https://themighty.com/2018/09/dan-habib-documentary-intelligent-lives/
This is a short blurb about a documentary called Intelligent Lives, the subject of which is people with low IQ. This is sometimes referring to as intellectual disability, or ID. Autistic people can have IDs as well as other conditions like depression and anxiety, and in fact, one of the subjects of the documentary is autistic.
I wanted to take a minute here to talk about IQ overall. In the educational setting, IQ measures intelligence. To the general public, that's the beginning and the end of it. A high IQ means you're smart and more likely to succeed, and a low IQ means you're not, and are less likely to succeed.
Now, I have a psychology degree, so I learned about IQ in more depth than most people do. IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is a measure of how well any given person learns in an educational setting, especially academic subjects. That's all it does.
Does that seem like the equivalent of overall intelligence? If it does, let me explain a bit more. Academic subjects, like math, writing, history, and literature, are only a small portion of what a person draws on to be successful in life. In addition to these, there is also:
This is a short blurb about a documentary called Intelligent Lives, the subject of which is people with low IQ. This is sometimes referring to as intellectual disability, or ID. Autistic people can have IDs as well as other conditions like depression and anxiety, and in fact, one of the subjects of the documentary is autistic.
I wanted to take a minute here to talk about IQ overall. In the educational setting, IQ measures intelligence. To the general public, that's the beginning and the end of it. A high IQ means you're smart and more likely to succeed, and a low IQ means you're not, and are less likely to succeed.
Now, I have a psychology degree, so I learned about IQ in more depth than most people do. IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is a measure of how well any given person learns in an educational setting, especially academic subjects. That's all it does.
Does that seem like the equivalent of overall intelligence? If it does, let me explain a bit more. Academic subjects, like math, writing, history, and literature, are only a small portion of what a person draws on to be successful in life. In addition to these, there is also:
- Interpersonal intelligence: how well you sense others' emotions and motives, how well you handle disagreements, and how well you can manage and direct people into a working unit. Autistic people, myself included, often struggle with this form of intelligence. Because we're so different from others, it's not as intuitive to understand people.
- Intrapersonal intelligence: how well you know yourself, your reactions, your motives, your strengths, and your weaknesses. This skill is important for taking care of yourself.
- Musical intelligence: how well you can keep a beat going, identify specific sounds, and even how good your sense of pitch is. Perfect pitch is fairly rare in Western society, but approximate pitch (which is what I have) is more common. Musicians usually score highly in this, for obvious reasons.
- Kinesthetic intelligence: how well you can coordinate your limbs and fine motor movements. Athletes tend to excel at this, but so do surgeons and gamers.
- Existential intelligence: your grasp of what life is about, why we live, and why we die. This tends to come up in religious settings or philosophical ones.
- Spatial intelligence: how well you can visualize things in 3D. Architects, sculptors, and graphic designers all tend to excel at this.
Debatably, there are even more kinds than these. The point being, though, is that IQ simply isn't a catch-all measure of what a person is capable of. There are all too many high-IQ autistic people that succeed in academia, only to graduate and be unable to keep a job. Lacking social skills, not understanding how to handle other people, and not having sufficient functional self-care skills (knowing how to do the laundry, keep yourself clean, and take care of a living space, for example), can make it impossible to handle the demands of adult life. At least one piece of research agrees with me.
I count myself as a lesser example of exactly this phenomenon. I wasn't supremely ill-prepared, and I'm not brilliantly high-IQ, either. But college was definitely a difficult experience. Even though it eased me into taking care of myself, it was still extremely challenging to manage attending all my classes, keeping my area clean, handling personal hygiene, and still remembering to eat and do homework. I definitely let any non-mandatory social experiences lapse by the wayside for the first couple years, and often forgot to do all of my personal hygiene.
My grouchy stomach usually ensured I ate, at least. Even if the food often wasn't very good. I may have spent most of my 3rd and 4th years in college eating mac'n'cheese for dinner, every night. And my lunch was often nearly the same thing each day, although I did at least try to make that meal balanced.
But in the end, I tried various full time jobs using my education and detail-oriented skills, and succeeded in keeping none of them. The 9-5 schedule simply strangled my energy reserves until it ground me down to misery. My moderately high IQ didn't help in the slightest for the demands of the real world.
This documentary will show, in ways mere words can't express, that having a low IQ need not bar you from having a successful life, and doesn't reduce your value as a person. I'm looking forward to attending the screening of it in my area. The website for the documentary is here. Check it out, and see if there will be a showing in your area.
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