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VDARE.com’s John Derbyshire recently expressed puzzlement over American Ruling Class Russophobia, arguing that the country is a “economic nonentity” with a population that is “increasingly composed of aging drunks.” Maybe so, but in at least one alarming respect Russia may be converging with the West.
In recent months, the MSM have been reporting research that has found that IQ scores in developed countries have been getting worse and worse [Young people ARE getting more stupid, By Isabella Fish, Mail Online, June 12, 2018 ]. So overwhelming has the proof for intelligence decline become that it’s now being explored even by “mainstream” academics, with no connection to British psychologist Michael Woodley of Menie, whose research demonstrating the collapse has been termed the “Woodley Effect” [The Woodley Effect, By James Thompson, Unz Review, February 11, 2017,], with the mass of evidence for it soon to be presented in a full length book [At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future, by Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie, Imprint Academic, 2018].
However, most of these studies show that intelligence is declining in stable Western countries. What if people were also getting dumber in an autocracy with almost no history of democracy plus expansionist ambitions and enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons? And what if they were getting dumber far more slowly than the West?
This is exactly what’s happening. It’s happening in Putin’s Russia.
Russian psychologist Ekaterina Chmykhova, of the Modern University for Humanities in Moscow, and her team [Dysgenic fertility in the Russian Federation,By Ekaterina Chmykhova et al., Mankind Quarterly, 2016] have found that the rather paranoid people who brought us the October Revolution and Stalin are going to be getting more prone to dictatorship, which is predicted by national low IQ. [Intelligence, By Richard Lynn & Tatu Vanhanen, Ulster Institute for Social Research, 2012] But will likely soon become smarter than the democratic Westerners.
A total of 465 psychologists at 47 regional branches of Russia’s Modern University for the Humanities were despatched to test representative samples for each region aged between 17 and 50. The psychologists were tasked with administering to them the Standard Progressive Matrices (“SPM”). Widely acknowledge to be a highly reliable IQ test, this presents people with sequences of shapes (like the one at right) and asks them to discern the pattern which the sequence is following. This was possible in 29 Russian provinces, giving the team a sample of 4,645 Russians. The researchers also obtained average completed fertility and birth rate data by province from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service.
The result? The “glupyy” (Russian for “stupid”) will inherit the Russian Federation. The correlation between a province’s average IQ score and its average completed fertility (number of children among the middle-aged, who are unlikely to have any more) was -0.49, while the relationship with birth rate (how many children are born to each person) was -0.57.
In social science these are strong correlations and they are statistically significant, meaning they are definitely not a fluke.
By far the lowest average SPM score was in the province of Khakassia, in the central south of the country. This boasted (again, by some margin) the highest average fertility and birth rate.
In contrast, fertility was low and IQ scores high, in the northern parts of the country, such as Karelia. This would be in line with British psychologist Richard Lynn’s “Cold Winters Theory”—that colder climes select for higher IQ, due to the need to built complex shelters and plan for more for the future [Intelligence,By Lynn & Vanhanen, Chapter 13].
These results are of crucial importance because intelligence is about 80% genetic [Dysgenics, By Richard Lynn, p.101] which means that if the less intelligent have the most children, Russia will pass to the less intelligent, with higher intelligence dying out.
With those aged between 40 and 50, who were unlikely to have any more children, Chymkhova’s team conducted individual surveys regarding how many children each had. This revealed something quite eye-opening—and different from what you tend to see in the West.
In the West, there is a broadly linear relationship between IQ and fertility, in the “normal” range (i.e not including the mentally retarded, who don’t tend to have children)
However, this is not the case in Russia. Among families with one or two children, there is no relationship between IQ and fertility. This negative relationship only hits in when it comes to larger families, with 3 or 4 children. And Russian women with no children by the age of 40-50 are less intelligent than those who have 1 or 2.
Also, studies in the West have shown that dysgenic fertility is greater among women than men [e.g. Effects of sex, race, ethnicity and marital status on the relationship between intelligence and fertility, By Gerhard Meisenberg, Mankind Quarterly, 2010]. This is seemingly because feminism persuades cleverer women to delay and limit their fertility by dedicating their 20s, and even the first half of their 30s, to their careers. Also, the welfare system – with its lavish child benefit – in Western countries has been proven to positively encourage low IQ, unemployed, single mothers to have lots of children, with only those on welfare, in the UK, breeding at above replacement fertility level [The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality, By Adam Perkins, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016].
In Russia, in stark contrast, dysgenic fertility can only be found among men—and even there it’s not very substantial. Intelligent Russian women, apparently under less influence from ideologies such as feminism, atheism, and Leftism, wantto have children and succeed in doing so in a way that their equally intelligent Western sisters do not.
Also, Russians are poorer than Westerners, and lower living standards – which expose people to greater instability and mortality salience – seem paradoxically to persuade them to have more children and have them younger, to be on the safe side [The Welfare Trait, op. cit.]. And ideologies such as nationalism or religion tend to promote fertility: think Hitler’s medals for fertile mothers or the Catholic ban on contraception.
This decline will naturally result in Russia becoming less stable and more authoritarian, since Lymm and Vanhanen also showed that authoritarianism correlates with lower IQ. But although Russia’s IQ is decreasing, there is a further complication for the West. Russian average IQ is only about 4 points lower than the typical Western IQ of 100, and so on a par with Italy [Lynn & Vanhanen, op. cit.]. And its average IQ is declining much more slowly than the West’s. Chymkhova’s researchers have calculated that the genotypic Russian IQ is declining by 0.44 points per generation (defined as 25 years). By contrast, drawing upon Western studies, Richard Lynn showed in Dysgenics that genotypic IQ is declining at a rate of 1.29 points per generation [Dysgenics, p.286].
Put simply, Russian IQ is falling, but it is falling at about half the rate ours is. What this means: before long, a country that, for whatever environmental reason, has never been particularly interested in democracy or freedom of expression and has a long and continuing record of expansionism, will have higher average IQ than the West—which will still have this cultural legacy of democracy even if its IQ will have declined.
The likely result of this, for the West, is pretty obvious: The West will be eclipsed and then dominated by Russia and, as low national IQ is positively associated with authoritarianism, that Russia will be increasingly authoritarian.
But equally obvious are the causes of Russia’s slower decline: a less luxurious lifestyle, nationalism, religiousness, the lack of a true welfare state, and low Feminist/Leftist influence.
It follows that what the West must do to survive is as clear as one of the easier puzzles on the Standard Progressive Matrices.
Lance Welton [Email him] is the pen name of a freelance journalist living in New York.
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„Russian expansionism“ every few sentences. I doubt whether this makes sense.
When we look at European history, we see that in the relationship between Russia and countries more to the West, the attacks mostly came from the West (Napoleon and Hitler are well-known, but there are earlier examples) and Russia repelled them.
Certainly, there were non-Russian areas under the occupation of the Russian empire. After the partition of Poland, one part was occupied by Russia, while the others were occupied by Prussia and Austria-Hungary. The relentless propaganda of the russophobes for demonizing Russia should not lead us to idealizing Russia in response. It was quite similar to other European powers like Prussia and sometimes occupied areas where people were against it.
A large expansion of Russia to the East obviously took place during the 19th century. Like the conquest of the West of the United States, it was an expansion into a relatively thinly populated area with culturally quite different people. When you do an actual comparison, there is a stark contrast between the extremely violent, genocidal nature of the Manifest Destiny in the US and the mostly peaceful integration of Siberia into the Russian empire, with indigenous peoples mostly being left alone (of course, in other areas, such as the Caucasus, it was less peaceful, in some respects, Russia was more like other empires).
Certainly, Russia has a very short history of democracy – very short if we consider that Boris Yeltsin made a military coup against his constitutionally correct impeachment in 1993 and had the army shoot at the building of the Russian parliament (with the West and Bill Clinton in particular applauding this coup as a victory for „democracy“) and that Yeltsin‘s re-election in 1996 even though he polled only in 10th place before the campaign (with heavy involvement of oligarchs, the US, and international monetary organizations) had started raises some doubts about legitimacy. But before rushing to sweeping statements about an anti-democratic national character, we should become aware that democracy is quite a recent phenomenon in most European countries. Before World War I, there were few democracies in Europe, and from the countries that – unlike Russia – became democratic after World War I, a large part became dictatorships again within a relatively short time. Stable long-time democracies were quite a rare phenomenon.
Russophobes typically just throw around slogans like „expansionism“, „authoritarianism“, but they rarely do concrete comparisons between Russia and other European powers. If they did, it would become obvious that their slogans are certainly partially true, but they are not more true for Russia than for other imperial powers, often it seems that they are rather less fitting for Russia than for other large countries. In some cases, throwing around these slogans without making such comparisons is just an effect of thoughtlessness (or rather people repeating certain ideological tenets in their environment), in other cases, russophobia is an important element of certain ideologies.
A recommend the book Creating Russophobia by Guy Mettan. Russiaphobia and the distortion of historical facts in order to try to make Russia look particularly bad has a long history.
Building an argument, however seductive, on an slippery term like ‘authoritarian’ favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority) is building on sand.
We tend not to characterize the US Government as authoritarian because we, uh, haven’t given it a thought, actually. If we did, we might wonder would a truly authoritarian leader have the sole power to:
– declare war unilaterally and frequently;
– issue 300,000 national security letters (administrative subpoenas with gag orders that enjoin recipients from ever divulging they’ve been served);
– control all information at all times under the National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.
–torture, kidnap and assassinate anyone anywhere at will.
We would expect personal freedom in an authoritarian state to be limited by
– secretly banning 50,000 people from flying without explanation
– imprisoning 2,000,000 people witout trial
– executing 2,000 people each year prior to trial.
In a real authoritarian state there would be
– warrantless surveillance of private phone and email conversations by the NSA;
– SWAT teams raiding homes;
– shootings of unarmed citizens by police;
– harsh punishment of schoolchildren;
– endless wars;
– out-of-control spending;
– militarized police;
–roadside strip searches;
– roving TSA sweeps;
– privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans;
– fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on citizens’ private transactions;
– militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition.
What does that correlate with?
Um, have you looked at a map lately? Russia’s empire has been shrinking considerably over the past decades. Its recent “expansionist” territorial acquisitions include: Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and, partially, a small sliver of the Donbass. Furthermore, these were all clearly defensive in nature and borne of desperation. Saying something is so, doesn’t necessarily make it so.
LOL, Wut?! I guess I could walk outside and find my dog reading Kant, but what’s the likelihood? Anyway, if you wish to place a wager on such a prediction, I would be quite happy to take the other side.
I can give you a hint about who will eclipse and then dominate the West, and the rest of the world: There are a lot of them, and they really like rice!
That’s the loop that controls human destiny. Environmental circonstance influencing genetic potential, in turn occasioning environmental change, thus influencing another bout of genetic “drift”.
Our guess, these pointedly differences, as important as they are, should be used to influence on a scale of magnitude the long term destiny of mankind. That would be the correlation between genes and environment that matters. As is, differences are too small, too volatile in the short term to have any meaning as compared to new imprevisible changes, because of the amount of variables ignored. Surfing should become decidedly taking “God” like responsibility for destiny. Rulers and elites can be utmostly small, but should be seeded with cognitive capacity individuals, the bottom of humanity must be reduced to about anything from five hundred million to two billion individuals, somehow, again, not indiscriminately, thus altering allowance for human nature to exceed itself.
As any study, it must fit into a worldview, using volatile entities as Russia and the US, the West, territory, ethnicity, religion, only obscures responsibility. There is no way back (alias Gugin, identity politics, alias Trump), alias liberalism and it’s completely discredited critters when held up against reason and logic.
But, universalism, the long term, the inclusion of nature, the environment beyond the human world must be. By creating part of the globe into “Paradize” even if that were possible, it only refers to itself by turning other areas in space and time into “Hell”. The commoner still lives Biblical, Caballa, Koran times and modes. The elites should not! Too dumb to steer is mortal.
Building an argument, however seductive, on an slippery term like ‘authoritarian’ favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority) is building on sand.
The author knows this, his is not a mistake, it is called what we call the bend, somehow twist logic into opportunistic bread writing. It is taught in school, in the media displayed, and the hallmark of the middle classes who build a “career” on sucking up to the elites of choice. Hence, let’s look further then our nose is long, expand on the variables, the complexity matching of the model to the volatile reality. Many “studies” much more their interpreters would make sense.
Interesting that people with Asian genes are dumber.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1AOHY_enUS708US708&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=HrJUW_qALKWatgXJkrDwBQ&q=Khakassia+people&oq=Khakassia+people&gs_l=img.3…3091.5970.0.6582.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0….0…1c.1.64.img..0.0.0….0.OGVqiiAWNIs
Expansionism of Russia is put into context by maps of what “Ukraine” has been over the past millenium.
The history of Ukraine as an artificial state
https://www.sott.net/article/391652-The-history-of-Ukraine-as-an-artificial-state
Well let’s do something about it. Support:
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/1438604/hadassah-hospital-woman-becomes-a-savta-and-then-gives-birth-to-triplets.html
https://forward.com/schmooze/405567/orthodox-woman-has-10th-child-on-same-day-she-becomes-a-grandmother/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-woman-gives-birth-to-her-20th-child/
Or you can Madison Grant your way through life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Grant
>cold winter theory
Khakassia is actually about lattitude of Moscow, and has January temp much lower than any of northwestern parts of Russia (e.g. Karelia).
Do you have an opinion on the dysgenic trends that are the topic of this article?
The article is utter crap. I’m saying it as a Russian. The author examines a static situation, and then makes a sweeping assumption about dynamic.
Some Russian minorities are duller than ethnic Russians, and also have relatively high fertility rates, but their share in overall population is very small and they are still benefitting from the Flynn effect, along with the rest of the country.
The bottomline is that Russia’s intelligence is rising, not falling over time. This may be different in the West because of the rapid demographic displacement, but generally speaking human populations get smarter over time.
So in about 25 generations the majority of people in the West will be retarded. Right?
The history of democracy is indeed very short. It never existed anywhere except for a few weeks at a time during periods of transition. 80% percent of the population of Athens were slaves, and the rest were run by an oligarchy, and a strangely cantankerous one. Not a democracy. One of the first US flags was a snake saying “Join or Die.”
The article states that lower IQ is associated with authoritarianism. I would like to point out that Europe had some of it’s highest cultural and technical achievements under governments that were dictatorships, which were monarchies in one form or another with an overwhelmingly powerful upper class. Under the Soviet dictatorship, it’s amazing how much technology the Soviets came up with considering Stalin’s purges of highly intelligent people. Sure, they were stealing a lot of ideas from the west, but there needed to be a lot of highly intelligent, creative people to put these stolen ideas into fruition.