År 2017 skrev jag boken Annorlunda land: särbegåvningens psykologi (Almqvist & Wiksell) som är en sammanställning av vad man då visste om begåvning i allmänhet och särbegåvning i synnerhet. Denna text är en uppföljning av denna som på ett populärvetenskapligt sätt ger en mycket personlig bild av dagens kunskapsläge med ett fokus på den problematik som existerar både för den begåvade i samhället och för den begåvade som elev, student eller som fokus för forskning. Boken kanske bäst kan beskrivas som en guidad tur genom det komplexa landskap av forskning som begåvning utgör och berättar om de observationer jag har gjort under tre decennier i jämförelse med vad forskningen har att säga. Utan att dyka alltför djupt i den enorma mängd forskning som numera finns reder ut vad som är forskning och vad som snarare är ideologiska floskler. Jag utgår inte bara från psykologisk och pedagogisk forskning när denna är tillämpbar, jag utgår i lika stor utsträckning från olika naturvetenskaper. Viktiga hållpunkter i texten blir de praktiska konsekvenserna av normalfördelningen och hur dessa har rationaliserats bort från skolan, utbildning och arbetsliv. Jag jämför Sverige med EU och vågar mig på att ge en generell definition av begåvning och diskuterar varför ingen hittills har lyckats producera en stabil definition som alla kan vara överens om, trots det över 100 definitioner som redan finns. Numera kan man inte heller förstå begåvning i samhället om man inte också förstår den globala ekonomin och de principer på vilka denna vilar. Begåvning är mycket eftersökt i samhället, men på ett sätt som inte går att förena med verkligheten. Avslutningsvis ger jag råd för hur man hjälper extremt begåvade individer i lovets olika skeden. Det står utom allt tvivel att de sällan kan göra samma val som står till buds för resten av befolkningen.

Despite its ubiquity few outside the corridors of power are concerned with policy. We become acutely aware, however, when policy is dysfunctional. If dysfunctional why are such policies increasing in numbers anyway? Departing from well-known facts of social evolution this book explains why, and also how flawed policy is tied to political inertia and the UN’s Sustainability Agenda. If some of the challenges that the World is facing can be resolved by well-designed policy, a proposal is also made how policy makers must reason to create functional policy in line with human nature.

Cosmopolitanism is an ancient Greek notion which in modern times has found its way into educational practice. It expresses a moral responsibility toward everyone irrespective of cultural background, looks or ability. However, it is an ideology difficult to operationalise and convey in education if the objective is to change learners’ attitudes for the future benefit of mankind. There are several obstacles standing in the way such as concurrent but incompatible value systems, the rise of individual empowerment for global economic growth and most important perhaps, the evolutionary basis of human nature. It is, for example, not possible to encourage competitive behaviour and simultaneously aim at imparting moral values. It is difficult to effectively teach a cosmopolitan mindset, but this is not to say that we should not try. Drawing from the research of multiple disciplines the conclusion of this article is inevitably paradoxical. While the effort to strive for moral cosmopolitanism is a good one, it is also not a one that is entirely possible. We must adjust expectations rather than trying to find miraculous methods by which to enable a better World through general tolerance and acceptance everywhere. Sadly, the latter is not possible. We can at best expect to have a local impact made possible by dialogue. 

Few fields of study offer so many contradictions and such fervent conviction as competition. Not many would question that the human species is intrinsically competitive, but the understanding of what this means and how it impacts everything from local schools to the global economy differs to the extreme. It is the objective of this study to synthesise a multitude of research and other literature in search of what could be considered reasonably true in scrutinising claims made that competition is always useful and beneficial. It has even been argued that competing is necessary for the continued progress of human society at all levels of endeavour. But such assertions of benefits are often curiously made together with findings that contradict them. In most cases contradiction rarely leads to discouraging the strategic use of competition. The objective of this study, therefore, is also practical in the sense that there is a need to educate [sic] the social science community about the inescapable reality of phylogenetic evolution and how it affects every aspect of human behaviour in general and competitive behaviour in particular. A critical analysis of published research is difficult to understand unless the evolutionary origins of ambition, its conditions and effects on human existence are explained first. Competition is the dispassionate engine which drives phylogenetic evolution for all known living organisms. It is difficult to say anything valid about human behaviour without considering it. The result of the analysis is disheartening. Few assertions of claimed benefits stand up to the knowledge base of biology and our evolutionary history. Most fail because they are studied, or operationalised, on the assumption that competitive processes, even if essentially detrimental, are always subject to control and can therefore be used instrumentally in all social settings for every conceivable endeavour and always in aconstructive way. No practitioner, and very few scholars in the social sciences, take the randomness by which we sometimes behave into account, or that much of human behaviour is motivated by biological algorithms generating largely automatic and unaware behaviour. We do not always know when we compete or why. Competition as an evolutionary function does not easily translate into intellectually engineered strategies, especially not if they involve intellectual and creative endeavours. The only domain in which competing remains reasonably true to its evolutionary origin and function in organised and formalised society is in the pursuit of physical prowess such as in sports. Competition has by natural selection over eons of time been designed to be primarily physical. This study concludes by comparing argued benefits as probable, occasional, doubtful or improbable to known facts of evolution in order to suggest what we may have understood correctly and what we most likely have misunderstood entirely.

The number of theories and conceptions endeavoring to understand gifted and talented behavior are surprisingly numerous because of different scholarly convictions, practices impacted by culture, and motives to study and further the achievement potential of this relatively small but extraordinary group of individuals. In spite of intense study all over the world, we do not seem to be much closer to a common understanding of what giftedness and talent are in the scholarly community. This chapter does not present yet another theory, but it does propose a framework of important issues to consider in trying to forge all current theories and conceptions together motivating scholars to seek consensus on the basis of well-established knowledge in biology and evolutionary theory. These offer fundamental and scientifically uncontroversial knowledge shedding important light on the subject matter of education, psychology, and other social sciences and their derived practices. An evolutionary understanding offers new perspectives and will inevitably create a more sustainable knowledge base for understanding the social significance of giftedness, talent, and its education in a collective society by setting boundaries to what is likely to be possible, and perhaps of greater importance, to also suggest what is, in fact, impossible. The latter is likely to limit the impact of cultural and ideological biases on scholarship and educational practices.

Thousands of refugees have immigrated to Turkey because of the current Civil War in neighboring Syria. This is causing tensions between refugees and locals. These increasingly negative attitudes towards the incoming victims of conflict are of particular interest. The present study, therefore, aimed at determining the premises of the emergence of such negative attitudes. The research sample consisted of university students who all studied at various faculties at Cumhuriyet University in the Turkish province of Sivas. Data were collected by the Attitude Scale Towards Refugees, the Patriotism Attitude Scale, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and the Cirhinlioğlu Religiosity Scale. Data were analyzed by Independent Sample t-tests as well as using Stepwise Regression Analyses. Results showed that the feeling of empathy correlated negatively with negative attitudes towards refugees, while blind patriotism, religiosity, and having nationalist/conservative orientations, correlated positively. Men were found to be more negative than women. The feeling of empathy was the most prominent factor in predicting the nature of attitudes towards refugees. Religious doctrine and distancing oneself from conservative and patriotic perspectives appeared to be effective in potentially preventing the development of negative attitudes. In conclusion, research results are discussed in the light of relevant literature.

The significance of illusion as a positive force in everyday life has been underestimated in both societal discourse and in empirical science. The objective of this study is to provide a synthesis of many academic disciplines’ understanding of illusion and reality by proposing a taxonomy of functional and dysfunctional subjective realities as based on the assumption that the human mind is adaptive in an evolutionary sense and likely to be a quantum entanglement system. Assumptions and discussions needed to construct the taxonomy are generally based on empirical research drawing from evolutionary theory, neurology, biology, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, physics and other disciplines. The purpose of the proposed taxonomy is heuristic, serving as a base for further studies drawing particular attention to the fact that, by evolutionary processes, Homo sapiens have been made dependent on multiple subjective realities where illusion and reality are not necessarily opposites. The article is concluded by discussing possible reasons for why illusions as a positive force in human behaviour has been neglected in comparison to the dysfunctions of the human mind of which research abound.