Whilst this book is not intended to be offensive in any way, there are, inevitably, some people who would find some of its contents offensive. Please note, therefore, that if you choose to read this book, you do so at your own risk. Please also note that this is a book of ideas, opinions and thought-exercises and that none of the contents of this book are intended to be read as statements of fact.

Hello. Let me introduce myself: I'm Robert Jameson - and I'm interested in how we can make the world a better place by unlocking people's potential for intelligent thinking.

In this short book, I'm going to be presenting some ideas about what I think are the key skills and capabilities at the heart of genius. More importantly, I'm going to be suggesting ways in which these skills and capabilities can be developed.

I've called this book, 'The Dark Arts of Genius,' because it deals with what, for many people, is the unmentionable, unacceptable, inappropriate and downright offensive subject of how some people are so much more intelligent than others. If you don't want to take the risk of being offended, then this book is not for you.

In the next chapter, I'm going to be hitting you with the big one - the big secret of genius - a monumental, potentially life-changing revelation. But stay with me - don't skip ahead - because I think I need to start by being clear on a few important introductory points.

Firstly, I want to say a few words about philosophy - because, whilst I regard this as a philosophical book, it differs considerably from what you might normally expect in other philosophical offerings.

For one thing, I'm not going to be mentioning the great philosophers or referencing philosophical concepts in any sort of formal, academic fashion.

I want to encourage people to be philosophers - but what I don't mean by that is that they should study the lives and ideas of famous philosophers. 

It seems to me that, all too often, people who are supposed to be studying to be philosophers, end up becoming walking reference guides to the lives and ideas of famous philosophers of the past, having neglected the development of their own potential to philosophise about issues for themselves.

It's not that studying the great philosophers is a bad idea as such. It's very important that some people do engage in such studies - but I think we should be careful not to confuse such historical studies with actual philosophy.

Being knowledgeable about other people's ideas does not make you a philosopher. Indeed, the temptation to instinctively reference that knowledge can easily hamper, rather than enhance, a person's ability to think intelligently about an issue for themselves.

Now, some people, even some senior academics, might ask: 'But isn't it a waste of time to philosophise about something, only to come up with an idea that was already thought of by a famous philosopher hundreds or thousands of years ago?'

Well, no - obviously not - because besides the importance of the idea, the process of coming up with ideas for yourself is an extremely important one. It's brain training. It's vital practice - practice of the skills that can enable new and original ideas to be developed. This still applies, regardless of how many times the idea has been thought of before.

No, philosophy, for me, is about the art and practice of thinking. A philosopher is a dedicated practitioner of the art of thinking - not a repository of knowledge, but someone who has applied themselves to developing their own capacity for intelligent thinking.

And how does someone develop this capacity? Well, that's essentially what this book is about.

Next, since this book is largely concerned with the concept of intelligence and with how intelligence can be nurtured and developed, I want to briefly explain what I mean when I refer to 'intelligence' and 'intelligent people' - so as to avoid certain confusions that might otherwise arise.

There are many attempts to obscure the meaning of intelligence. These are often born of political-correctness. It is politically-incorrect to suggest or imply that some people are especially intelligent, because that implies that other people are less intelligent - and that is deemed to be offensive.

But, I think it would be helpful, for our purposes, to put aside the politically-correct idea that everyone is intelligent, 'just in different ways.'

When I talk about intelligence, I mean it in the traditional sense of intelligence referring to a person's intellectual abilities; their capacity in terms of being able to form and develop sound, rational arguments and to understand ideas - and their capacity to follow rational decision-making processes.

In this traditional sense of intelligence, some people are clearly far more intelligent than others. Not wanting to accept this fact doesn't make it any less true.

So, now we're clear on those points, I want to make the key suggestion on which this whole book is based - and it is this: Intelligence is developed, not inherited. You can learn to be exceptionally intelligent.

People sometimes speak as if intelligence is something you are born with. Well, that's probably a rather unhelpful way to think about it, because the truth is that, if we define intelligence in terms of actual thinking skills and capabilities, then the ability to think intelligently is clearly something you have to develop over time.

If you define intelligence as a potential, rather than an actual ability, then, yes, you could argue that intelligence is something you are born with - but that's not really what we mean when we say someone is intelligent. We mean they have the ability, here and now, to think intelligently.

So, intelligence has to be developed. Some people may, of course, be born with a greater potential than others - or, perhaps more accurately, with a more easily accessible potential than others - but intelligence itself comes through study and practice. It doesn't have to come through formal education - it can be developed through informal means - but it does come through study and practice.

To become intelligent, you must learn and practise the skills of intelligent thinking - and utilise and develop the character traits that enable you to apply them consistently.

It may well seem obvious that being intelligent, in the way I've described, requires study and practice. It may seem obvious that such intelligent thinking has to be learnt, but that's just it - people often fail to see or fail to appreciate the obvious.

If studies on the subject are to be believed, the vast majority of people consider themselves to be of above average intelligence. Some of them are correct, some have a rather inflated view of their abilities and many others are seriously deluded.

The real problem, however, is that so many people act as if there is little they can do to improve their intelligence. Even those that do apply themselves to study, are often focused on building knowledge, rather than boosting their intelligence.

The world's most intelligent people, however, are those people prepared to work hard to become intelligent. They lack the arrogance to believe that intelligence is theirs by right. They understand that intelligence is something you have to work at.

The chief requirement to be able to develop exceptional intelligence is simply the determination to learn the skills that intelligent thinking requires.

It seems to me that intelligent thinking and intelligent behaviour are incredibly important. We could do with a more intelligent world - more thoughtfulness, more consideration. People, animals and the planet we live on repeatedly suffer as the result of unintelligent behaviour - and unintelligent behaviour is a common and obvious result of unintelligent thinking.

To make a better world, we could do with some intelligent people - rather more of them than we have now - but what can we do about it?

The first step is to realise that we can do something about it. Intelligence can be developed. People can be trained to be more intelligent - but is there a reliable method of doing so?

People are born. Most grow up to be not very intelligent, some grow up to be reasonably intelligent and very few grow up to be geniuses - but what if we didn't have to rely so much upon chance? What if it were possible to take reasonably ordinary people and train them to develop the super-advanced thinking skills of a genius?

If we could find a way to do that with any sort of reasonable success rate, then surely that would be amongst the greatest discoveries in human history.

If even 1% of the world's population could be trained to develop genius-level thinking skills, our prospects for the future could be dramatically transformed for the better.

Well, it may well be very much possible. The biggest barrier lies simply in the difficulty of finding people willing to study and learn the skills and attitudes involved. That's why I've written this book.

I thank you for taking an interest in this book - because, by doing so, you're taking part in a great experiment to try to make the world a better place.

In this chapter, I'm going to reveal to you the incredible secret of being super-intelligent - and I'm going to keep things fairly brief, in order to encourage you to focus on what is, essentially, a very simple point, but an extremely important one.

So, prepare yourself for an amazing revelation. Are you ready? Are you sure? OK then - here is it: 

The reason most people aren't very intelligent is that they are stupid.

Now, that, in itself, sounds like a fairly idiotically obvious statement - but don't be fooled! Stop to think about it and you'll realise that there's much more to it than it might seem.

This is genius in action - to see the obvious in what other people have overlooked. The amazingly important point here - and it is easily missed if you aren't paying careful attention - is that it isn't that stupidity is the absence of intelligence - it is largely that intelligence is the absence of stupidity. 

Think about it! Stupidity can be a real, distinct and substantial 'thing' in itself. Stupidity is an active, powerful entity - not merely a lack of intellectual ability. In fact, one might say that stupidity is intelligence with things added to it - things that are very unhelpful and undesirable.

Our central problem, as a species, is not that people lack the processing capacity for intelligent thought. They may have a considerable capacity for rational thinking, but they also have mental blocks and biases that, more often than not, get in the way.

The capacity to think intelligently is, in a sense, straightforward. Simple logic, simple procedures  - of the sort even young children can demonstrate when they play Guess Who - can go a very long way. 

So why are so few people intelligent? Because there are many influences which are superbly effective at twisting their thought processes and undermining their intelligence.

To understand intelligence, we need to understand why most people are not intelligent - and why even people who sometimes appear very capable intellectually, seem to so easily lose the capacity for intelligent thought in many circumstances. We need to study the influences that prevent them being intelligent.

So what are these mental blocks and biases that get in the way of intelligent thinking? The answer, in the main, is prejudice.

I sometimes say that the main barriers to intelligence are laziness and prejudice. Either people can't be bothered to think about things - or, when they do, they are too blinded by prejudice for their rational brain functions to be able to operate effectively.

In many ways, however, laziness is a form of prejudice. Laziness is a bias towards doing what seems easiest, in the short term, rather than what would probably be best. It is a prejudice against anything which involves substantial effort. And so, unintelligent thinking nearly always comes down to some form of prejudice.

99 times out of 100, when people fail to follow a rational argument, it is not because it is complicated or difficult to follow. It is not because they are incapable of following the argument. It is because they refuse to follow the argument. 

Often this is out of sheer laziness. Most of the rest of the time, they simply don't want to follow the argument you put in front of them, because they fear (and 'fear' is the right word) that doing so will lead them to a conclusion they don't like, a conclusion they don't want to face up to - a conclusion they are prejudiced against. 

So, to protect themselves from this unsettling possibility, they decide (consciously or subconsciously) that they would rather opt out of discussing the matter in hand rationally and intelligently.

Sometimes they just 'go dumb' and claim they simply don't understand. Other times, they employ alternative strategies to end the discussion - such as claiming that the point you're making is 'ridiculous' or 'offensive.' Either way, the intelligent part of the discussion has probably come to an end.

We all ought to be familiar with these well-used strategies. It's relatively easy to recognise them, of course, when other people turn to them in desperation when they are losing an argument. The difficult bit - and, for most people, I mean the extremely difficult bit - lies in recognising the problem when we resort to such behaviour ourselves.

Prejudices, of course, come in many forms - more on this in later chapter. But for now, the key thing that needs to be appreciated is that, in all probability, everyone (or almost everyone) has their own substantial set of prejudices.

You might not think of yourself as a prejudiced person - and you may well be rather less prejudiced than most people - but just because you aren't outrageously racist or sexist or homophobic, this doesn't mean you don't have serious prejudices. You almost certainly have lots of them - and they probably interfere with your thinking capabilities more often than you realise.

Intelligence comes from recognising your own prejudices and finding ways to overcome them - not from denying their existence.

In the previous chapter, I said that the key to getting people to think more intelligently is not that you must teach them any sort of advanced thinking skills - it is mainly about finding a way to remove the mental blocks that are holding them back. And the main blocks that get in their way are their prejudices. In this chapter, I want to consider the problem of prejudice in more detail.

Intelligence is simple. Genius is simple. It's stupidity that's complicated. Stupidity is a complex mass of interconnected prejudices. Clear that mess away, and intelligent thinking becomes pretty easy stuff.

There are, unfortunately, a myriad of prejudices that people acquire (and rarely discard) during their lifetimes - and which are incredibly effective at blocking intelligent thinking.

Racism, Sexism and homophobia are perhaps the most commonly highlighted forms of prejudice - and it is obvious how such prejudices can prevent a person from thinking intelligently. People afflicted by such prejudices will often be unable to follow even the simplest of arguments whenever that argument goes against their racist, sexist or homophobic view of the world.

Such obvious prejudices, however, are probably not the main prejudices inhibiting intelligent thinking in most western societies. These prejudices are frequently highlighted and, importantly, are widely recognised as prejudices. Our societies have far from perfect, but nevertheless extensive and influential systems for countering such prejudices.

Many other prejudices, however, are not always recognised as prejudices. For example, there is selfishness. Selfishness is a form of prejudice. It involves people's thought-processes being twisted to arrive at conclusions and decisions biased in favour of whatever they perceive to be in their own interests. It leads to people being biased against any ideas, beliefs and conclusions they don't see as supporting their interests.

Selfishness often plays a big part in discussions about global warming, for example. Many people's views on such environmental issues are distorted by selfishness. They don't want to cycle anywhere instead of using a car. They don't want to cut down on their frequent holidays abroad. They don't want to consume less. So, they don't want to hear any arguments that global warming is a real and urgent problem, caused by human activity.

This is not about whether their opinions are right or wrong. It is about them being unable to discuss the issues intelligently, because they are set against accepting any arguments or conclusions that go against what they want to believe.

Selfishness is a trait that is often frowned upon - but certainly not always. It is sometimes seen as a good feature in certain professions. And even when it is frowned upon, it is often excused and not looked upon anywhere near as negatively as racism or sexism.

A selfish person, however, is not likely to be an intelligent person - because selfishness is a form of prejudice and it distorts people's thinking processes.

Some prejudices arise out of things being such an endemic part of our lives that we never or almost never stop to question them.

Many beliefs are so engrained within our culture, that they are commonly accepted without question - the belief, for example, that a one-person-one-vote democracy is a good system of government or that the jury system is a principled and fair way to reach verdicts in criminal cases.

When people adopt such beliefs without questioning them, they behave unintelligently, because they have allowed their beliefs to be determined by prejudice. They have not arrived at them through a rational process, but as a result of laziness and prejudice born of a tendency to go along with what society in general appears to believe or accept. It is not that their beliefs are necessarily wrong - merely that they were not arrived at through an intelligent thought process.

Even more damaging, however, are the many prejudices that are not only rarely challenged, but which are far more likely to attract praise than criticism. These are the prejudices of the society we live in, the prejudices that are deemed politically-correct - the ones society actively encourages.

There is a huge deal of pressure, in terms of political-correctness, to support multiculturalism, to accept homosexuality as a positive thing, to believe that rape is rape, that torture is wrong, that discrimination should be illegal and that people should allow what they do, say and believe to be determined by what other people consider 'appropriate' and 'acceptable.'

Discussions even remotely connected to gender, race, religion or sexuality are often heavily hampered by political-correctness - but political-correctness extends much, much further than that.

For example, we have the whole issue of criticism to content with. Political-correctness has trained people to be hyper-sensitive and to take offence at nearly any criticism, implied criticism or imagined criticism. 

They are encouraged to be so fearful of losing face that they will instinctively reject almost all criticism, no matter how justifiable and potentially helpful it might be. Often, they will be unwilling to admit to any mistakes, even to themselves - and thus, in many cases, unwilling to see, accept or understand what ought to be very, very obvious.

This means almost no discussions, on any issue, are entirely free from the threat of prejudices caused by political-correctness.

Try having a discussion about intelligence, for example. Even if you avoid bringing in any issue of gender or race into the discussion, you end up hampered by the problem than any suggestion of anyone being especially intelligent, is interpreted as a criticism of everyone else.

With most people, you can't even discuss something as seemingly unemotive as a simple maths problem, without politically-correct hypersensitivity stifling any chance of an intelligent discussion. They'll be scared of feeling inadequate or humiliated if they get it wrong - and scared of being thought of as a nerd for getting it right. 

It is politically-incorrect to be competent at maths, because being good at maths makes other people feel inadequate. Even bringing up the subject of maths makes many people feel inadequate. It makes them feel that you are attacking them by deliberately trying to make them feel stupid and humiliating them.

The key point here is that prejudice doesn't just affect discussions on a few topics, such as immigration or gay marriage.

Whether they stem from selfishness, arrogance, political-correctness or any other source, prejudices in one form or another can easily reach out to affect almost any issue you might care to imagine.

Bring up an issue that is emotive in any way - and, in practice, almost any issue can quickly become emotive - and people's prejudices will rapidly surface. Their capacity to think rationally can then quickly evaporate, because they are not skilled in overcoming prejudices.

One single form of prejudice can inhibit and detrimentally influence millions of people's thinking on many thousands of different issues. But there are so many forms of prejudice, so widespread amongst the population, that almost any discussion, with almost anyone picked at random, is likely to be severely limited as a result of that person's numerous prejudices.

The prejudice involved might sometimes be in the form of racism or sexism, but could easily be in the form of a political bias, or selfishness, or just a general tendency to support, or reluctance to question, popularly accepted views.

To be intelligent, you need to deal with your prejudices. So, what can you do to overcome your prejudices - especially any tendencies you might have to conform to the acceptable attitudes of the society you live in?

Simple: Practise! You practise and practise until you become good at it. You pick issues and beliefs in relation to which there is significant social pressure to conform - and you practise challenging the prejudices that society encourages or condones. You practise thinking what others dare not think  - or what they are discouraged from thinking.

You practise wondering: Maybe gay marriage is a bad idea. Maybe there's nothing intrinsically wrong with offending people. Perhaps rape isn't always rape. Perhaps communism isn't such a bad idea. Perhaps women shouldn't have 'the right to choose.' Perhaps referring to a Pakistani as a 'Paki' is no more racist than calling an Australian an 'Aussie'. Maybe.... Perhaps.... What if....?

The aim of this practice is not to convince yourself of any particular opinions, but to give yourself the confidence to be able to think differently. It is to give you the freedom not to be confined in your thinking and not to be constrained by convention - by what you are expected and pressured to believe or accept.

The key to being intelligent is not to be stupid. And the key to not being stupid lies in being willing to challenge prejudices - not just the unpopular prejudices, not just some particular forms of prejudice that happen to have affected you personally or ones which particularly irritate you, but all prejudices, regardless of how politically-correct those prejudices may be - because our prejudices are what, so often, prevent us from attaining the clarity of thought that would enable us to think intelligently.

If you can become expert at recognising and overcoming prejudice - that's probably the point when you'll have unlocked your potential for genius.

As I said previously, the secret of being super-intelligent is to rigorously challenge your own prejudices and the prejudices of the society you live in.

And the number one prejudice that gets in the way of intelligent thinking, is not racism or sexism or homophobia, or any of the most frequently highlighted forms of prejudice. The most damaging and perhaps the most widespread form of prejudice, I suggest, is conformism.

The vast majority of human beings seem to be cursed by the cruel and insidious weakness of wanting, indeed desperately needing, to be part of a crowd - wanting to fit in, not wanting to be unpopular or disliked, not wanting to be an outcast. It is a weakness that utterly cripples many people's intellectual abilities.

When deciding upon their beliefs, attitudes and actions, they refuse to properly consider radical ideas, unpopular ideas or even ideas which might merely induce a moderately disapproving look when expressed or even implied. Their brains refuse to function when arguments are presented that fail to support whatever happens to be deemed appropriate and acceptable by their peer group, or according to the rules of political-correctness in the society they live in.

Even for people with stronger personalities, who are often capable of intelligent thoughts, their intellectual abilities are often seriously weakened by their conformist tendencies when particularly controversial or emotive topics are under discussion.

It is not just that people are scared of being discovered to be different or labelled as different - they are scared of being different and scared of even thinking differently to other people - because of the sense of isolation they feel whenever they see themselves as apart from the crowd.

Yet, how can you reasonably hope to make society a better place if you don't question its values and traditions? Are you ever really likely to properly consider new ways of doing things, if you never bother questioning the ways things are done now?

And yet, unfortunately, most people's thought processes are severely constrained by the norms and expectations of the society they live in - with the result that they are dogged by prejudice and unable to think intelligently on any number of issues.

Conformism works to undermine intelligence on all sides of many debates.

A lot of racism, sexism and other well-known forms of prejudice, in fact stem mainly from conformism. Very often, people discriminate against people on grounds of race, gender or sexual preference, largely because they seek to conform with the attitudes favoured by their peer group and/or those favoured by the wider society they live in, rather than because they have any particularly deep-seated racist, sexist or homophobic tendencies of their own.

At the same time, conformism undermines the intellectual abilities of many other people who are keen to be seen to oppose sexual or racial discrimination, but who themselves are deeply prejudiced because they refuse to intelligently consider ideas which appear to conflict with the rules or spirit of political-correctness.

Let's consider a simple example, to show how damaging political-correctness can be - to illustrate how easily it can undermine people's capacities for thinking intelligently.

This example concerns a husband and wife who find themselves at the centre of a major controversy - and the subject of legal action - because they refused to let a gay couple stay in their guesthouse. They said they could not let a room to the two men, as doing so would be at odds with their religious convictions.

They were taken to court over the issue and, ultimately, their actions were deemed discriminatory and illegal by the courts. They were fined and saddled with considerable legal fees - but should they have been? Should the state have any right to interfere in such matters and deny such people the right to decide for themselves who they will and will not accept as guests in their own home?

Whilst many people would argue that such 'discrimination' is clearly wrong and should not be allowed, there is a very obvious and rational counter-argument that, no matter what the rights and wrongs of the decision by the guesthouse owners might be, they should have the right to make their own decisions on such matters, informed by their own particular moral views. It is a simple matter of basic freedoms. If we value freedom, then surely we ought to allow people to live according to their own moral rules - and not force them to abide by a set of moral rules dictated to us all by the state?

In a free society, the state is only supposed to be allowed to restrict our freedoms when it is necessary to stop us harming or restricting the freedoms of other people.

If gay people were so discriminated against that they would be unable to find accommodation anywhere, then state intervention might be justified. But if, having been turned away from one guesthouse, there are, in fact, hundreds of other hotels and guesthouses in the area perfectly willing to accept their custom, then it is difficult to argue that their freedoms have been taken away. It does seem draconian for the state to intervene in such circumstances and force guesthouse owners to abide by the moral rules it dictates are the correct ones.

This is an issue, however, (one of many) that lots of people really struggle to deal with rationally and intelligently.

Now, obviously, some people are prejudiced against gay people. But, equally, many people are prejudiced through having been indoctrinated to look favourably upon almost anything associated with homosexuality - for fear that not doing so will result in them being labelled as homophobic in some way.

Consequently, millions of people will be unable, or unwilling, to discuss such a matter intelligently - because they refuse from the outset to so much as consider that it should be allowable to refuse customers on the grounds of their sexuality.

On any argument related to homosexuality, they feel compelled to support, without qualification, whatever they perceive to be the pro-gay side of the argument - not because it is right, but because of their own desperation to conform.

Understand that this has nothing to do with whether they are right in their views. It has nothing to do with whether they are right to believe that businesses should never refuse people because they are gay. It has nothing to do with whether they are right to believe that it should be illegal for businesses to turn away customers on account of them being gay - but a person's view, whatever it is, will not be an intelligent one if they refuse to fairly consider any alternative views.

So, we have a reasonably simple issue that is highlighted in the news every now and then, but which millions of people - possibly the majority of the population - are unable or unwilling to consider intelligently, because their minds are closed to any ideas or conclusions that do not seem to fit in with the attitudes they are expected to support and defend.

They have effectively decided that fitting in with the politically-correct position is more important to them than considering the issue maturely and intelligently. They have effectively decided not to be intelligent. They largely shut their rational brain functions down. 

It ought, for example, to be a simple distinction to understand that just because you don't think gay people should be discriminated against, it doesn't follow that you believe the heavy hand of the state should be involved in fining or threatening to imprison people who do discriminate against gay people. Yet, try discussing this issue with people - and you'll often find they do indeed fail to appreciate or acknowledge such a simple distinction. 

That's how political-correctness cripples people's brain functions. They shut down their brain functions to avoid accepting a perfectly reasonable distinction that ought to be easy to understand. They render themselves idiots in order to avoid accepting an unpopular opinion - or an 'inappropriate' viewpoint.

Many people conform because they don't have the strength of character not to. Others, perhaps, just haven't yet got around to appreciating just how important it is to resist the temptation to conform. Many, unfortunately, just cannot conceive of living their lives any other way than through surrendering to conformism.

Pressure to conform affects some people's thinking on some topics more than others - but there are few if any topics not affected at all by conformism. Conformism, by its nature, can affect people's view on almost anything. Before, or even instead, of thinking for themselves, they first look to assess what other people are thinking and what other people will find acceptable and appropriate.

Fundamentally, they are not interested in intelligent discussion - only in demonstrating their allegiance to the crowd they feel they belong to and their willingness to conform to its rules and expectations.

This dynamic all but wipes out the intelligent thinking capabilities of most of the population.

This chapter revolves around the subject of justice - a topic I will use to illustrate some important points about prejudice and intelligence.

The first point I want to emphasise is that an issue doesn't have to be mired in complex emotions for it to attract prejudice. 

There are many highly questionable beliefs and practices which play a prominent and important part in our societies, but which most people rarely if ever question. Often, this is precisely because they have become so deeply engrained within our culture, that people don't stop to appreciate that there is anything particularly questionable about them.

Consider the subject and concept of theft, for example. It is not the most emotive subject. It does not tend to cause great offence merely to discuss the subject. It is, however, a topic that might help us to realise the extent to which we neglect to question what we ought to question.

Because they have never really stopped to thoroughly question the principles involved for themselves, people's views on theft tend to be dominated by prejudices - prejudices stemming from the assumptions and accepted, but rarely questioned, 'values' of our societies. 

Most people seem to have been brought up to believe - under the influence, perhaps, of their parents, their teachers and/or their religious leaders - that theft is wrong. 

They may accept that there are exceptions - that it may be excusable to resort to theft in extreme circumstances, such as when people steal food to avoid starvation - but, extreme circumstances aside, most people passively accept that theft is fundamentally wrong.

They have never really stopped to properly consider that perhaps our societies' views about theft are seriously and fundamentally flawed. This seems rather neglectful, considering that the concept of theft has such a huge influence on our everyday lives. 

When someone steals something, they take it away from another person who owns it or has possession of it - but doesn't the idea that theft is wrong rely rather precariously on the assumption that the owner actually deserves to possess the item in the first place?

If we look at the distribution of wealth in our societies, can we seriously claim that wealth is fairly, reasonable fairly or even remotely fairly distributed? Do the super-rich really deserve to be super-rich? Do the poor deserve to be poor?

Such debates often boil down to arguments over how hard people worked to get their money.

Nine times out of ten, the rich will attempt to justify their wealth by saying they worked hard for their money. 'I worked hard to get where I am,' they will say.

No doubt some of them did, but there is also a lot of good fortune involved, not least the fact that most rich people tend to have well-off parents and either directly inherited considerable wealth or received other advantages - such as an education at top schools and universities and contacts in high places - that enabled them to become rich for themselves; advantages that most people don't get.

And also, there is, ethically, a huge difference between people who worked hard providing useful services that benefit other people and society in general - and those who worked hard swindling people out of money through providing sub-standard goods and services, by conning people into buying dodgy financial products, or by selling sugary drinks to kids, many of whom are already overweight.

Looked at rationally, it ought to be admitted that wealth is not fairly distributed - and if this is the case, this casts considerable doubt over the idea that theft in general is wrong.

But perhaps there's an even bigger assumption being ignored here. Our societies tend to judge the ethics of property ownership according to how that property was acquired. If you bought it or inherited it, that's deemed ethical. And if you stole it, that's deemed unethical.

But why should we judge property ownership this way? It barely makes any sense at all. It is merely one possible way to judge the ethics of property ownership. It's our traditional way of doing so, but it is very difficult to justify - especially as there is what ought to be an obvious alternative method of judging property ownership that would appear to make much more sense.

Oh, you earned that money, did you? You worked hard for that money, did you? Well - well done - but what really counts is what you're going to do with it. Are you going to spend it in a selfish way for your own benefit - or are you going to look how you can use it to benefit others?

You own a large house. You worked hard to be able to purchase it, did you? Well done - but what matters is whether you're going to put it to good use.

Surely, the ethics of ownership have much more to do with what you do with the money and possessions you own, than with how you acquired your money and possessions in the first place?

If you buy yourself a third supercar, then what does it matter that you worked hard in order to be able to afford it? It's still a ludicrous waste of resources that could have been put to far better use.

Robin Hood was a good guy - a heroic character (albeit a fictional one) - but not because of how he acquired wealth. Rather it was perhaps in spite of how he acquired it. The important thing was that he did good things with the wealth that he stole. We instinctively understand that principle in a story, yet we're usually very reluctant to apply it - or even consider it - in real life.

The trouble is that people fail to develop intelligence when they are too eager to accept - and far too reluctant to question - what society tells them.

Let's move on to a different justice-related issue that centres on another idea that people rarely question, despite the many obvious reasons why we ought to question it. The issue is that of how we should view the jury system.

The jury system is frequently almost idolised as a cornerstone of our justice systems. No doubt there have been many times when juries have helped to prevent injustices that might well have occurred under an alternative system - but there must also have been many times when juries and the jury system have been complicit in perpetrating injustices.

And, overall, when you really stop to think about it, the jury system - largely an accident of history intended to limit the power of kings and nobles - seems totally out of sync with what we would normally consider to be key principles of justice.

For example, as a very basic and obvious starting point: Normally, we expect people who make important decisions about other people's lives to be held accountable for their decisions. Whether in the public sector or the private sector - in almost any organisation - decision makers are generally expected to have to justify their decisions. They have to explain themselves - and other people can then scrutinise their explanations to see if their decisions are reasonable, fair and justifiable.

Jurors make incredibly important decisions about other people's lives and they do so on behalf of us all - so why are they not held accountable for those decisions? Having twelve strangers disappear into a room and come back with a guilty verdict, without ever having to explain themselves, is clearly, obviously, not justice - so why do we behave as if it is?

Jurors are untrained. They are often under-educated - and a considerable proportion probably have a poor grasp of the language in which the court case is being conducted. We don't even check if they have any sort of reasonable understanding of key concepts such as 'innocent unless proven guilty' or the idea of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

If they're at all representative of the population in general, then most of them probably aren't very nice people. They're probably not very principled and not very honest. It seems farcical that we would allow such poorly-qualified people to make such important decisions - but especially when there is almost no scrutiny over how those decisions are made.

Perhaps you are someone who has stopped to really question the ethics of the jury system, but it is the sort of thing which many relatively educated people still fail to stop and question - and having the eagerness to stop and question what others do not question, is a major factor in the development of advanced intelligence.

Would any reasonable and intelligent person, if they spent a decent amount of time thinking about it, believe that the jury system is an ethical way to dispense justice? It makes very little sense, yet we don't just put up with it; we hold it in high regard as a principled, idealistic system - seemingly with complete disregard for any rational analysis of what justice should mean.

The jury system is an appalling substitute for justice - so why do we accept it? Why don't we have protests on the street about the criminal unfairness of our jury system? Well, it's because our societies are dominated by convention and conformism - and hence dominated by stupidity.

With so many things, if people are not strongly encouraged to question something, then they don't question it. They just unthinkingly accept what they are used to. They go along with what they are given. That, though, is the opposite of intelligence.

Another thing with a subject like this, though, is that many people simply won't be much interested in the ethics of the jury system.

It's one of those things that doesn't necessarily seem very exciting, until you find yourself on trial, facing a life sentence, or even the death penalty, and you find that your fate rests in the hands of twelve ordinary and probably fairly dim-witted strangers with unknown ethical standards. Suddenly, then, the whole thing seems desperately exciting - or terrifying.

But then you're probably not very likely to be in such a situation, are you? And so the question becomes; 'OK, but do you care about people who are?' Do you care about people you don't know and who you're never likely to meet? Do you care about injustice? Do you care about principle?

Many people don't. Perhaps they just haven't lived enough to have been able to learn to care - but caring about such things is a vital part of being intelligent. If you care, you take an interest - you think about such things and you consider what you can do about them.

People who do not care - care about other people, care about justice, care about the planet we live on, care about principles and values - such people will never be intelligent; not unless they somehow learn how to care.

As previously emphasised, a discussion on any topic can become bogged down by prejudice - but the most likely to be most severely affected are topics that stir up a strong emotional response.

That's one reason why sex-related subjects are amongst the very best ones to consider and discuss, if you want to practise the skills of intelligent thinking. 

Sexual issues involve many emotions, conventions and taboos. These fuel countless prejudices - and becoming intelligent is largely about developing the awareness and skills to challenge and overcome such prejudices. And, by way of encouraging a little practice, I wanted to suggest a little thought exercise about the age of consent.

The age of consent is not merely a topic likely to expose strong opinions. It is an issue many people find particularly difficult to consider rationally, because their thought processes become crippled by fear - often an intense form of fear closely related to conformism.

Having an intelligent discussion on this issue has become even more difficult in the wake of certain well-publicised sexual scandals of recent years. There have always been sexual scandals, but perhaps today's sexual scandals are accompanied by rather more hysterical reactions than used to be the case - the result, perhaps, of the modern media's desire to stoke up such hysteria.

And there's a lot of paranoia around; paranoia about 'sexual predators' and paranoia about paedophiles supposedly driving around in fleets of white vans, looking to snatch children off the street.

In such an environment, the age of consent is a very thorny issue indeed. You're talking about an issue that unavoidably combines the concepts of children and sex in the same discussions. Far too risky a topic for most people to dare tackling!

And those that do participate are generally obsessed with following the politically-correct line, as a way of cementing their anti-paedophile credentials. They're too fearful to discuss the issue intelligently. Many seem nothing less than absolutely terrified that one slip up - one single hesitation to confirm the PC line - will result in suspicious whispers behind their backs and a lifetime of suspicious glances aimed in their direction. (Do some of them protest too much, one wonders!)

Such attitudes create rather a tense atmosphere when the subject is raised - which makes it all the more of a challenge for people to consider or discuss the issue intelligently - but that's precisely why I've brought the subject up.

So, what about the age of consent? At what age should a person be deemed, by the law, to be capable of consenting to sex? The age of consent where I live is 16. It's higher in some countries (or states) and lower in others. So what should it be?

Every now and again, someone will suggest - perhaps in an opinion piece in a newspaper or on a news website - that the age of sexual consent should be lowered.

Such suggestions are often met with rather hysterical reactions. And the people who make such suggestions are often assaulted with abuse - abuse which only sometimes holds back from accusing the person who made the suggestion of being a paedophile and child abuser. No wonder people are scared to fairly consider the issue - but such intimidation is plain wrong and we shouldn't surrender to it.

Unfortunately, most people do surrender to this intimidation - but through being scared and succumbing to their fears, they render themselves unable to consider the idea in a remotely fair or reasonable manner.

And yet there are some very good arguments - including what ought to be some fairly obvious arguments - as to why the age of consent should be lowered.

It seems the most obvious one is a critical issue of freedom. In stipulating an age of consent, the state is taking quite a drastic step; it is taking away people's freedoms to make their own choices about their own private lives. It is imposing its will on its citizens by issuing a threat of imprisonment if people do not conduct their personal relationships in line with how the state dictates they must be conducted.

This is not to say that the imposition of an age of consent cannot be justified - only that it is a very serious step and a potential infringement upon some very basic and natural freedoms. Such interference may only be justified under strict conditions.

State interference is almost certainly justified in regard to having an age of consent above 12 or 13 and possibly above 14. But what about at 15?

A 15 year old female, for example, can be physically and emotionally mature and perfectly capable of having and nurturing a child. If that is the case, then what right does the state have to deny her the freedom to bear children?

'None,' would appear to be the obvious answer. If the young woman's actions are not doing anyone else any harm and if she is not being harmed in any way, then on what basis, exactly, can the state possibly justify such draconian restrictions? Shouldn't such interference be considered an abuse of state power and a clear violation of her basic human rights?

Of course, it can be and is argued that most 15-year-olds are not mature and responsible enough to have sex. This is very probably true - but how can that be said to justify taking away basic, natural freedoms from those 15-year-olds who are mature enough and who are ready to make excellent parents?

Do we want to see 15-year-old mothers and fathers? Perhaps many people would rather not, but so what? What right would we have, morally, to interfere so fundamentally in other people's lives?

Supposedly, we believe in freedom. If so, then we ought to insist on setting a high bar for when the state is allowed to override our personal decisions. 

We may believe that, in an ideal world, people would not have sex at all until they are 16, 18 or even 21. But, in a free society, the state has no right to enforce its ideals upon anyone. All it is justified in doing is enforcing minimum standards, where behaviour that fell below that standard would clearly involve abuse or cause some serious form of harm in some way.

The state can, quite justifiably, on behalf of the people, attempt to encourage higher standards, but, ethically, it should only enforce minimal standards - the minimum standards required to maintain a peaceful society. A state that enforces laws to impose its own ideals is a dangerous and dictatorial one - one whose existence is incompatible with the concept of a free society.

Another problem is that having an age of consent at 16 or higher means that we are not prepared to enforce these laws in a fair, consistent and non-discriminatory fashion.

Indeed, age of consent laws - as generally enforced - have got very little to do with protecting young people. They're really much more to do with excusing discrimination and pandering to prejudice.

We pretend that we wish to protect young people from abuse and from the pressures and risks of sex - but this is largely nonsense. In general, we do little or nothing to stop young teenagers having sex, even when they are below the age of consent. We barely lift a finger even to discourage them from having sex. The politically-correct position is not that 'children' should never have sex. Indeed, modern sex education in schools often seems to encourage children to believe that sex amongst underage people is perfectly normal and acceptable.

What really gets people worked up is not the harm caused to children through them having underage sex, but the thought of a much older man matched up with a much younger woman. In fact, many people would be more offended by the idea of a 50-year-old man -  a 'dirty old man' as they would perceive him - having sex with a 17-year-old, than they are by the idea of two fourteen, thirteen or even 12-year-olds having sex with each other. So, it's actually sexual age-gaps that many people are so offended by - not the idea of children having sex at all.

This may seem like a mad prejudice, but age of consent laws are, in practice, used chiefly to pander to such prejudices. In many countries, age of consent laws are used almost exclusively in cases where there is a significant age difference between sexual partners. Some countries actually have close-in-age exceptions to their age of consent laws. Many other countries, without these exceptions, still only prosecute when the people involved are not close in age, despite there being no basis in law for such discriminatory policies.

But where, exactly, is the scientific evidence that close-in-age relationships are any better or more successful than those that involve a significant age difference?

If a young women, for example, is mature enough to have sex, then what does it matter if her partner is much older than she is? From either a moral or legal perspective, it shouldn't really make any difference at all.

And if a young woman is too young and immature to be having sex, then she is too young and immature to be having sex with anyone - regardless of how old her partner is. It does not make it OK simply because her partner is of the same age as she is.

Unfortunately, what a lot of people actually want - and currently get - is a law that allows or even encourages discrimination; a law that excuses, backs and gives force to their age-gap-related prejudices, so that people can be selectively prosecuted according to those prejudices, rather than in accordance with any decent principles of justice.

But, really, age of consent laws ought to be about protecting young people from harm - not about enforcing modern, cultural prejudices.

The law should also apply equally to all, with only rather limited exceptions, such as with very young children and those with mental conditions who don't understand the seriousness of their actions.

If the age of consent is 16, then we should be prepared to prosecute everyone above the age of criminal responsibility who has sex with anyone under that age. But it seems clear that we are not prepared to do so. We are not prepared to prosecute a 15-year-old for having sex with another 15-year-old. Except in very rare circumstances, we're not prepared to prosecute a 16 or 17-year-old either.

But, with a lower age of consent - at 15, 14 or 13,  we might be prepared to enforce the law more equally. And that's why it could be argued that perhaps the age of consent should be lowered in order to protect children and teenagers from sexual abuse. To many people, that might seem like a contradiction in terms, but it isn't.

The trouble with a relatively high age of consent - 16 or higher - is that it is, in practice, unenforceable, or, at least, our societies are not prepared to enforce such a position and everybody knows it. This means that laws on age of consent are frequently ignored - ignored on many millions of occasions every year. They are seen as advisory, only leading to a prosecution in exceptional circumstances.

Most people who engage in sexual activity with underage young people, do not realistically fear arrest. They feel their own young age will allow them to escape the law. But if a 14-year-old is not ready for sex then he/she is not ready for sex - not with a 30-year-old, but not with another 14-year-old either.

A lower age of consent could be an age of consent that could be applied firmly and consistently - and one that could be rigorously enforced with there being far less of a case to argue that such enforcement was an unreasonable restriction of our freedoms.

So, there are some good, strong arguments for suggesting the age of consent might currently be higher than is justified - and for suggesting that a lower age of consent, which could be more fairly and consistently enforced, might do far more to protect young people from harm than an unrealistically high age of consent that our society is only prepared to enforce in order to pander to irrational age-gap-related prejudices.

To be intelligent, you have to be able to fairly consider such arguments. You don't have to accept them, but you do have to be prepared to accept them - prepared to accept arguments if you can't find any flaws in them. It might not seem to be a huge distinction, but it is the distinction between intelligence and stupidity - and consequently an extremely important one.

There are all sorts of reasonable opinions that can be held on such an issue, but intelligent arguments are difficult to come by in a climate of fear. Fear leads to prejudice - and intelligent thinking requires us not to be constrained by such fears.

I want to finish by saying something about freedom. 

There is an extremely strong, but frequently overlooked relationship between freedom and intelligence.

Take any opinion you might have. If you are not free to think that the opposite opinion might be true, then you are not free, you are not a free thinker and your opinion is largely just a manifestation of prejudice. Your opinion itself may be a good one - potentially a perfectly justifiable one that fits in with all accepted facts - but it is not born of intelligent thinking.

Intelligent people are free to think, to consider and potentially to accept any opinion or idea - regardless of how unpopular, unacceptable or offensive it might be deemed to be. 

They can defy conformism, defy convention and defy political-correctness. They jump at opportunities to be curious, provocative and daring. 

To be intelligent is to be free from overbearing mental constraint; free from social pressure, free to consider ideas for yourself rather than be dictated to.

Many great intellectuals, though sometimes physically restricted or threatened by oppressive regimes, though sometimes imprisoned or tortured, retained their independence of mind.

Most people, however, can't even retain their independence of mind in the face of even a mild amount of social pressure. Their mental balances are unsettled by even the slightest criticism or implied criticism. Their thinking, words and behaviour are dominated by fear; fear that comes from social pressures to conform, fear of being an outcast, fear of expressing or simply holding or even just considering ideas that are unpopular, unacceptable or politically-incorrect.

Intelligent people have strong defences against such fears. Some are almost totally immune. They simply do not care what other people think of them. It is not in their nature.

For others, it is not that they lack all fear of social ridicule or contempt - but such fears are successfully counteracted by a sense of mischief, a desire to excel, a sense of justice and a fierce sense of principle. They have the strength of character to resist such fears and not give in to them.

A genius can see what other people do not see. They think what other people refuse even to consider. And this is what makes them so incredibly valuable to our entire species.

It isn't magic, though - it's freedom. They gain that freedom through determination and practice. They must be determined to question what they are told or what they are expected to believe - and they must be practised in doing so. Through determination and practice they become skilled at opening their eyes to see things and opening their minds to think things.

They have developed the capacity to free their minds from the prejudices of the society they live in - and thus freed themselves to think intelligently.

Intelligent thinking and freedom - together, they can help us build a better world and a brighter future. As individuals, as a society and as a species, we have enormous potential - which far too often goes to waste because we fail to challenge our prejudices, fail to overcome our fears and hence fail to develop our capacity for intelligent thinking. We really ought to stop wasting this potential - but to do so, we must ditch conformism and learn to nurture and value the critical free-thinking capabilities that are the hallmark of genius. 

You cannot be intelligent if you only allow yourself to think what it is acceptable to think and believe what it is acceptable to believe and if you question only what it is acceptable to question.

To be a conformist is to be dead. Being alive suggests an ability not to conform; an ability to decide, an ability to create, the capacity to 'think different' - to be different.

This is not a game. It can certainly be fun questioning things. It can certainly be fun to dare to think what other people refuse to consider, but there is a huge amount at stake here. Thoughtlessness and prejudice lead to stupidity. Stupidity is at the root of so much that is wrong in the world. Stupidity acts as a cover for selfishness, greed and hatefulness. Our freedoms and the future of mankind and of this planet we live on, depend on individuals working hard to develop the skills of independent, intelligent thinking.

Being intelligent is about attitude and character. It is about having a questioning mindset. It is utterly and fundamentally about freedom - freedom of thought - the willingness and determination to free yourself from conformism and other prejudices.

Most people are not intelligent because their minds are not free. They are intellectually imprisoned and constrained to believe what they are expected to believe, to behave according to what is acceptable to others. That is the opposite of intelligence.

To be intelligent, you must learn to be free.

I hope you found this book interesting. It was designed to provide a brief introduction to what the thinking skills of genius are and how they can be acquired.

To actually acquire these skills, however, requires practice - practice at identifying and challenging the prejudices that frequently have such a devastating effect on people's thinking capabilities.

If you would like some guidance on how to acquire this practice, then I have several books that you might really appreciate.

In particular, I would like to point you towards my Wosdom books: Here is Wosdom, Seeking Wosdom, Pearls of Wosdom and Wosdom Teeth.

Each book in the Wosdom series contains a varied collection of challenging opinion pieces designed to encourage the reader to question the accepted and 'acceptable' beliefs and attitudes often prevalent within our societies. They have been repeatedly demonstrated to help reveal people's prejudices - and, in so doing, to provide a valuable opportunity to challenge and overcome those prejudices.

Many of these opinion pieces will be considered highly-offensive by many people, but they are really just carefully constructed thought exercises, calculated to provide precisely the sort of thinking practice that readers might need to help them further develop their advanced, independent thinking skills.

Just don't go near my (reasonably) acclaimed fiction book, An Intelligent Life, until you think you're ready for something a bit more hardcore! You might not appreciate it unless you have a rather dark and twisted sense of humour.