Where do we go from here?
 

I have noticed, through the years, A major dumbing down of the general population. Maybe it is a lack of interest in the happenings of our country and the world. Maybe just a failure to comprehend what todays actions mean for future generations.
The news and media tend to follow in the government line, and either neglect of purposefully fail to report in any detail the major issues effecting our world.

My question is simple.....are we heading for serious societal collapse in the coming decades, or am I reading too much into the apparent stupidity?

Not through the years though, I think its always been like this. With the introduction of the internet and just about everyone owning a TV its much easier for the media to get its news across. Many people do not ever think for themselves, they do what they are told all the way from birth to death and never challenge anything they were taught when they were younger. People also take the news they see on TV for the absolute truth, when in fact it hardly ever is the unbiased truth. When a news channel decides to not run certain stories, many people who only watch that news station miss out on everything else that is going on, and if said station has a certain slant (IE left or right, ect) then they will never hear the other side. Or maybe I've got it all backwards, I'm not an expert or anything, just writing what I observe. As for a societal collapse, don't know about that. I think things will definatly change over the next 10 years, depending on who is elected, but things will definatly change. Hopefully for the better, leading to a more tolerant and educated people.

There are two reasons, first the mass communications media are a stronger force for programming the human mind than anything else, including the human mind itself.

Second, the "educational system" is nothing compared to what is actually "educating" people today - that being cultural propaganda propagated by mass media.

As for the future, there is no societal collapse coming. There is more cultural conditioning, as I stated above, but that doesn't make for societal collapse. It just channels human existence into narrower and narrower pathways.

People aren't thinking, in part, because they don't have the time to think. If I look at life today for the average family versus 30-35 years ago, there's 'way less free time, 'way more work, 'way less time together, 'way less time to think. I don't consider this a plot, but people who are too busy don't really have time to think about what's going on around them, and why. They just take whatever pap sounds good and run with it. Gotta get to the next job, gotta get the kids to soccer practice, and so on.

This is why something like a mass economic dislocation -- like the last great depression -- is one of the scariest things that a politician can conceive of. Because suddenly you've got millions of people with _lots_ of time to think, and a lot of grievances to think about. To a lesser degree we had that in the 60s -- not so much because there was an economic problem, but because there was _so_ much economic slack that whole classes of people had time to think about things like the Vietnam War, women's rights, civil rights, and so on. And, to a degree, get involved.

A good friend of mine runs a volunteer organization some distance from here, the kind that traditionally involves a couple of night meetings a month and some weekend work. And he's dying on the vine, because although this is a worthy and long-established cause, the only people who usually have _time_ to volunteer nights are senior citizens who aren't strong enough to do the work. The 40s and 50s -type volunteers of yesterday are too busy on the treadmill of life.

Art, as always, you have a poetic way of replying to messages that seems 'on target.' Do you mind sharing how you do it?

-SF

So the general population is stupider now than it was in, say, 1896? With all the colleges, hospitals, libraries, skyscrapers, planetariums, art museums, laboratories?

On second thought, maybe your right. :)

The total intelligence of the human race is a constant. The population is growing.

lol

i think you may be on to something.

saltfish,
I have no idea.
Anyway, some people occasionally tell me they don't know what I'm talking about. Of course, I think what they really mean is they disagree with me...

ya know, i am trying to get things in order to start an arts/cultural for profit type business with classes, lectures, seminars, etc. One of the MAIN seminars i want to hold for the general public is something titled, "How to discern the truth from the media" Seriously, it is sooo biased these days that you absolutely have to check, doublecheck, triplecheck, cross check and do everything in your power to figure out exactly what they mean. People these days seriously only look at one source of material and buy it as the absolute truth.

As for the general population's education, yes it is being dumbed down. Seriously, there are studies showing that highschool graduates in 1950's had just as much general knowledge as college graduates of 2000. Now, advanced knowledge is another matter. So maybe dumbing down isnt' the correct term, but maybe a narrowing of education. Probably a reason why liberal arts aren't huge majors anymore. People are more concerned with teh technical/how to make a living from a college major/practicality issue than they are with being 'educated' classically.

Anyway, have fun, enjoy what you can, and question everything

that makes more sense than anything i've heard about the gradual downward spiral of society in a while, basically hitting the nail on the head in my opinion. this, in addition to the "programming of the masses" by news and other media mentioned in other posts is, in my opinion, driving society, nay, humanity, towards the destruction of itself

Consider, what is dumb?

Do you mean those unwise people who leave stuff blocking the water fan in the dishwasher?

Do you mean the folks ya see a'talking like this?

Do you mean those who aren't very educated beyond school and college?

The list goes on and on.

Hah! I never thought of that. And I'm with you on the direction of society. If anything, we're knee-deep in a sea of talking heads telling us what to be outraged about. I think this is far more of a political matter (left versus right) than a governmental one. As a corollary to Occam's Razor, the correct answer is usually the more mundane one.

We are being dumbed down and it is deliberate. We are like slow, dumb cattle being herded into the slaughter chute. Some of them panic because they smell the blood and reaslize where they are headed, but most just plod along until they get the pneumatic slam on the skull and the slash across the throat.
Franklin Roosevely once said that nothing in politics is accidental. "If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
Arnold Toynbee, the author of the acclaimed 12 volume "A Study of History" once declared "Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state that America is in today". Jesus said that in the end times it would be "Just like it was in the days of Noah before the flood. People marrying and giving in marriage right up until the end came".
As a people we are being groomed to take a secondary role to the Europeans. This means we are slowly, inexorably being taught to think and dress and converse and idealize and act like them. Our cars look like theirs, our homes, our schools, everything. Our world is slowly merging into a homogenous unit and that means that the U.S. must be dumbed down so that the merger can be accomodated smoothly.
Pretty soon they will begin gelding us.