BBC Will Find the Sharpest Brits ... or Will They?

Clare Balding is to be the host of a new Saturday night TV show BBC1 entertainment show to find the country's sharpest mind. The presenter, one of the stars of the BBC's Olympics coverage, will front Britain's Brightest early next year which put 24 brainboxes to the test to find the ultimate egghead. Show bosses will test various aspects including measuring emotional intelligence and processing speed to find the most brilliant brain in the six-part series. Hopefuls will tackle challenges and puzzles in the studio and on location. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: These minds, so good with puzzles, are the nation's sharpest.

Free-Market Analysis: The West's fascination with numeracy continues. It surely is kind of power elite dominant social theme.

We've written about this before, in fact. The elites search out a certain kind of intelligence and even select for it. In our view, this is the reason for the testing mania that has infected so much of the West. The tests are aimed at ever-younger children and these children, once selected, are often put through elite academies.

Singer Lady Gaga and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg attended the same summer camp for gifted individuals. Gradually, these bright kids are directed toward institutions that serve the interests of the elite.

This is a selective process that offers up the "best and brightest" for elite grooming. The emphasis seems always to be on numeracy and the information made available via elite schools such as Harvard strictly conforms to an elitist, mainstream worldview. Here's some more from the article:

Balding said: "I have always said that 'facts are my friend', but knowing things doesn't make you clever. "I am fascinated by the brain – how it works and how it can be improved. I am so excited to be given the opportunity to explore and test intelligence in a format that will be fun, informative and entertaining. The quest to find Britain's Brightest will inspire all of us."

Show bosses have already begun sifting through applicants but production firm RDF is still looking for more contestants for the show which will be filmed at the BBC's MediaCityUK base in Salford.

These sorts of programs encourage people to visualize "smart" people in a certain way. The focus is similar to that of high IQ organizations such as Mensa.

While an organization such as Mensa seems innocent enough given that it remains determinedly apolitical, one of its founders was anything but apolitical. A little research informs us that one of Mensa's cofounders was Lancelot Ware. Wikipedia tells us:

Ware was born in Mitcham, Surrey, the eldest son of a businessman father and musical mother. He attended Steyning Grammar School and Sutton Grammar School. He then became a Royal Scholar at Imperial College London, reading mathematics, followed by a PhD in biochemistry. He undertook medical research with Sir Henry Dale at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hampstead, London, and became a non-clinical medical researcher and lecturer in biochemistry at St Thomas' Hospital in London.

Ware's high IQ was obviously noted. During World War II, Ware worked at Porton Down. What is Porton Down? From Wikipedia again:

Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ. On maps, Porton Down has a "Danger Area" surrounding the entire complex.

It is home to the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, known as Dstl. Dstl is an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the site is believed to be one of the United Kingdom's most sensitive and secretive government facilities for military research, including CBRN defence. The Dstl site occupies 7,000 acres (28 km²).

One can make the argument that Mensa was merely an innocent avocation of a brilliant man or one can speculate that Ware as a kind of elite agent created an organization that would provide a voluntary way of tracking of high-IQ individuals.

What seems true is that the elites are obsessed with intelligence, which goes hand-in-hand with elite fascination with eugenics. Being aware of who is intelligent serves two purposes: It allows elites to employ top people and it allows elites to ensure these people are co-opted into elite systems.

The emphasis on numeracy is another interesting part of the elite program to harvest intelligent individuals. Intelligence in modern times is determinedly measurable but not all individuals have easily measured intelligence.

Much measurable intelligence is linear and can be identified. But holistic intelligence, often NOT numerate, is much harder to quantify. The intelligence of those who produce great poetry or art may not be manifest early on.

It is also an irony of modern times that the facility most apt to be used by those with holistic intelligence is the Internet.

The 'Net attracts autodidacts and those generally who might be considered outliers. These individuals are apt to avoid the kind of IQ culling practiced by the elites and often may cultivate more formidable types of intelligence later in life.

In any case, the Internet, as we often point out, is a kind of waking nightmare for the elites. No matter how hard they try, they cannot track and co-opt all the intelligent people in the world.

And a number of intelligent and un-indoctrinated – uncontrolled – individuals are today using the Internet in all sorts of creative ways.

Conclusion: The elites will do their best to continue to control the Internet and those using it. They will determinedly reinforce the theme that intelligence is a kind of mathematical parlor trick. But it is not. Read the 'Net and see for yourself.