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I don't think it's actually that people are more stupid. I see they are much lazier about becoming knowledgable about the basic discipline of THINKING...or rather critical and logical thinking.
Also, human beings have not progressed in their intuitive thinking and have regressed as it pertains to primitive, knee-jerk reactions to threats that are only IMplied.
Many human beings fared better when they were actually producing ideas and things that met their needs. Now they produce very few ideas (the majority) and even less of that which will provide them with the basic necessities. Few know how to cook nutricious foods because they don't have to and its cheaper not to. Few grow food because they don't have to. Few fix things because most things are throw away....and so forth and so on.
Ad apathy, despair, greed,lack of vision and unbridled pregnancy and you have what on the surface appears to be stupid. Self awareness and how one affects their surroundings is definitely in absentia. Who said, "....they know the cost of everything and the value of nothing"?
I think people are as intelligent as they've always been, but our society (and those societies that emulate us) is becoming more self-involved, and less caring about how others perceive us. Our focus seems to be whether we as individuals are personally satisfied. My DH refers to this as the "Me, NOW" generation, but from what I've observed, I see it demonstrated across all generations. That's why I think its a societal phenomena.
When one doesn't care what someone else wants or needs, one's more lax about one's own performance in any venue, work or otherwise.
I've talked with many parents and teachers over the course of the past four decades, and there's been a lot of moaning about the digression, but I haven't ever heard anyone talking about what they are DOING to solve the problem. It is as if each of us waits for someone else to resolve it. Meanwhile we pamper our children like they were each the Second Coming of Christ, and they take that and "run with it."
DH and I chose to remain childless, but we still feel the loss of not being able to discuss any topics with others where the other is not the central theme. We also see people under-performing their work, if they perform at all. As former managers in business, we encountered problems with our staff -- employees have to be externally motivated. Co-workers and higher-level managers have their own agendas, aside from the needs of their employers. Fewer and fewer business owners are directly involved, and have little to say about work standards.
Perhaps when each of us (individual, business, and public authority) realizes that we are part of a community, and not a cluster of individual stars, each of us can start DOING something to turn it around.
I find it not only morally repulsive but ignorant to blame TV and the music industry for the decline of intelligence. The media does not influence, but responds to what people want. If no one bought rappers' b*** and ho gangbang music, if no one watched Survivor or Bridezillas, there would be no profit in making them and therefore no such trash on the airwaves. Uneducated, or undereducated, people who find this sort of trash 'entertainment' will drool over it and demand more of it. These are the types of people who have no purpose in life, who think of themselves as put-upon and downtrodden and unable to achieve. It is not the music or TV that makes them this way, but the influences of their own childhood and home lives, and the continuance of that decline throughout each generation. When this sort of attitude and behavior is catered to, financed by, and accepted as a norm by a society, instead of being shunned, reviled, and even in some cases made illegal, it becomes the depth to which society can reach, rather than its heights.
When I was a teen, becoming pregnant in high school was a sure way to be ridiculed as well as to lose one's "right" to an education. Education was a priviledge, not a right, back then. Once one accepted the responsibility of having a child, one was considered to have chosen to be an adult and not in need of the childhood freedoms of school and afterschool activities. Now, of course, there are day care centers on high school campuses, and student mothers of two and even three children can still drop their kids off at the state-sponsored school day care and go to classes and activities. They are not forced to accept the responsibility of their poor choices. And so it continues throughout their lives for the most part; no one has to make choices because all choices, no matter how irresponsible or how they impact others, are "ok". Kids who try to achieve or become something and make something of themselves are called nerds or geeks or Uncle Toms or other slights, and are harassed, bullied, beaten up or worse for their insistence on doing something with their lives. Education has become something not to be achieved, worked for, or attained, but something to be handed out to everyone, whether or not they can pass the tests or earn a prize. Why work when the belly is full? or why strive when, with a minimum of effort, one can slide by and do as one pleases? THAT is the main contributor to the dumbing down of society - the acceptance of people as they are, without encouraging them or driving them to their own particular success.
If you think that is political, you're right. And it is that which has caused the dumbing down of society - the acceptance and financing of all choices, no matter how poor, how self-destructive, or how debilitating to society, that has snuck in under the guise of "freedom to be - you and me!" - without concern or responsibility for the repercussions. With great freedom comes great responsibility - that means that one can be free to choose, but must also suffer the consequences of one's choices. Where there are no consequences, there is no freedom. And where there are no consequences for refusing to educate oneself, achieve, or aspire to be better, then one has a societal decline... and listens to rap, and debates the merits of Survivor's latest group with passion and illogic on Facebook.
I find it not only morally repulsive but ignorant to blame TV and the music industry for the decline of intelligence. The media does not influence, but responds to what people want. (snip)
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I don't think you can blame the TV or music industry for any changes in intelligence, but the media certainly does influence. If it didn't companies would not bother to advertise on TV.
There are many many examples of the media having an influence. Sometimes for good. Breast cancer is much more talked about now than in the 1960s largely because of shows like "All in the Family." Sometimes for ill as in popularizing certain suicide methods or automobile stunts.
The media sometimes wants it to be just one way. If a poor girl from Alabama grew up to be a respected forensic scientists and credits the show "Bones" for inspiring her that will be seen as maybe so. If a poor girl from Alabama grew up to be a marijuana dealer and said Snoop Dogg inspired her that would be all on her. It's inconsistent and hypocritical, but not that uncommon.
I don't think people are stupider, per se. They just aren't as educamated as they used to be (evidentally, the previous Occupant of the White House was more of an inspiration than he imaginifidated!)
You don't have to be smart to work at Slave Mart or Whammy Burger, just get them into a situation where they have to make change without a cash register or calculator. You think our crappy education system is an accident, haha, it is there to produce sheep
When I was a teen, becoming pregnant in high school was a sure way to be ridiculed as well as to lose one's "right" to an education. Education was a priviledge, not a right, back then. Once one accepted the responsibility of having a child, one was considered to have chosen to be an adult and not in need of the childhood freedoms of school and afterschool activities. Now, of course, there are day care centers on high school campuses, and student mothers of two and even three children can still drop their kids off at the state-sponsored school day care and go to classes and activities. They are not forced to accept the responsibility of their poor choices.
I am very glad we no longer live in a time where teenage mothers are kicked out school. That's a recipe for secret abortions, welfare mothers, and hasty marriages that end in divorce. It is a young woman's best interest to stay in school until she at least graduates from high school.
I find it not only morally repulsive but ignorant to blame TV and the music industry for the decline of intelligence. The media does not influence, but responds to what people want. If no one bought rappers' b*** and ho gangbang music, if no one watched Survivor or Bridezillas, there would be no profit in making them and therefore no such trash on the airwaves. Uneducated, or undereducated, people who find this sort of trash 'entertainment' will drool over it and demand more of it. These are the types of people who have no purpose in life, who think of themselves as put-upon and downtrodden and unable to achieve. It is not the music or TV that makes them this way, but the influences of their own childhood and home lives, and the continuance of that decline throughout each generation. When this sort of attitude and behavior is catered to, financed by, and accepted as a norm by a society, instead of being shunned, reviled, and even in some cases made illegal, it becomes the depth to which society can reach, rather than its heights.
When I was a teen, becoming pregnant in high school was a sure way to be ridiculed as well as to lose one's "right" to an education. Education was a priviledge, not a right, back then. Once one accepted the responsibility of having a child, one was considered to have chosen to be an adult and not in need of the childhood freedoms of school and afterschool activities. Now, of course, there are day care centers on high school campuses, and student mothers of two and even three children can still drop their kids off at the state-sponsored school day care and go to classes and activities. They are not forced to accept the responsibility of their poor choices. And so it continues throughout their lives for the most part; no one has to make choices because all choices, no matter how irresponsible or how they impact others, are "ok". Kids who try to achieve or become something and make something of themselves are called nerds or geeks or Uncle Toms or other slights, and are harassed, bullied, beaten up or worse for their insistence on doing something with their lives. Education has become something not to be achieved, worked for, or attained, but something to be handed out to everyone, whether or not they can pass the tests or earn a prize. Why work when the belly is full? or why strive when, with a minimum of effort, one can slide by and do as one pleases? THAT is the main contributor to the dumbing down of society - the acceptance of people as they are, without encouraging them or driving them to their own particular success.
If you think that is political, you're right. And it is that which has caused the dumbing down of society - the acceptance and financing of all choices, no matter how poor, how self-destructive, or how debilitating to society, that has snuck in under the guise of "freedom to be - you and me!" - without concern or responsibility for the repercussions. With great freedom comes great responsibility - that means that one can be free to choose, but must also suffer the consequences of one's choices. Where there are no consequences, there is no freedom. And where there are no consequences for refusing to educate oneself, achieve, or aspire to be better, then one has a societal decline... and listens to rap, and debates the merits of Survivor's latest group with passion and illogic on Facebook.
Education was not a privilege. Unless you are a hundred years old or from another country Granny, public education was compulsory for you and your classmates as it is now. What is the difference from someone communicating on Facebook from you making a thousand posts on different internet communication forum? Essentially they are the same thing. And mainstream rap music is no different than any other mainstream music: formulated according to a model that will produce maximum sales. This is no different than what has been going on in popular music for the last 50 years.
Moderator cut: discuss topic, not other members please!
Last edited by katzenfreund; 11-01-2009 at 11:54 AM..
Ha! What makes all you Smarts so high-and-mighty? We are proud of our stupidity and have learned to embrace our culture and history. In the end, the jokes on you because of our master breeding program you will all be just like us. Thing is, it will be so subtle and gradual of a process, you won't even know you're stupid too. Maybe you already are....
Bye for now, I need to go find a stamp to mail this.
Crummy computer systems are another factor. Too often they don't fit their purpose well enough, so you always find decent customer svc reps struggling to work the company system.
And the American culture celebrates idiocy and criticizes the educated like they are the one's deluded by all that knowledge. Many people proudly emulate Homer Simpson for instance, rather than being a shameful, selfish cretin, he is a hero.
Finally, people get so embarrassed when they are publically proven ignorant on something that they pervert the concept and just stick to the nonsense because they can do it in a fake positon of power.
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