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When I was growing up, people admired intelligence and valued education. They wanted their kids to be literate and educated. Many families had at least a collection of abridged classic books from Readers Digest or Everyman’s Library.
Not every person aspired to be an author or academic of course, but at least it was understood that literacy and education were good and desirable qualities in a person.
Knowing something about literature and music was a part of our shared experiences. Look at Bugs Bunny cartoons. They’re filled with nods to classical music and great books in the middle of the slapstick and visual gags.
Now it’s flipped. People are rewarded for acts of stupidity and ignorance that would embarrass our ancestors who worked hard and sacrificed to get us this far.
Carl Sagan would disappointed at the way things have turned out because he called it in his book, The Demon-Haunted World:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
Not every person aspired to be an author or academic of course, but at least it was understood that literacy and education were good and desirable qualities in a person.
Knowing something about literature and music was a part of our shared experiences. Look at Bugs Bunny cartoons. They’re filled with nods to classical music and great books in the middle of the slapstick and visual gags.
Now it’s flipped. People are rewarded for acts of stupidity and ignorance that would embarrass our ancestors who worked hard and sacrificed to get us this far.
Carl Sagan would disappointed at the way things have turned out because he called it in his book, The Demon-Haunted World:
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
