I have often referred to Idiocracy as a documentary. I sometimes find myself stumbling upon a channel, movie preview, or even a film recommended by friends which makes me think “it’s our generation’s ‘Ow My Balls!’” I would bet that some people came away from Idiocracy thinking, “I didn’t understand that movie, but I can’t wait for Ass to come out on the big screen.”
The movie opens with the explanation that stupidity is often accompanied by recklessness. This recklessness results in many unwanted pregnancies, which results in a generation heavily populated with the children of stupid/reckless parents, who would pass on their own traits to the following generation in a similar fashion. In a nutshell, the idiots are breeding, while smart folks are too busy inventing things, curing diseases, writing, reading, etc. to be bothered with the pizza-sex-beer-and-more-sex lifestyle of the breeding idiots.
When I hear the phrase “dumbing down,” I think of any sector of pop culture becoming more dilluted to find a wider audience. That is not necessarily an indication of the population becoming dumber, but it does take away the enjoyment of any one favorite thing of ours.
nd_n8 It’s due to our expectation that corporate entertainment outlets have some sort of responsibility to pass along information. I understand your plight about the Jena 6, I learned about them here on this message board. We can’t know everything that’s going on, the best we can do is try and keep our ears to the ground. If you expect Infotainment like CNN and Fox News to do any more than that you’re already living in ‘Idiocracy’. If you accept that you have to go to other sources for real information then you’re not. There is an intellectual divide. There will be one for the forseeable future, just decide which one you should strive to be on, and hope for the best.
“Civilisation” is a perfectly acceptable spelling.
As to the OP, I’ve noticed that people who decry the allegedly increasing stupidity of the human race always seem to think they’re above it, despite a lack of evidence of their supposedly above-average intelligence.
There is no objective evidence that people, on average, are getting dumber.
Christian Europe did something like that in the Middle Ages- a lot of the best jobs for smart people had celibacy as a job requirement. Didn’t seem to hurt Europe’s ability to dominate the world a few hundred years later…
But not all Mormons and Orthodox Jews stay that way. Nor do all of their children follow the religion of their parents. As long as that sort of thing is happening, and killing the people who leave the religious fold is discouraged, not everybody will be Mormon or Orthodox Jewish.
We all know people who are smart enough to invent things but are reckless enough to make a hash of their lives- clearly, intelligence and recklessness are not mutually exclusive. You wouldn’t characterize making James Watson’s recent statements about race in public as being a tad reckless, for example?
That’s good for comparing rich nations’ birth rates with poor ones’ – but a study of differential prolificity of different social classes within one country would be more relevant.
After being a physics major, going to grad school, watching what Mr. Neville went through to get a job in science, and watching the latest instance of this (he’s been busting his butt lately to get an NSF proposal completed), I’ve come to the conclusion that a little bit of recklessness is not only not going to keep someone away from a career in science, but it’s required.
Imagine yourself as an intelligent new college student choosing a major. If you’re really intelligent and non-reckless, you will choose one that will make it easier for you to get a job in the future, especially if you know you will have to take out student loans for your education. Do you choose business, pre-medicine, pre-law, or something else that is as well guaranteed to get you a decent job as anything is? Or do you choose that other field you love, in which you may be able to make a significant contribution to humanity’s level of knowledge, but in which you will not get a well-paying job until you are well into your 30s if you pursue it as a career? Even if you do bail out and get a different job later, your non-standard background in your new career will result in your not getting job offers- just last month, I didn’t get a job offer that I thought I was certain to get, because I have a master’s degree in astronomy, and “you’d just leave if something came up in astronomy”.
To choose a major like physics or astronomy, you really do have to choose to do something you like over something that might be more lucrative, and that’s at least somewhat reckless. I think the process here is quite comparable to the thought processes that might lead someone to have unprotected sex or have more kids, despite possible negative consequences. Or maybe I’m just feeling cynical lately…
Maybe it isn’t a trend towards less intelligence, but instead of less wisdom. Intelligence, I assume, we are defining as retention of information and not necessarily the application of knowledge.
It’s harder to say how such a population might be different from what we’ve got now, though. We’d still have the scientists and inventors- the stereotype of the absent-minded professor shows that they are not known for wisdom as opposed to intelligence. We’ll still have lowbrow entertainment, as we always have, but we might have more niche stuff- if you’re an artist, is it wiser to create something that you know will appeal to the masses, or something more intellectual that you have more interest in?
We’ll have stuff like warning labels on coffee cups. But I wonder just how much of that kind of thing is due to “people having less common sense” and how much is due to the increased complexity of the world since 50, 100, or even 25 years ago, and that “common sense” just can’t keep up? Ask any older person- they will tell you that things have gotten more complex since they were younger. There are lots of things to deal with that our parents and grandparents just didn’t have to deal with, using common sense or otherwise.
I have often wondered if technology lends to dumber people. “Make something idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot,” in other words.
For example, I have restored a classic car fromt he 1960s and I have to be extra alert and cautious when I drive it because I am used to the comforts and security of modern cars. As soon as I get behind the wheel of that old car, I suddenly become hyper-aware of how close I am to other cars, how fast I’m going, and even the sound of the car because I’m concerned that anything could go wrong at any time (and the car makes a lot of mysterious sounds). Also, the brakes in an old car are BAD, by modern standards. I am of the opinion that making cars safer and easier to drive has made drivers more relaxed and less concerned about the impending danger on all sides of them on the highway. Having a classic car, I find myself often uttering the phrase, “65 miles per hour in my car is scary…just like it is supposed to be.”
Driving is a good example because everyone can relate and has been frustrated with other drivers. But other conveniences have made us a little ignorant of the world around us. Many people would struggle to survive if there were a long term blackout, but not long ago, no one had electricity. The generation of those who grew up during the Depression give us a look into that. My great aunt always amazed me with her ability to improvise new ways to re-use worn-out things and save money. We are kind of losing touch due to our laid-back lifestyle here in the future. So, maybe we aren’t fighting a future of idiocracy, just a future of ignorance. And it’s taking longer than we thought.
Intelligence presumably evolved because it correlated with more offspring. But due to culture, intelligence no longer correlates with number of offspring, i.e. intelligence reached a point where it is no longer selected and the determination of family size is based on choice.
Perhaps, from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence beyond the basic level needed to maintain culture is actually maladaptive, and the folks who are best interconnected with the culture will thrive and reproduce, and the pesky individualists will die off.
It just seems to be the trend from a tribal culture, where intelligence might lead to more children, to a more hive-like culture, where interconnectivity is more important.
I don’t think that’s really true, though. We know different things than people in the past did, that’s certain, but I think it’s much harder to say whether we know more or less than they did. We might have trouble surviving in a world without electricity, but how well would someone with a pre-electricity skill set do if they were picked up and plunked down into today’s world? I think they’d be at least as incompetent as an average one of us would be in a long-term blackout. They might pick up skills appropriate to today over time, but I think one of us put in an environment without electricity for a while would do the same thing.
Is the total number and complexity of skills needed to survive getting greater or less with time? I’m not even sure what yardstick one might use to measure that.
I think stupid poor people are a lot more likely to have kids than smart poor people. I’m poor and very afraid of having more kids. I like to think I’m smart, though, and take a lot of precautions to prevent that from happening.
