Good morning,
I have strong opinions on this "dumbing down" of society, but am not convinced that it is a deliberate dumbing down. This is only a theory, but, I believe that it is just laziness on society’s behalf that is leading to this dumbing down of people. We now live in an age where people are 'time poor' and as a result are living conveniently. People you aren't time poor, everyone has the same amount of time; it is what you do with your time that counts.
Myself, I invest my time in educating myself and my family and spending time with them. Both my wife and I constantly have ourselves enrolled in some sort of course and we make time for each other every single day. The thing that gets me the most is these fools that say they don’t have time to cook a decent meal for their family and thus live off the golden arches or the colonel are the one’s that complain, "I'm fat, somebody should pay me to lose weight" (xoa). People if you don’t have time to cook and provide the basic source of nutrition for your family, change jobs, quit the Thursday night tennis group or better still, turn the TV off and provide your family with a basic right. And let’s not get started on this ‘financial crisis.’ You voted for the capitalist system, you lived in it, you invested in it, you knew the risks, you paid the execs $30 mill a year to earn you your 3 cents per share, you lost your money, no one should have to guarantee anything. Pony up and accept your dues.
This you may be asking does not relate to dumbing down, but I feel it does. It is the attitudes that go along with this style of thinking that leads to the dumbing down of society. People are willing to take short cuts any way they possibly can to get somewhere in life, and if it means not having to do a 3 second grade 6 calculation to work out the power output of a grid in megawatts then why do it. The attitude is this; ‘I don’t understand that, put it in simple terms that I can comprehend. I like to know how many houses a power plant can power.’
My personal opinion is, I don’t understand how many houses a power plant can power, to me there are too many variables involved in thinking that. A simple look down my street confirms this. I live in a standard three bedroom 1970’s brick veneer home, yet a walk down the other end of the street reveals 7 or 8 bedroom mini mansions with 3 car garage, feature garden lighting with a swimming pool and spa. Just a hunch, but I feel I can safely say my place doesn’t use as much power as that. Which leads me to ask, whose house are referring to with that power plant, mine or the other one?
My point in all of this is that people need to recognise that all it takes to contribute to a smarter, more ‘comprehensive,’ I mean that in a mental way, not as a whole, society is take 5 minutes out of your busy day and smell the roses, spend time with your family and use your brain in a more effective manner, instead of thinking how I can shortcut my way around this.
:bier:
blue