How Darkness Actually Creates High Intelligence

I was scrolling on TikTok last week and then boom, one particular video caught my attention..

The video talked about a fascinating pattern: humans who are born during the darkest months of the year, especially December and January, tend to show higher intelligence compared to those born during the sunniest months.

@kyleinspires - TikTok

To be honest, I immediately thought this is such a coded truth, and it felt worth sharing for three reasons:

• First, we are in Capricorn season.
• Second, it’s a perfect example of how nature reveals the fabric of reality when we actually pay attention.
• And third, I want to shout out all my fellow Capricorns whose birthdays are rarely celebrated or properly acknowledged because they fall during the holidays. (Timothée Chalamet and Lewis Hamilton have both summarized this perfectly in interviews.)

So in today’s letter, I want to share 3 key facts that explain how darkness shapes intelligence through nature, biology, and timing.

 1) Why Darkness Builds A Faster Brain

During winter pregnancies, melatonin levels naturally increase and pass to the developing baby during critical stages of brain growth, particularly between the 7th and 9th months of pregnancy.  

So, Less daylight means higher melatonin production in the mother.

Now, melatonin helps form myelin, the protective coating around nerve cells. And because myelin allows brain signals to travel faster and more smoothly, this means:

• More darkness leads to higher melatonin.
• Higher melatonin leads to stronger myelin.
• Stronger myelin leads to faster and more efficient brain thinking.

In the video example, Kyle explained this by referencing observational data where researchers analyzed 50,000 SAT scores by birth month, and found that:

• January babies averaged ≈ 1480
• While July babies averaged ≈ 1380
• The hundred-point gap persisted across all demographics.

This illustrates how darkness has a correlation to the brain's processing speed, pattern recognition, and analytical problem-solving abilities.

 2) How Winter Season Builds Structural Intelligence ( And Long-Term Thinking)

In nature, winter is the season where growth slows on the surface ( trees, flowers, vegetables) and structure strengthens underneath. This means energy is conserved, systems reorganized, and foundations are reinforced before anything new appears.

 The human brain follows the same logic.

When development is influenced by slower rhythms and reduced stimulation, intelligence forms as a structure first. This means the brain learns to organize information, connect patterns, and think in sequences and structures, instead of reacting impulsively.

Structural intelligence shows up as:

• Long-term thinking
• System awareness
• Patience with complexity
• The ability to see how small actions lead to long-term outcomes

This kind of universal intelligence isn’t driven by speed or urgency. It’s driven by order, timing, and long-term results.

This is why winter-coded energy, especially Capricorn energy, often appears serious, reserved, or slow to move. The focus is on durability and long-term thinking. 

This is also why:

• Capricorn is ruled by Saturn
• Saturn is the planet that governs time.
• Capricorns are naturally the masters of time.

No wonder Jeff Bezos took about 7 years to make Amazon profitable.

He was building the structure that could hold that level of scale. 

3) How Nature Reveals the Architecture of Reality Through Timing

What this example really shows isn’t just a fact about birth months or intelligence. It shows how reality itself is designed and architected.

 Nature doesn’t operate randomly.

It operates through:

• Timing
• Cycles
• and patterns we’re still discovering.

And with that, there is an underlying pattern that’s revealed, which is: What develops first is never the outcome; it’s the structure that will hold the outcome.

That means:

• Darkness comes before light.
• Winter foundation comes before spring blossoming.
• Wiring and subtraction come before expression and addition.

The same law applies to the brain, to intelligence, and to life trajectories.

• When something is created in the darkness, it gains depth.
• When a creation has deep roots, it gains a bigger capacity.
• When a container has capacity, it holds a greater scale.

Reality always prioritizes capacity before expansion.

However, one of the main distortions of modern thinking is that we are trained for faster dopamine hits (endless scrolling) and faster responses (AI). This conditions us to expect fast outcomes, which creates a false perception of how reality actually works.

The good news is, as more people wake up to the true fabric of reality, they’re starting to see clearly:

• You’re not becoming a 7-figure entrepreneur in 7 days.
• You’re not building a 100-million-dollar app in 30 days.
• You’re not healing generations of trauma in 72 hours.

Those outcomes can only happen when you increase your internal capacity.

Until then, darkness is the answer.

This is what nature keeps teaching us.

See you next year.

-Ons