Susan Jacoby has written an article in the Washington Post that is one of those "woe is me" pieces about how stupid we're becoming. Problem is, this isn't anything new. Every older generation has looked at the younger one with a mix of bemusement and horror at how stupid they've become -- compared to themselves. I'm in my mid-fifties and I see my peers succumbing to this more often than not. It's a drag, believe me.
Fact is, every generation, as it nears death, gazes out upon a world that appears to be, well, dying. But life is for the living -- not the withered (in mind if not body), cynical elitists.
"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837...
Well blow me down. Americans have been complaining about the dumbing down of culture for nearly 175 years? How'd we ever get so far?
But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events.
Hang on -- who's she talking about here? That's a pretty broad brush she's using. There are plenty of people who remember just fine, thank you.
Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.
Is that the candidates' fault, or the voters' fault or the traditional news media's fault? Big difference, I think.
No wonder negative political ads work.
Negative political advertising is as old as the the Republic. Ever read some ads from the election of 1800? It makes today's stuff look pretty tame.
A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome.
Not really. Hasn't she ever read a blog that contains embedded video from YouTube?
Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching.
This is not a new phenomenon. Long before the Internet, long before television, long before radio, or even modern newspapers, voters made election choices based on emotional reactions to a candidate or his party. Fact is, our brains developed over thousands of millenia to make emotional decisions first and -- only after that -- logical ones. Emotional intelligence controls pretty much every decision we make -- especially in electoral politics.
As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language
Again, Jacoby assumes that we make decisions based on dispassion and logic. I think that is the exception, not the rule.
FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin."
The anecdote is illustrative of many things, chief among them the vast difference in quality of leadership and character between FDR and GWB.
Sandy, this is frustrating: if Jacoby wants to say that Bush lied and we fell for it, then say it -- I'm just not convinced that it was due to us being dumber today than our ancestors were back then.
According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important."
Finally, some hard data! And yes, I agree -- it's a shame and much to our detriment. But is this because people spend too much time on their Facebook profiles? I'm skeptical.
The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place.
Great point. Or as Bush so famously put it:
"I remind people that, like when I'm with, Condi, I say she's the Ph.D. and A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. and just look at who's the president and who's the adviser."
Not that Condi would have been much better.
And speaking of Bush, Jacoby continues:
...rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job.
Jacoby's lament would be a whole lot more credible had she been saying this back in 2001, before we bought No Child Left Behind.
If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.
Again -- broad brushing happening here. There are always going to be dull and stupid people making bad decisions. But, if anything, greater numbers of people are engaged in issue-discourse than ever before.
They just happen to be concentrated on one side of the political spectrum and not the other.
Look -- every generation (as it gets closer to death) thinks the world is, for want of a better word, dying. But I don't buy it. That's not to say that climate change is not a serious problem. It is. And our generation may, in fact, be the last one for a long time that will have done better than our parents. Our children may not be able to say that. And perhaps this will not be another American century, but rather a Chinese one. Or Indian. Who knows?
I do know that if you think you can't do "it," you're probably right. And if you think you can, you're also probably right.
So, in the end, you become what you think about. That's why I'll always turn my back on the candidate of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
I will always prefer the candidate who appeals to hopeful, forward thinking ideals.