything but scholarship — has been lost.

The academic group that allows such to survive will be the one that succeeds. Not that where the head girls of our best schools are using the wrong frame set to deal with the bleeding edge of the other gender that are motivated by visions they do not see and goals they cannot comprehend.