Penis Size, IQ and Moral Politics

We men are grateful for pants. Yes, to keep us warm and protect our sensitive skin but more than that, to protect our sensitive self-esteem. We would be very stressed and distracted if, all day we had to compare our endowments to other men’s. Sure, a few would enjoy gloating, but for the rest of us, not so much.

Of course, maybe size doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the wrong measure of male prowess.

Most of us, male and female, would find days stressful if we walked around with our IQ’s emblazoned on our shirts. A few would gloat. Mensa members sometimes do, but the rest of us would have a hard time.

Of course maybe IQ doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s the wrong measure of our mental prowess. Still, take any measure you like: EQ (emotional intelligence) for example, or Howard Gardner’s seven intelligences--would you like any objective measure of your mental abilities emblazoned on your shirt? Yes, if you had a high number, otherwise, not so much

We can’t help but notice that some people perform better than others. There are differences and they do make a difference. In a free society we’re ambivalent about comparing them.

Geniuses and fools use the same voting booth, enjoin the same debates, share control over our same collective destiny. In a democracy whether at home, at work or in politics, we’re torn between sharing the power with everyone or allocating it the smarter among us. We don’t trust people who pull rank saying “I’m smarter, so just give in,” nor are we OK with people saying “I get as much say as you” when they haven’t earned their say through smarts, wisdom and study.

It’s no more someone’s fault that they aren’t that mentally well-endowed than it is that their other endowments are modest. We feel compassion for the poorly-endowed. They didn’t choose to be poorly endowed. So we try to avoid comparing endowments. And yet we can’t entirely. We praise the efforts of the least among us, but we still prefer high performance to low.

I offer no solution to this tension that I think lives in all of us. I’m not smart enough to offer one, and I suspect that there just isn’t one. I do think there’s benefit to recognizing the tension and the way it tugs us in opposite directions. Understanding the tension makes us more compassionate with ourselves and others when our hearts give voice to either the collective embrace of everyone, or the selective embrace of the well-endowed.

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