THE WORLD'S GOING TO THE DOGS

And to Hell in a handcart – isn't it?

'We're all doomed, I tell you'

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It’s the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility...

We’re creating a world of dummies. Angry dummies who feel they have the right, the authority and the need not only to comment on everything, but to make sure their voice is heard above the rest, and to drag down any opposing views through personal attacks, loud repetition and confrontation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201407/anti-intellectualism-and-the-dumbing-down-america

I did not think that I would ever pass on a pop article from Psychology Today. Still these are strange times – or perhaps I am dumbing down too. So here goes anyway.

Andy Blunden. referred me to this article by Ray Williams*. It is worth from time to time reading and considering expressions like this, if only to think about the latest examples cited.

True or false? Has it not been ever thus, from the year dot, everywhere? Whatever the reality, grumpy old men and women always think this anyway, don't they? There were probably those who said and evidenced this at the heights of Classical civilisation, during the Renaissance and in the Industrial Revolution.

At both the societal and individual level there are comparative material and historical facts to be determined here. But what are the relevant facts? Search me. I can't answer this, though I do think that I recognise something of what the author complains of and I do feel there to be potentially better ways.

Change

But, if what is being complained of here is important, then the really important, testing question is as ever: What is to be done? And is change gathering anyway? As time and the wisdom of hindsight will surely tell?.

Then I am ever the optimist for what can come from resolving contradictions.

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* Developed from an article by Susan Jacoby, published in the Washington Post eight years ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901.html

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