Sophistication, Evolution and impolite things said in a recondite manner

Family is the proof that sophistication is not evolutionary and only tenuously genetic.

A posit: There are a great many sophisticated people in this world. There are also a great many severely unsophisticated people in this world. Everyone else sits happily in the middle.

Another posit: all of the sophisticated people are related to, within two degrees, a great many severely unsophisticated people.

I don’t think I need to support either of these posits; if you are even a remotely sophisticated person, you know exactly what I am talking about.

So, if our higher intelligence is evolved (and why wouldn’t it be?), why don’t we see a definite genetic separation between the highest peak and lowest trough of our intellectual spectrum? Why is it that the full range of human intellect can spawn forth from the same tiny pool of genetic potential?

Could it be that intellectual capacity is not a genetic trait – that it really can’t be passed on? To a certain degree, a clever parent increases the likelihood of a clever offspring, but where are the Einsteins, the Motzarts, the Shakespears and the Newtons now? Hell, where were they one generation after making history? How is it that intelligence is so likely to spring up from flat mediocrity in one or two generations and then subside as readily? Are we a species of a set intellectual range, from which we do not deviate for natural reasons?

Perhaps, powerful intelligence is too volatile, perhaps it needs a complex and sturdy range of supportive attributes and that the full set develops much slower than the impetuous leaps of its individuals. It is true that many geniuses lack rudimentary sensibility and may suffer from strange social dysfunctions. Yet, apparently, from what I’ve read, even if two geniuses bred, their offspring would be just as likely to be smarter than their parents as any other children of more humble origins.

Maybe this means that intelligence is highly prone to mutation or some other form of variation. Regardless of the cause, this could be advantageous to us, a social species, as the fluke brilliance of an individual would benefit the entire society whereas the fluke stupidity of another could be easily ignored. If this volatile method of intellectual evolution provides the species with an advance on its intellectual potential (albeit a sporadic one) who am I to feel shame or suffering at the state of my glorious relations.