It could be that wealthier people with better access to healthcare and education are more often diagnosed as being depressed. I don’t know if that’s true but I imagine it is possible.
Marc
What Lamia said. Are we here to debate the image of the “happy retarded person” or of Joe Average?
Yes, but you have to understand, happiness is relative. You have to try to get a little perspective here. If you are “stupid” then you don’t worry about “smart” things, but you do worry about things like “which eyeshadow to wear”, and that is a big deal to you. IOW, regardless of the “absolute value” of whatever it is you are worrying about, whether it’s world hunger or the possibility N’Sync might break up, from the persective of a given individual the problem can be “big” enough to make them very unhappy, an unhappiness that feels just as bad for unintelligent people as it does for us “smart” people, even though we ourselves disdain the sourse of the worry.
Goodness. I can’t believe I just wrote a sentence that long. Did I make myself unclear?
While both intelligence and happiness are difficult to quantify, and therefore difficult to study, I believe there is a wide body of indirect evidence that suggests there is an inverse correlation between happiness (subjective well-being) and intelligence:
1.Down Syndrome: People who suffer from Down Syndrome are known for their good-natured, sunny dispositions. Their constant cheerfulness often makes them their parents’ favorite, despite their mental retardation.
2.Microcephaly: My only observation of microcephalics has been from the 1932 film Freaks, where again we witness a remarkably cheerful disposition, accompanied by profound mental disability. They are depicted picking flowers, enjoying the ‘simple things’ in life. They may have been coached to act happy-go-lucky, but with their severely diminished cranial capacity, one wonders if it was even possible to direct them.
3.Religiosity: Their have been many studies which have shown that religious people are generally happier than non-religious people, but there have also been several studies that document the fact that religious people tend to have lower IQ’s than non-religious people.
4.Depressed children: Studies have show that the incidence of unhappiness/depression in children has risen dramatically over the last several decades. But sociologists have also documented a significant increase in childhood IQ scores (the Flynn Effect) over the past century, further coupling the link between intelligence and unhappiness. A recent study summarized at www.healthcentral.com found that 4-5 y.o. children with signs of depression had the ability to judge complex emotions, such as shame, merely by looking at facial expressions. This remarkable ability, particularly at such a young age, indicates these depressed children may be “gifted”.
Finally, after noting that that happy people’s predictions of future events are ridiculously optimistic, indicating major cognitive abnormalities, some researchers at Liverpool University opined that happiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. Personally, I’m inclined to believe it’s just a symptom of underlying stupidity.
Please cite me just one study to support this claim.
http://www.infidels.org/~godlessheathen/Golden_Rules2.html
I don’t necessarily agree that looking at Mensa membership or top scientists provides any useful information, as these individuals are not randomly selected. But the other 13 studies seem to support my claim.
John Merck, the Elephant Man, was regarded as a kind, gentle soul always polite and willing to please. Well, what possible use would a grumpy and hateful disposition be to an Elephant Man? How much worse would his situation have been without his “agreeable nature”? Who would give a hostile elephant man a cold hotdog? Have you considered that the kind, happy natures of the retarded are useful to them? That they would have very little out of life without them? I have a cousin who has Down’s Syndrome. She’s about 5O now and she has survived her mother and father and one sister. It’s arrogant and condescending to consider her low IQ as some kind of life trauma anaesthetic. Also, I’m quite sure she knows how her condition has wrecked her life or, at least, she knows what she can’t have because of it.
Sort of relevant: I have a theory that sometimes happy dispositions arise out of an intolerance to suffering caused by prolonged unhappiness or frequent emotional trauma. People actually develop a resilience or, I suppose, a tolerance rather than intolerance. That’s not to say the feelings are any less intense because it’s the intensity that creates the effect. It’s like bouncing a ball hard off a brick wall - the harder you throw it the further it bounces back.
- Hi Grienspace!
The elephant man wasn’t retarded. I know that.
just look at the nature of religion.
“here is a book - it is the word of a supreme being, so believe it and adapt your life to it, as it will make you happy.”
Who is more likely to say “okay” - a smart person or a dumb person? The smarter you are, the more you’d be inclined to question this. Obviously there are exceptions… but on a macro level, it doesn’t seem to be a stretch of the mind to presume that, for the most part, intelligence and religiosity are inversely proportional. Intelligent people see through the contradictions and irrationality of religion, whereas dumber people are much more inclined to accept it as truth (not having the capacity to begin to refute it).
would of been is ignorance actually bliss ?
the theory of intelligent people being depressed is be cuase they supposedly are more concered with societial and world problems like hunger the homeless ect and the fact that they cant do anything about it and its never going ot change ect
so its more of a awareness thing where does the less you know or pay attention or un aware of make you happier
if you dont know about it you cant get upset or worry and be unhappy
Amen to that
I think that the idea of intelligence = more worries is a fallacy, based on the idea that most people consider themselves to be among the ‘intelligent’ group, and certainly as ‘thinkers’. In fact, a trick that fake ‘clairvoyants’ often use is to say to the person “You’re a thinking person, aren’t you”, to which every living person who is conscious would answer “that’s right, I do think a lot!”
It’s quite possible that people of lower intelligence - let’s use a boring scale of academic results - don’t get depressed over the same ‘philosophical’ problems that others do, but if they’re in a crappy job and know they probably won’t ever be able to break out of it, and they’re going hungry or have to tell their children they can’t afford good clothes or treats, the reality of life would be quite depressing for them. Obviously, some people would prefer that people in that situation would walk around perpetually miserable, but many people just decide they don’t want to kill themselves, and if they’re going to keep living, they might as well grab some fun when they can. That might mean drinking lots of beer and watching wrestling, or playing sport, or whatever it is that “we” believe less intelligent people do.
I’m sure Kalt’s not after an argument, and merely wants to feel superior to a supposed group of ‘suckers’. I just have to say that this is so far from the reality of how many religious people approach their lives, that it’s not funny. When I was studying Nietzsche, Camus and Dostoyevsky before becoming religious, I had exactly the same attitude then as I do now - study is about finding ideas that strike a chord deep inside and expanding on what you learn from them. The difference, for me (and I know everyone’s different, and I certainly have no interest in convincing anyone to follow any particular philosophical or religious path), is that the religious system of study I followed these secular writers with seemed more appropriate for my situation and temperament.
I suppose that if you think that by definition religious people are less intelligent than skeptics or cynics, then you’ve just written me off. But the term ‘dumb’ becomes meaningless at that point. I definitely know that in study hall when I get the chance to study Torah, Talmud, etc, looking around the room I see a far higher rate of Phd’s, academics, authors, philosophers, mathematicians or scientists than someone who has already judged them would have expected in a room full of ‘dumb’ religious people.
Your other points were ridiculous, but this one really takes the cake. No one is sure what is responsible for the Flynn Effect, but we can be fairly certain that it isn’t an increase in the general intelligence of the population. It is likely that the real reason is that children today are simply more used to performing the tasks that are part of an IQ test (such as solving puzzles and mazes) than children were in the past.
I’d like to apologise for alluding to any similarities in the appearances of Down’s Syndrome people and victims of elephantiasis. Oh no…catch 22. One of the most distressing news stories I have ever seen was a Sixty Minutes story recently on how incidences of elephantiasis are increasing at a great rate on an island in the Pacific. The father of one of the victims turned to a reporter and pleaded “have you ever seen anything like this before?” to which she glibly replied “oh, yes it’s nothing unsual” (or something similar). Well…NOT. So NOT in fact that I have feel ashamed each time I remember what that reporter said.
I think this thread is about how little empathetic understanding there really is between the winners and losers in life. There’s a lot of people who outwardly appear to have everything but seem to be as much at risk of suicide as every other person on the planet. They may have looks, intelligence, a job in which they get to contribute to the welfare of the planet or the people in it (with pay!) they have relationships with other people of good appearance, freehold homes and material goods. For some reason all of that just doesn’t cut it for them. Conversely a person of low IQ may seem to live in a perpetually secure state of childhood - they never have to leave home and go out in the cruel world. As an experiment you could find out how much you’d want to be like them. Sell everything up, foster the kids, ditch the relationship and go home to live with Mommy. And remember: Mommy knows best!
So… were trying to prove that “ignorance is bliss”, right?
To an extent, through posts mentioned above, I agree.
…“through points mentioned in above/previous posts”…
That is a pretty lame cite, cynic. Let me see. A study by an atheist representing an atheist organization that claims because inmates of criminal institutions have lower IQs, and because inmates will represent themselves, when asked, with the religious institution of their upbringing , that a correlation exists between religiousity and lack of superior intelligence. Lets see, perhaps we can expand on this logic. Mostly men are in prisons as compared to women. Are men more religious? Are men dumber?
Hello **G. Nome **. Glad to see you are still around.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by grienspace *
**
The part about the inmates had absolutely nothing to do with religious attitudes and IQ. I found a better summary of the Free Inquiry article here:
Anybody wanna banana?
No really, it’s cool. I’ve got plenty. 
I believe that childhood environment, genetics, attitude, and motivation impact happiness far more profoundly than intelligence. In my experience, people from families projecting a positive attitude through involvement in social issues, close friendships, and encouraging mutual nurturing of family members tend to be happy people. I have known a number of highly intelligent people who devoured knowledge in a wide range of areas, but were able to accept situations or ideas that ran contrary to their beliefs. A common thread among people whom I consider happy is that they have given some thought as to what is most important to them, and they devote the bulk of their energies toward those “things” they deem important.