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[mycrazyhair]

...brightness is nothing; it is in the heart that the values lie. I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.

- Mark Twain, "Eve's Diary"

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[crunchywitch]

We might be - and I did, too. But I heard a piece on CBC radio a year or so ago about intellect (mostly about how we measure it, but also how we think about it), and one of the throwaway lines by a researcher was that our criteria for intelligence has changed so much in the past century - and how we teach things such as critical skills has changed so much as well - that some people whose IQ tests once defined them as brilliant would now be considered marginally intelligent. And Malcolm Gladwell talks in Outliers about talent as something that is much less innate than we used to think. And then CBC talked about this book, which is linked to this blog by David Shenk. And I wonder why "kind" is assumed to be not innate, but "smart" is. Is there reason to think that kindness is definitely not expressed in our genes, or that there might not be evolutionary purpose for it?
Oh, I haven't had nearly enough caffeine to explain this usefully. I'm not sure I disagree with you: just not sure I agree, either - I wonder if there's a benefit to the current power structure to see intelligence as natural (and therefore fixed in terms of who has it and has access to it) and other traits as nuture-able.