Posted by spoonman Friday 5 September, 2008 07:35 PM
Are we humans - with all our modern access to education and information - getting smarter?
Or is there some process at work that is dumbing us down?
We hear that education standards are rising. Parents often comment about how smart their kids are, compared to how they were at the same age.
We have more university graduates now than at any time in our past.
We have access to the Internet, where basically anything you want to know is available at the click of a mouse. Except that not all of it is accurate.
We seem to be producing some very smart people who are making all sorts of stunning scientific and medical discoveries that would have been science fiction to previous generations.
That's the upside.
But it does seem sometimes that the smarter we like to think we are, the dumber many people seem these days.
We hear anecdotal evidence that kids are leaving school unable to write and spell in proper English. Judging from some of the emails I get, I'd believe that.
We keep hearing experts say that modern mass media is so dumbed down it is nearly worthless as a source of useful info. But it is popular.
Many people have spent hours of their lives watching so-called reality TV, which is about as dumb as it gets. But we love it, or did anyway. Some equally banal new format will no doubt emerge.
We are absorbed by celebrity scandal, when the really important or complex news stories and issues often slip under the public radar.
Many millions of people are getting into faith in a bigger way, at the expense of knowledge. They prefer to believe the story, rather than get the truth. And then kill the person who disagrees with them or believes a different story.
Huge numbers of people use way too many mind-altering substances too often, which makes them sound dumb. Think about some of the more incoherent callers to this show, if you want an example.
So where do you think we are heading?
Are we getting smarter? Or are we dumbing down?
Knock yourselves out......
