Sometimes, I get the feeling that stupidity is self-inflicted. That people are really only as smart as they want to be. And that for some reason or another, the youth culture has decided that intelligence, and perhaps even thought itself, is something to be stigmatized, something to be avoided at all costs. And that the kids followed suit, dumbing themselves down in order to be accepted, to fit in, because being smart means being a nerd, and being a nerd isn’t “cool.” And maybe—just maybe—there was a time when we didn’t feel like intellect was something to be ashamed of, but we’ve stashed those feelings away in a little tin box with the rest of our childhood memorabilia, because that time is past, and now is the time to grow up, and growing up means going dumb, it means getting hyphy, it means downloading “This Is Why I’m Hot” in droves until it reaches #1 on the iTunes Store.
It’s only ironic if you think it is.
4 Comments
Hah, I drove this post out of you.
But I’m glad you agree.
Which is why it’s young people like you who should articulate these realities as sharply, and insistently, as you can.
After all, I don’t expect that the vast majority of sheep who purchase such “songs” on iTS keep weblogs with coherent thoughts, analyses, and options. Yes, options. They have MySpaces maybe; and I’m not going to go all elitist and say that sort of solipsistic web graffiti is irrelevant—we ignore it at our peril… but clearly, lucid prose/poetry is ultimately more powerful and lasting than the regnant bleatings by benighted consumers of digital doodads.
Stay the course, in other words.
Well, there’s half of it. The other half would be rampant grade inflation and decreasing college acceptance rates. The other part of the population are no slouches, so much so that there’s an obvious divide here.
I want to think of it as evolution, diverging paths to develop more advantageous qualities, and those who “go dumb” are the ones who have fallen behind and know it. Those who know they can’t catch up. Those who fall behind.
And since the world doesn’t have enough resources to support everyone, someone’s going to die out. Optimistically speaking.
Then there’s the middle! People who fight to the death to keep up but just aren’t naturally as good at picking up information. But those are few in number.