Identity Politics and Psychological Defense Values

If put into words, intelligence defense values would say something to the effect, “I’m smarter than you” or, “I’m smart; you’re not.” I have mentioned them before, but this post is about the less savory version.

Defense values are a special case of defensive habit, more commonly called “defense mechanisms,” that aim to fend off self-doubt and anxiety by giving us a pseudo-self-esteem—a salve, as it were, for the self-doubt and anxiety. Defense values may be any value, rational or irrational, that we use as our source of (pseudo) worthiness and efficacy.

The way the values are held in our minds and pursued are what makes them defensive. Feeling a jolt of excitement, for example, when thinking or talking about the value and especially bragging to others are signs that a defense value may be operating.

When expressing or practicing a defense value, we tend to feel special in the eyes of significant others, whomever that group of others might be, and superior to outsiders. Defense values are other directed and always carry an air of condescension. For example, “I make the best creamed spinach” (on earth, is the implication). Or, “I have a very high IQ” (a lot higher than yours). Or, on the irrational side of values, “I shoplift and never get caught” (unlike you, you sucker who doesn’t even try).

If someone does not like your creamed spinach, or does not like creamed spinach at all, and you feel crushed as a result, that is another clue that a defense value may be operating.

Defense values are always comparative and are therefore key to understanding group identity and identity politics. People gather together in groups, formally and informally, and think of themselves as belonging to groups, based on a common value. They identify with each other based on that value, whether it be one’s family, a cooking or gun club, a rogues’ gallery of criminals, or just shared philosophical, religious, or political values.

It matters whether the values are held in the members’ minds genuinely or defensively. Genuinely held values derive from the confidence of an authentic self-esteem that generates pleasant interactions among the groups’ members. Defensively held values generate psychological dependence that requires us, so to speak, to look over our shoulders to ensure that we are successful at impressing certain people, securing their approval, or maintaining our superiority over them, or all three. Such interactions lead to group rules of “political correctness,” whether or not the group is political in the literal sense.

Individual psychologies, of course, are complicated and exist along a continuum, so some members of a group may hold a genuine self-esteem, others may not, with many gradations in between. The more defensive the membership is, the more enforcement of certain “politically correct” rules comes into play. Extreme defensiveness of a group may generate such severe rules that admission to the group requires one to be a “true believer,” to identify with the “holy cause,” as Eric Hoffer (chap. 2) puts it.

This is the psychological source of the leftists’ identity politics that we have today. It does not display a strong personal identity based on an authentic self-esteem that practices courage, integrity, and independence as its primary virtues.

Defense values, like most defensive habits, begin in childhood and become so automatized that we are not aware of them, or of how they have developed, or that the habits are less than healthy and may be contributing to a less than happy life. They feel like, “That’s me, and I can’t do anything about it.”

Psychologist Edith Packer (esp. chap. 4, 5, and 10) identifies defense values as developing earlier in childhood than the other “helper” defenses,” such as repression, compulsiveness, projection, etc., although compulsiveness often quickly accompanies developing defense values.

Ironically, and sadly, it is profuse praise of children that encourages the development of defense values. For example, a young boy energetically helps mom or dad clean up a mess of spilled milk. The parent gushes, “You’re such a good little boy!” Repeated enough times, the  boy will begin compulsively to seek out similar praise. A girl who is good at school and is praised frequently with “You’re so smart” is on the path to developing an intelligence defense value.*

Family conversation can reinforce and cement the intelligence defense value by a parent (or both) repeatedly gushing: “So and so went to an Ivy League school and was top in his class,” or: “So and so teaches at that top-rated school, which means she is so smart to be there that she could not possibly be biased, ineffective, or unfair as a teacher.” Over the years, a child inhales the parents’ intelligence defense value that also expresses a good dose of condescension.

If we discover that we have an intelligence (or any other) defense value, we should not feel guilty or bad about ourselves. We should, however, work to replace the defenses we do have with genuine values.

To be sure, not all children accept parental values as illustrated in these examples, but such values are significant “environmental” influences on many children.

Intelligence defense values are endemic to certain groups in our culture. Academics are one, at any level, but especially at universities, and the higher the rating of the university, the stronger the intelligence defense value and, usually, the greater the condescension. And politicians and bureaucrats of the “deep state” are a second. Indeed, in some European countries, it is a badge of honor for a young person to land a job in the bureaucracy; the last thing such a person would want to do is work for a “greedy,” profit-making business. (This also, unfortunately, seems to be the case of many ivy league graduates in the United States.)

The self-esteem that derives from these group memberships is “pseudo” because self-esteem does not derive from other people. Authentic self-esteem is confidence that we are worthy—meaning loveable, worthy of being loved—and competent—mentally competent—to live our lives as healthy, happy human beings. Initially, we should derive this confidence from being loved by our parents and significant others around us, along with sincere, nonjudgmental respect from our teachers, and we should be (or should have been) taught how to introspect the contents and processes of our minds to identify and correct mistakes. As we mature, self-esteem becomes a quiet confidence, a quiet pride in effort and achievement, that gives us the courage, integrity, and independence to stand up to disapproval or criticism or fears of being challenged or condemned.

When the intelligence defense value becomes tied to a group identity, especially one involved in today’s identity politics, it can become a nasty political correctness and condescension, expressing envy and hatred toward anyone who is different or who disagrees.

Group conformity is the source of such behavior and group conformity is the desired result. It is external control psychology in action (1, 2) and has another name in the political sphere: collectivism.

At the level of politics, where facts cease to be relevant (Applying Principles, pp. 307-09), fines and imprisonment can be recommended and imposed by the group’s enforcers. This leads ultimately, in the totalitarian state that this eventually establishes, to the recommendation and imposition of executions.

Frail egos do not tolerate differences or disagreements.


*The correct principle to use when relating to children in these situations is Haim Ginott’s: Describe, don’t evaluate. Let the child draw the evaluative conclusion. As Ginott says (1, chap. 2; 2, chap. 5), “Direct praise of personality, like direct sunlight, is uncomfortable and blinding.” . . . “It creates anxiety, invites dependency, and evokes defensiveness.” (Interestingly, advertising man David Ogilvy (Applying Principles, pp. 201-03) gave the same advice to his copywriters: Describe the product factually. Avoid evaluative terms, especially superlatives. Let the consumer draw the evaluative conclusion.)

Is Intelligence Inborn?

My IQ—the so-called intelligence quotient—is probably twelve.

(Psst! And I’m proud of it!)

I say “probably” because I have never known my score. One day in junior high school we were all herded into the auditorium to take a standardized test. After about the first page of questions, I decided, “This is stupid,” and stopped answering. Hence, my presumed score. Teachers never told us what the purpose of the test was.

Intelligence, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary is “understanding as a quality admitting of degree; spec. quickness or superiority of understanding, sagacity.”

There are two usages here. One, “the intelligence” or “understanding” is synonym for rational faculty, which is our capacity to reason and think conceptually that distinguishes us from the lower animals. The other usage, as the OED says, “admits of degree.” Thus, there are supposedly brighter, smarter, more intelligent people and there also are the dull and dumb.

Degree of intelligence is not the same as quantity of knowledge or retained subject matter. I have met many uneducated blue collar workers and unskilled laborers who are more intelligent than college professors!

Intelligence is supposed to be an inborn ability, not an issue of how much knowledge one has accumulated and can spew out to impress those supposedly less endowed.

Ayn Rand has variously defined intelligence as “the ability to deal with a broad range of abstractions” and “the ability to grasp the facts of reality and to deal with them long-range (i.e., conceptually).”

I don’t doubt that this is a component of what we think of as smart, but a genius who has a greater degree of intelligence than the rest of us, to put it in the vernacular and to relate it to the OED’s definition, is a “quick wit,” a person who grasps an insight or makes a connection ahead of everyone else.

By analogy, an entrepreneur is someone who sees and seizes profit-making opportunities ahead of others. Some of us may also see the opportunity but we often do not act on it. The entrepreneur does.

Similarly, the highly intelligent person does not just make an unseen-before connection, but acts on it by conducting an experiment and writing a book. Some of us may have daydreamed about a “what-if” fuzzy linking but never get beyond the fuzziness.

The genius and entrepreneur both must hold in mind a great deal of knowledge related to their field, possess the ability to work with a broad range of abstractions, and think long-range (i.e., conceptually), but it is their “quick wit” that puts them out in front of others. (And contrary to what our Marxist-laden intelligentsia may think, entrepreneurs can be highly intelligent and even geniuses.)

The problem I have with the concept of intelligence, like all the other traits I discussed in last month’s post on the genes/environment debate, is that other variables, such as that unmentionable one, free will, but especially interest, can explain what is supposedly inborn.

Interest is a desire that directs intensive and sustained attention to a particular goal or object. It is interest, when put into action as effort, that drives a five-year-old to become a concert pianist as an adult. It is interest that drives entrepreneurs to think day and night about the next profit-making opportunity. And it is interest that drives geniuses to uncover every stone until they have found that next important discovery.

Interest is a potent motivator that can separate the highly accomplished, whom we would also likely call highly intelligent, from the rest of us. Strong interest—which also has to mean here the absence of psychological inhibitions and presence of choice or free will—could well be the key variable to explain the “degree of understanding” that the highly intelligent possess.

Yes, knowledge, or a context of subject matter, is required to make great accomplishments and to make great discoveries possible, but I am convinced that anyone with a normal brain, a good teacher, and patience can learn that context of knowledge, however abstract it may be. Interest and will power, if present, can take such a student to the next level.

So is “quick wit” inborn?

Those twin studies don’t prove anything. For nearly a hundred years they have attempted to prove that many traits, including intelligence, are inherited. Clinical psychologist Jay Joseph has thoroughly examined the studies of identical and fraternal twins, both reared together and reared apart (1, 2, 3, plus three books, the latest here), and has declared them “one of the great pseudoscientific methods of our time . . . [that] will eventually be added to the list of discarded pseudosciences where we now find alchemy, craniometry, and mesmerism.”

What about IQ tests? Please! Aside from the fact that these tests, along with college entrance examinations, correlate with socioeconomic status and the latter do not predict college success (high school grades are the better predictors), IQ testing is a contrived situation, as is paper and pencil testing of all kinds. Testing seldom corresponds to the reality it is supposed to represent.*

As I wrote in Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism (note 19, p. 158), “Supermarket shoppers in one study performed arithmetic calculations far more accurately in the store than on a formal test. And one boy, considered the dumbest in his class, was discovered by his teacher to be a paid scorekeeper in a bowling alley, simultaneously tracking the progress of two teams of four players each. The teacher promptly created word problems, requiring students to calculate scores for games of bowling. The boy could not do the problems.”

I think I’ll go find that dumb kid and have him teach me how to score games of bowling. I never could figure that out.

No wonder my IQ is only twelve!


*And let us not forget that IQ testing originated in the eugenics era, designed to sort out the “dumb” and “feeble-minded” for isolation and perhaps sterilization. Today, IQ testing and college entrance examinations perform a similar function (sterilization excepted), shunting the “dumb” off to the less prestigious colleges and trade schools (and in many countries to a blue collar life that they cannot overcome). The ones who score a little better than the “really dumb” ones and live in government-created slum areas are given special favors and money to attend the prestigious universities. There, many suffer a mismatch with their classmates—and flunk out. The sorting continues. (See 1, 2, 3.)