Idiocracy

Warner Crocker writes about Susan Jacoby's new book:

Great read with, I'm sure, some controversial facts. Susan Jacoby in the Washington Post takes on "The Dumbing of America." She looks at this from several angles including the march of technology and how it impacts politics. She lists three points along the path of anti-intellectualism: video, lack of general knowledge, and an arrogance about the lack of general knowledge. She's right to a degree that no one would want to tackle these issues in an election year. Where she misses is that, sadly, no leader anywhere will touch this at any point before or after an election.

She also misses, what to me is a crucial fourth point as to why we continue to dumb things down. Money, or rather the pursuit of more of it or the fear of not making any. In my business of the theatre we are in fact our own worst enemies, when it comes to the dumbing down of our audiences. We don't play certain plays because they are deemed elite or will be a poor seller because we have to protect the bottom line. And of course that begins a downward spiral that in the not-for-profit world was supposed to be taken care of by donations, which then became sponsorships, which then got strings attached, which then led to keeping the sponsors happy, which essentially kept the spiral moving ever downward.

As much as I agree that anti-intellectualism, which involves not just general ignorance, but also a pride in that ignorance, is spreading, and that certain people exacerbate the trend by dumbing things down, there's something else here. As much as I, or people in my social circle, value art, science, and intellectual pursuits, the sad reality is that most people feel as if they can get along just fine without them. In our culture, incentives to acquire knowledge beyond the math required to fill out a tax form or the English needed to follow an office memo are paltry. Ignorant people find jobs, make livings, meet spouses, and produce offspring. They can become TV stars and talk show hosts. They can be upwardly mobile, and they can, at times, make substantial fortunes. Sometimes, they even become Presidents of the United States. Given all this, I can see why people don't feel they need to put in any extra effort to learn more than they already think they know (even if they don't know very much).

That said, while the decision for ignorance over knowledge doesn't cost much individually, it is devastating collectively. Societies that can't tell bad ideas from good ones tend to lead the world in the manufacture of corpses. Considering the damage that we can do to ourselves and our planet in the 21st century, we need to find some way to motivate people to learn. Otherwise we might find life very soon becoming, once again, brutish, nasty, and short.

Hmm, I think someone wrote a play about this...