A new measure of intelligence: Big-picture thinking trumps narrow-minded expertise

Friday, January 14, 2011 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: intelligence, big picture, health news

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(NaturalNews) Observing the various realms of science, medicine, experts and world events, I've come to the conclusion that our modern definition of "intelligence" (IQ) is seriously lacking. The label of "high IQ" is typically assigned to those who are experts in narrowly-defined fields such as disease pathology, pharmacology, particle physics, mathematics or other so-called "hard science" areas. And yet, it's not uncommon to see a high-level mathematics professor with an IQ of 175 chowing down on a processed hamburger laced with toxic chemical additives, while wearing clothes washed in carcinogenic mainstream laundry detergent.

The professor may be brilliant in mathematics, in other words, but he's unknowingly bathing his entire body in cancer-causing chemicals at the same time.

Not too bright.

Similarly, a typical conventional doctor thinks he knows about health, but he buys breakfast cereals made with genetically modified corn and doesn't even know that GMOs are bad for your health. A quantum physics professor wears antiperspirant deodorant and cologne products that contain powerful cancer-causing chemicals that are absorbed right through the skin. A pharmacist who is an expert in the world of drugs and synthetic chemicals has no clue that the common mineral zinc is crucial for proper immune function.

Highly-intelligent architects for some reason don't question the collapse of the WTC 7 building on 9/11 even though the official explanation of the collapse violates the laws of physics (a subject in which architects are well-versed). Chemists don't consider the chemistry of the toxic shampoos they put on their hair every day. Nor do many scientists think realistically about the toxicity of mercury fillings or the fluorosilicic acid ("fluoride") dumped into the public water supply. I could go on...

The point of all this is that there exists a huge gap in practical intelligence among the so-called "smartest" people in our society. I've spoken with countless doctors and conventional health care providers who are brilliant in their own fields and yet don't even know the basics of nutrition. So how can it be that a guy is so smart he can be the world's best brain surgeon, but when he goes home at night, he bathes his own brain and body in a sea of toxic chemicals consumed as additives in his processed food dinner?

Most people can't assimilate the big picture

What's lacking in these so-called "smart" people is the ability to see the bigger picture by assimilating information from a large number of seemingly unrelated sources. Or, stated in another way, even some of the most high-IQ people around can't see the big picture because they get lost in the details.

Your typical oncologist, for example, almost certainly can't hold an intelligent conversation about nutritional therapies to support immune function because he only thinks of antioxidants as "interfering" with the toxicity of his cancer poisons. Likewise, a typical virologist persistently looks at viruses as the cause of disease but forgets that viruses are opportunists which can only propagate when the terrain is sufficiently vulnerable. Thus, the best defense against invading microorganism is to change the terrain (the person being infected) rather than to try to rid the immediate area of all viruses.

Memorization is not intelligence

See, the very concept of "intelligence" in our society is way off the mark. It isn't intelligent to be able to memorize and regurgitate a huge number of facts and figures, yet this is precisely the measure of academic aptitude assessed in modern educational systems -- especially in law school and medical school. To function as a crude human database of facts and figures is not very useful in an age where handheld computers and mobile computing devices can do the same thing.

But what computers and search engines can't accomplish -- something that is uniquely reserved for intelligent species -- is the ability to assimilate information into a larger picture. It is, in other words, the ability to "connect the dots" and see patterns and trends in what might seem like chaos to others.

My favorite physicist Richard Feynman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman) was an especially gifted pattern assimilator. He was able to look far beyond the conventional boundaries of particle physics and grasp many of the non-intuitive interconnections between matter, energy and the nature of reality itself.

On a more practical level, people like Gerald Celente and even Alex Jones are also phenomenally gifted pattern assimilators. It's not that they are ridiculously good at remembering a lot of facts and figures in one very narrow area of science or knowledge; rather it's the fact that these types of people are able to see patterns in world events and thereby interact with the world around them at a far higher level of understanding than most other people.

Whereas a typical journalist sees a headline that says, "GMO restrictions called unscientific" and thinks it's merely a story about how un-educated GMO opponents are, a more intelligent "pattern assimilator" person sees the same headline and understands the far deeper meaning it holds: That the GMO propaganda campaign is being framed in the language of "science" as a way to label reasonable opponents of GMOs as being somehow uneducated or stupid. But behind the fake science curtain, it's really just gimmicky marketing and a profit-driven agenda.

The pattern behind all that, of course, is the agenda to control the world's food supply and, soon thereafter, charge monopoly prices for seeds (TM) that farmers used to be able to save for free.

A few people are able to see the story behind the story. These people are the "meta-analyzers" of the world around them. They have what I call a "wide angle view" (a big picture view) where they can bring in observational data from a very large data set of observable events in order to infer greater understanding of the world around them.

Here are just a few of the many pattern assimilators who are better known:

Gerald Celente can see the big picture of world finance. He sees the signs of the slipping value of the dollar, the leveraged debt of world banks, the actions of the Fed, the Wall Street bailouts, the news propaganda from the financial sector, and so on -- and from all that, he correctly infers that a global debt bubble is approaching catastrophic collapse.

Many of his colleagues, on the other hand, even though they may achieve high scores on an IQ test, are scribbling away with their noses buried in the arcane mathematics of derivatives calculations, and they miss the big picture because their minds are too narrowly focused on a tiny slice of what's really happening. When the big financial collapse comes, they will be caught with their pants down, holding their pencils in their hands.

Author John Perkins is also another big-picture genius, in his own way, for being able to see the patterns of government actions on a global scaled. He's the author of the popular book "Economic Hit Men" (and also "Hoodwinked"), and he sees patterns in the world that nearly everyone else misses. You can see my interview with Perkins, by the way, at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=83B1AF93091799...

On the nutrition front, Dr Richard Kunin is one of the most remarkable pattern assimilators you'll ever find. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kunin) Here's a genius the world has largely overlooked.

Alex Jones is one of the more astonishing assemblers of patterns out of chaos. His ability to see the underlying patterns behind world events is truly amazing, and whether you agree with his conclusions or not, his mind is able to amass an extraordinarily large amount of data from many sectors (health freedom, police state actions, legislative efforts and so on) and then identify patterns that most other people would miss. You can find Alex on www.PrisonPlanet.com

Seeing the bigger picture doesn't make you any more popular

This list is by no means exhaustive. There are many genius-level pattern assimilators in our world. They are rarely recognized for their talents, however. If anything, those who "get" the big picture are often derided or criticized for doing so. Connecting too many dots, it seems, is dangerous for your reputation. Those who have the most success in the sciences (in particular), are the ones who keep their heads down and focus on their own tiny little corner of study without asking any of the really big questions like, "Hey, where did this grant money really come from?"

I consider myself something of a pattern assimilator, as I see patterns from one area of knowledge often reflected in another. For example, if our global economy is like a world body, what would fit the definition of a cancer tumor engaged in angiogenesis? The answers is corporations, because corporations hijack their own supply of resources (much like cancer tumors build a new blood supply), then grow to a large and dangerous size at which point they begin to replicate and set up branch offices all over the world where the tumor cycle is repeated. And just like cancer tumors, corporations ultimately threaten the lives of their hosts.

As an avid reader and student of human history, psychology and even quantum mechanics, I feel competent to discuss the history of philosophy as much as, say, the modern-day repeating of patterns of tyranny from World War II.

The most promising and fascinating area of human discovery about to be achieved, in my opinion, relates to the superposition of quantum physics and human consciousness. This will result in a paradigm-shattering shift in understanding the nature of our reality, with ripple effects that resound throughout our modern world. Once Earth's people come to realize, for example, that matter is consciousness (and that all consciousness is connected), the implications will require profound rethinking of things such as compassion for animals, religious beliefs and self identity. This is the really exciting stuff that's headed our way.

But we'll never get to a higher understanding of consciousness if we remain "experts" limited to our tiny alcoves of knowledge. To really function as intelligent members of a race that has been advertised as "advanced," we must expand not just the depth of our knowledge but the breadth of our understanding.

And that, of course, means understanding the interconnectedness of our being-ness. It is the interconnectedness that really matters, quite literally (ahem).

Let us hope that more members of the human species can learn to recognize the interconnectedness among not just people, plants and animals, but at another level the interconnectedness of mind, matter and energy, too. To gain understanding of this interconnectedness is -- to paraphrase quite a number of scientists and philosophers from human history -- to become closer to God. He who can see all interconnectedness in life and the cosmos is, of course, God Himself.

To see and recognize the patterns in the reality we apparently inhabit is, in my view, the most important next step necessary for the advancement of human intelligence. Importantly, this advancement cannot come from the sciences alone. It must involve a so-called "quantum leap" in consciousness.