The Dumbing of America

[kevin_standlee]

As it happens, Lisa and I were discussing this very subject yesterday, to varying degrees of despair. Thanks to jaylake for spotting it.

The Dumbing of America -- not only are Americans getting dumber, but we're proud of being dumb, too. Possibly this is why intellectual throwbacks like Lisa and I enjoy old radio programs like Jack Benny more than most modern fare.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

You're probably right. I want to believe that you're right, and that it just seems like people are getting dumber because with higher availability of information, we hear about more dumb people than we used to hear. It just seems to me that American society these days embraces stupidity with pride.

I think that in Lisa's case, she has always had difficulty understanding that just because she grew up among people who were generally more intelligent than her (her father was part of the scientific community at Los Alamos NM), that doesn't mean it was representative of society at large, and she's not really stupid herself. This has left her with considerable impatience with people less intelligent -- or possibly I should say more foolish, which isn't quite the same thing -- than her.