Adaptation

The other day I read an article which explained that children who lie, deceive, manipulate, are more intelligent than their peers, and are more likely to succeed in later life. They do this not because they have inherited a dishonest or corrupt set of genes, but because they realize that by doing so, they are more able to influence the outcome of their individual situations. In other words, a tool used to personally benefit from a circumstantial situation.

Many long years back, I read a quote by someone (I think it was Einstein), which said that a true mark of intelligence is the ability to adapt to any given situation. The ability to be cast into unfamiliar surrounds, mould your behavior and attitude to its demands, its challenges, and emerge with newfound wisdom which you can take with you.

In light of the recent shootings in Newtown, CT, I think it's equally important to recognize that these poor, encumbered, mass-murdering individuals are, most likely, not intelligent (in the crucial essence of the definition). They could not:

• Adapt: to changing circumstances around them - many were simply angry at what the world had "given" them
• Adjust: their behaviors - they had no faculty to, no support; they most likely always felt like outsiders
• Accept: their own misgivings, and find alternative outlets to express their "creativity"

Contrast these attributes against those of highly successful psychopathic murderers - the Chikatilo's, the Bundy's, the Dahmer's - who of course are, by nature, highly manipulative, more calculated, well-adjusted and undoubtedly more intelligent, and you come to a chilling conclusion: 

1. There's been a veritable drought of evasive psychopathic murderers over the last 15-20 years
2. Despite all the surveillance around us, we wouldn't recognize them in the adjacent cubicle