The Dumbing Down Of America

Paladin

Paladin

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America (or insert your favorite country here) has become increasingly anti-intellectual during my lifetime. I didn't really notice this until I attended night classes a few years ago. Most of the students in the classes I attended were quite hostile if I introduced a subject for discussion that went over their heads, and even the prof accused me of being "too intellectual"

We were discussing the humanities at the time, and in the text it mentioned the contribution of Freud and Adler to the performing arts. I thought this a wonderful subject for discussion and so brought it up in class only to be attacked by the students and teacher! Imagine my chagrin! Now, I'm only a blue-collar schmuck, a grease monkey if you will, but I like to read, and the great thinkers of our time are my heroes.

Now I find out that only 23% of college grads can find the middle east on a map and intellectuals of all stripes are labeled "liberal" or "elitist" by many citizens and particularly those right of center.

I believe that it was in 1837 that Emerson delivered his "American Scholar" speech on Phi Beta Kappa day in Concord. In it, he exhorted those present to keep away from intellectual sloth and become the Thinking Man.

In 1963 a book called "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" by Richard Hofstadter was published, and on Bill Moyers the other night I listened to an author by the name of Susan Jacoby who has recently written "The Age of American Unreason"
Both are now on my reading list, and I just completed the first chapter of Jacoby's book. Good reading for sure, but very scary.

Is it any wonder that the American public, being so poorly educated is so easily swayed by propaganda and clever marketing?

Can anything be done or are we doomed to think our best thinkers are Bill O'Reilly and Larry the Cable Guy?
 
vizzini1.jpg

Too intellectual? Inconceivable!

All right, now that that's out of the way....Yes, I do believe that there is a strong anti-intellectual current within our society. It used to be that higher education (along with the intellectualism associated with in) was only available to those who could afford it, and who had access to it. Now, with the internet, access is not so limited.

Even with a more level playing field, some people still want to play into the class warfare game. Go figure. :rolleyes:
 
Is it any wonder that the American public, being so poorly educated is so easily swayed by propaganda and clever marketing?
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Sadly, propaganda has become a valued skill in itself. Not totally unexpected.

Even with a more level playing field, some people still want to play into the class warfare game.
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I suppose the fact that evidence of class warfare abounds should not cause anyone to conclude that it exists or that it has been making incredible strides to the detriment of many Americans in the past 7 years. The current economic downturn in the US is a direct result of it. Arguably, the failure to recognize this is itself a symptom of the ongoing dumbing down that is happening in our midst.
 
The one that got me was when I had a friend in the hospital for a heart attack.

He had a slew of vitamins next to him on the counter, and when I saw vitamin E, I asked if he wasn't prescribed Heperin, he said he thought so. I told him he should have his cardiologist review all his vitamins and ask especially about Vit E. The next day he told me the cardiologist said no problem. I asked him to have someone look it up, as I had thought that the two had the potential of creating too thin blood like a hemophiliac. They looked it up and I was right, just from books I had read on natural health, and it stirred thru the hospital.

In the elevator I saw a sign on anti-oxidants and heart disease. When I got there it seemed like the discussion was a decade old, and there was much misinformation, of course my information could have been wrong as I played around in the 'alternative' community. Every point I made, every question I asked they said was beyond the scope of the current discussion. At the end in a circle of folks talking to the presenter I discovered everyone in the room was a cardiologist. surgeon or MD of some sort, and the seminar was not intended for the public, they asked me where I practiced and what classes I was taking to keep up on the latest information.

I just read. I was dumbfounded, so were they when they discovered I was just a high school graduate..
 
Netti-Netti said:
Sadly, propaganda has become a valued skill in itself. Not totally unexpected.


I suppose the fact that evidence of class warfare abounds should not cause anyone to conclude that it exists or that it has been making incredible strides to the detriment of many Americans in the past 7 years. The current economic downturn in the US is a direct result of it. Arguably, the failure to recognize this is itself a symptom of the ongoing dumbing down that is happening in our midst.
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I wonder if the natural inclination of the less educated is to eschew knowledge, and if so could those in power subtly gain control of the masses by labeling the knowledgeable and the true thinkers as having drastically different values and ideals that undermine the so called American way of life.

That would leave the think tanks dedicated to power and control free to operate in plain sight while relegating more free-thought intellectuals to a marginalized existence.
 
Paladin said:
I wonder if the natural inclination of the less educated is to eschew knowledge, and if so could those in power subtly gain control of the masses by labeling the knowledgeable and the true thinkers as having drastically different values and ideals that undermine the so called American way of life.

That would leave the think tanks dedicated to power and control free to operate in plain sight while relegating more free-thought intellectuals to a marginalized existence.
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I suppose we could count ourselves blessed in that respect. Some countries control communication to the point that if the ptb don't like what is being said, they will forcefully silence the speech, rather than just marginalize the speaker/message.
 
I think that the commons of "public opinion" has always been subtly driven by a set of simplistic narratives. News and information is pre packaged to fit one or another of these narratives, which are also employed to drive advertising. It's not that people are any dumber, it's just that in the face of all the information available now, the simplicity of these received narratives which are designed to link our sense of identity with a sort of sense of the continuity of popular mythology seem much more implausible, insular, and downright silly. Plus, the gulf between the average person's intellectual life and that of the academic elite has grown so much wider.

Chris
 
seattlegal said:
I suppose we could count ourselves blessed in that respect.
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One would prefer to believe that the society values transparency. So where do US taxpayers get access to the full record of how the government is spending their money on little projects like the occupation of Iraq??

Regulatory agencies are certainly concerned with power and control. How much transparency can be expected from them?
 
Paladin said:
Is it any wonder that the American public, being so poorly educated is so easily swayed by propaganda and clever marketing?
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Actually I personally believe dumbing down has been larging replaced by a de facto policy of Shock 'n Awe where the average person is so overwhelmed with information about a destabilized environment that they are unable to make sense of what is happening. Example: no-one was even paying any attention when President Bush set the current US economic upheaval into motion by lowering the interest rates to historic lows while at the same time deregulating the mortgage industry. The average American is walking around in a daze and has no idea of what is going on.
 
Netti-Netti said:

One would prefer to believe that the society values transparency. So where do US taxpayers get access to the full record of how the government is spending their money on little projects like the occupation of Iraq??

Regulatory agencies are certainly concerned with power and control. How much transparency can be expected from them?
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Hey, I'm all for governmental transparency, and individual privacy, rather than the converse. {We see the push for governmental secrecy and individual surveillence from the control freaks, imo.}
 
Netti-Netti said:
Actually I personally believe dumbing down has been larging replaced by a de facto policy of Shock 'n Awe where the average person is so overwhelmed with information about a destabilized environment that they are unable to make sense of what is happening. Example: no-one was even paying any attention when President Bush set the current US economic upheaval into motion by lowering the interest rates to historic lows while at the same time deregulating the mortgage industry. The average American is walking around in a daze and has no idea of what is going on.
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You make a good point Netti, have you ever read Naomi Klein's book Shock Doctrine?

But I often wonder if the American public even wants to know anything. There are so many people I come into contact with that seem proud of not being intellectual to any degree and sadly enough seem to think I am an intellectual because I read a book now and then.

Call me Montag but...
Sometimes I wonder when the firemen are coming in the salamander to burn my book collection :D
 
Bump!

Yes, America is being dumbed down very much!

I don't think its due to the equal opportunity for education, or because Americans are overwhelmed with the amount of information. I think it has more to do with society's views of work and play.

Education is seen only as a means to an end. People don't go to school because they want to know things, they go so they can get a decent paying job. Education itself is seen as something dull and boring that one wouldn't want to spend their time on given the choice.

An anti-intellectual attitude is extremely prevalent in high school. (That guy got an A on the test? what a nerd!) I had somewhat of an anti-intellectual attitude in high school. I wasn't afraid of being seen as a nerd, but so often I saw school as something stupid that I was being forced to do. Sometimes this was true, but altogether I went to a good school. Part of it was due to the highly structured nature of high school where you would learn everything you needed just by doing what was required of you.

The general attitude seems to have changed some now that I'm in college. Students work harder, and care more about school. BUT, school is still seen by most as something that they HAVE to do, not as something they do out of interest. Lack of interest in education is what is causing the dumbing down of America IMO.

There is SO much entertainment in the American world. All the TV, movies, and mindless amusements of the internet. Bright flashy, amusing colors are flashed at us every day in the form of advertisements that will do anything to catch your attention without making you think very much. All the entertainment out there is so much more appealing than a dull day in the classroom, and the best part is, it doesn't take any effort! You just sit on your lazy ass and it does the thinking for you.

It seems Montag's world may soon be a reality!

Work and play are seen as completely separate. Work is something you don't want to do, but have to do. Play is something that comes as a fruit of your work, and is something enjoyable. Education is seen only as work. Theres a great clip of Alan Watts on this subject here:

YouTube - Alan Watts - Work as Play (part 1) <<watch this!

part 2 (if you have the time)
YouTube - Alan Watts - Work as Play (part 2)

part 3
YouTube - Alan Watts - Work as Play (part 3)
 
Thanks for posting the Alan Watts, Starship. I love that guy and will have to watch those clips later... after work. ;)

I think you are definitely right about the artificial separation between work and play. Over the past couple of years, I've been working on getting rid of that difference in my own life. I'm still not paid to play, but I certainly have come to view my play also as my work, and not merely an unproductive/recreational time in which I escape work. Rather, my inclination in my playwork is to create and also educate myself by exploring outside the boxes that stereotypically constrain education. No graduate degree for me, yet I still spend a large part of each week with my nose in books. Education also goes beyond that, though; it has to. The processing and digestion of information and ideas comes in quiet time or play time; on walks, in a garden, or with a musical instrument or lumps of clay in hand. And in conversation with other people. Those are the times when learning begins to bear fruit.

:)
 
You are not required to be an intellectual to be a good obedient worker and a voracious consumer. Stop thinking!!

Tao
 
Too true, Tao. In fact... being an intellectual typically makes one a very disobedient worker and a poor excuse for a consumer. :D
 
A great quote from an 1882 article on Social Darwinism...
Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. ... We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.
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I can see why you would think that quote to be controversial, since it refers to "inferior members of society". This may be a bit harsh, but it merely makes an observation on the human population the same way it does to any other population of organisms. The observation itself is benign and completely valid. What you do with it could be controversial.

The thought has often occurred to me that modern society could lead to "devolution". Almost any genes, beneficial or not, can survive and be passed on to the next generation. I expect we may see a large increase in genetic diseases in the future, unless we can genetically engineer ourselves to have better genes--which could be controversial in itself.
 
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