Recent reports in the UK-based international media, claimed last week that Britons have more brainpower than the French, according to controversial new research. I wonder where that leaves us – Maltese Europeans and European Maltese, take your pick – in this unique league table.
Of course there was no room for gloating on the part of the Brits about beating their eternal Continental rivals – because the most intelligent country in Europe is Germany. Now that comes as no surprise, what with having lost two world wars – happily the only two we’ve had so far – and still coming out on top so often in the fields of the economy, the environment and other important matters concerning the league of nations.
Such useless statistics always intrigue me enough to make me hope we somehow feature in the reckonings. Such as when we were voted, by some other statistical creep, the happiest people on earth, so much so that we also have, probably as a result, the fattest children anywhere in Europe.
We do have brains, don’t we? How else would anyone explain our very existence, albeit minimal and restricted due to size, at such international fora and major events as the United Nations, the Olympics and the football World Cup? For a minuscule country such as ours to be even listed, let alone featuring, in them is already an achievement, and for it to have had its name inscribed one way or the other in the annals of history is an even greater one.
I have always insisted it is our natural predisposition to politics that has given us this advantage over much bigger, though lesser known island-states all over the world. It is a penchant that has been tackled and discussed since time immemorial. I am sure that the very first two local communities to emerge soon after Neolithic Man reached these shores must have embarked on an immediate exchange of political niceties the likes of which the good professor from Holland, Jeremy Boissevain, describes in his books of the 1960s and 1970s about the anthropological aspect of Maltese village life.
For us to have impressed the great Roman orator Cicero who once actually expressed the wish to retire in Malta, we must have had brains well ahead of the introduction of the time-share side to our hospitality business. Another high-profile Roman, Deodorus Siculus, in circa 40 BC was ecstatic in his famous description of the wealth and life-style of the Maltese at that time. Had he checked our national IQ then, there is every possibility we could have beaten the Germans who were, until then, still hiding away from each other in dark and humid caverns.
On a negative note, St Paul the Apostle, if he truly ever landed not so casually among us, must not have credited us with too high an IQ. He may have lauded us barbarians for our inbred hospitality, which is probably why he prolonged his stay prior to hopping over to Rome where he is recorded to have literally lost his head, but for us to be so easily impressed by the viper trick must have also tickled him somewhat. It must have been that moment in time when the best brains of the day on the island were busily trying to appease the gods by shoving themselves off Dingli Cliffs in yet another form of self-sacrifice other than early retirement.
In the less distant records of Maltese history, we have had people like David Niven and Jan Morris openly referring to a distinct Maltese obstinacy in the form of political one-upmanship. Desmond Morris, on the other hand, had his “naked ape” censored by the lesser species of our race while Frederic Mullally was refused the postal delivery of copies of his own book, “Clancy”, on the grounds that the content may have infected him with immoral values. And we have recently got to know only too well what poor old Lord Carrington had to go through during the Anglo-Maltese showdown of the mid-Seventies.
As part of this survey, the University of Ulster has drawn up a league table of IQs across Europe and found that the average score in the British Isles is 100, the eighth brainiest along with Norway. The score puts Britain comfortably in the top half of the table. But where does it put us?
Mon Dieu, average IQ in France is 94, says Prof. Richard Lynn, the man behind the research. That falls into the relegation zone, along with Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Serbia. Simply told, have we been brusquely reduced to non-leaguers?
There are common differences between the town and rural area in each country, said Prof. Lynn in his survey. People in the cities scored a higher average than those living in rural areas. His theory for the differences in his country-by-country findings is based on the weather and diet. In the colder northern climes of Europe, humans needed to eat more to keep warm and that gave them bigger brains. Aha, we know where we belong here. Just have a quick look at our tourism brochures.
That sets you thinking about the possible size of our collective brain as a nation. Two or three band clubs in every tiny village. Two political clubs within a few metres of each other in the same village square. Five national holidays. Two official languages. One vote at the United Nations. Five MEPs. A Cabinet of Ministers that is numerically almost equal to that of Britain. Proportionately, the UK Cabinet would have to be made up of the population of one whole Maltese village to reflect demographic realities.
As our IQ standard remains statistically shrouded in mystery, who needs brains to analyse our fascination with power politics and such mind games as nationhood? If we take the recent local council elections by way of offering guidance to the Northern Irish professor, we had the winners being described as losers, and the losers as winners. Try to understand that, professor. We have also had voters “who voted with their feet” when they actually stayed home. On our political chessboard, victors and losers switch roles more than Eddie Murphy in his popular films, leaving us poor citizens, including those who vote using proper lead pencils in hand, rightly perplexed.
Do we have an IQ level that matches the modern-day Germans or have we featured so far behind that we have been taken off the list, very much in the same way and in the same spirit that we have more or less disappeared from FIFA’s famous football list?
But then, Prof. Lynn is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he said men were more intelligent than women by an average of five IQ points. That is tantamount to saying that the Maltese as a nation do not have an IQ at all.
I give up.