Bonehead Society
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.-Amos Bronson Alcott.
Are people today actually stupider than the people of yesterday? Evidence abounds that seems to indicate that they are. But, maybe because so many people now have the means to expose their stupidity to the masses, it only seems like they are.
Personal blogs, e-mailing and 'reality' TV shows hint that there is a creeping, oozing imbecility abroad in the land, but are those things truly representative of the state of our intellectual weal?Christ, I hope not. I use the television show Jeopardy as evidence for what I am presenting here. I've always been a follower of this high-end quiz. I even go back to the Art Fleming days when they used to flip the cards over by hand, but I have no quarrel with current compere, Alex Trebek. He's adept at his task and is also a compatriot. While it remains a fine, and often challenging vehicle in the wasteland of TV (I figure I've won about $45 billion from the comfort of my living-room couch over the years), something has been troubling me about Jeopardy of late. That is, the caliber of the contestants. Albeit most of them are very astute, quick on the buzzer, and obviously bright enough, but some of them dumbfound me by their lack of knowledge about anything that went before their time. For the younger contestants, that means that happenings pre-1970 might as well have happened in medieval times.
Question: Was British Prime minister in 1970."Who is Winston Churchill, Alex.""Winston Churchill died in 1965, you ignorant bastard!"The latter quote didn't come from Alex, it came from me. But, I mean, 1970,for heaven's sake. That's only last week, relatively speaking. The Beatles had already played their last live concert by 1970. And Mick Jagger had sired at least his third illegitimate child.
What's gone wrong here? Where has our sense of history gone? How can we see ourselves in any sort of context if we're oblivious to our origins? It distresses me because the malaise of intellectual isolationism is not just confined to Jeopardy -- the contestants of which show are among the more succulent fruits on the tree of knowledge, or they wouldn't have passed the regime of tests to get there -- but is widespread. Ask any academic about the paucity of general knowledge amongst college and university freshmen,and those of us with an ounce of trepidation about the direction society is headed, would be horrified. Furthermore, this ignorance is not confined to people of little consequence, and that's what gives me the vapors.
Think of our political leadership. I'm not going to be partisan here, the way you vote or don't vote is your call, and I learned during my column-writing days that the best way to lose half your readership is to declare your personal politics. But, I am going to express my dismay at the buffoonery that is displayed by people who steal our money holus-bolus, and also reserve the right to expropriate our land, tell us who we should or shouldn't have sex with, and have the power to wage war. That scares the hell out of me. Let's go back to Sir Winston S. Churchill. Not only was he prime minister during Britain's darkest days (and was in his late sixties before he even reached the top of the "greasy pole", after a lifetime of service), but he also wrote a history of World War Two; and of the English Speaking Peoples,among many other fine tomes, was a dab-hand with brush and easel, and was a lecturer of renown. His speeches stand as testament to his legacy. His contemporary, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nearly equally astute and committed, and he did all that while lugging around a pair brutally uncomfortable and heavy leg-braces.
Amazing men, both. Can you think of a political leader in the world today who would have the right, in terms of ability, to even apply a whisk broom to the greatcoats of those men? I can't. That's distressing. Distressing because, as nasty as the world was in 1940, the potential for disaster on a cataclysmic scale is much greater today.
It's greater today, but the joint is being run by C-minus students.
Are people today actually stupider than the people of yesterday? Evidence abounds that seems to indicate that they are. But, maybe because so many people now have the means to expose their stupidity to the masses, it only seems like they are.
Personal blogs, e-mailing and 'reality' TV shows hint that there is a creeping, oozing imbecility abroad in the land, but are those things truly representative of the state of our intellectual weal?Christ, I hope not. I use the television show Jeopardy as evidence for what I am presenting here. I've always been a follower of this high-end quiz. I even go back to the Art Fleming days when they used to flip the cards over by hand, but I have no quarrel with current compere, Alex Trebek. He's adept at his task and is also a compatriot. While it remains a fine, and often challenging vehicle in the wasteland of TV (I figure I've won about $45 billion from the comfort of my living-room couch over the years), something has been troubling me about Jeopardy of late. That is, the caliber of the contestants. Albeit most of them are very astute, quick on the buzzer, and obviously bright enough, but some of them dumbfound me by their lack of knowledge about anything that went before their time. For the younger contestants, that means that happenings pre-1970 might as well have happened in medieval times.
Question: Was British Prime minister in 1970."Who is Winston Churchill, Alex.""Winston Churchill died in 1965, you ignorant bastard!"The latter quote didn't come from Alex, it came from me. But, I mean, 1970,for heaven's sake. That's only last week, relatively speaking. The Beatles had already played their last live concert by 1970. And Mick Jagger had sired at least his third illegitimate child.
What's gone wrong here? Where has our sense of history gone? How can we see ourselves in any sort of context if we're oblivious to our origins? It distresses me because the malaise of intellectual isolationism is not just confined to Jeopardy -- the contestants of which show are among the more succulent fruits on the tree of knowledge, or they wouldn't have passed the regime of tests to get there -- but is widespread. Ask any academic about the paucity of general knowledge amongst college and university freshmen,and those of us with an ounce of trepidation about the direction society is headed, would be horrified. Furthermore, this ignorance is not confined to people of little consequence, and that's what gives me the vapors.
Think of our political leadership. I'm not going to be partisan here, the way you vote or don't vote is your call, and I learned during my column-writing days that the best way to lose half your readership is to declare your personal politics. But, I am going to express my dismay at the buffoonery that is displayed by people who steal our money holus-bolus, and also reserve the right to expropriate our land, tell us who we should or shouldn't have sex with, and have the power to wage war. That scares the hell out of me. Let's go back to Sir Winston S. Churchill. Not only was he prime minister during Britain's darkest days (and was in his late sixties before he even reached the top of the "greasy pole", after a lifetime of service), but he also wrote a history of World War Two; and of the English Speaking Peoples,among many other fine tomes, was a dab-hand with brush and easel, and was a lecturer of renown. His speeches stand as testament to his legacy. His contemporary, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nearly equally astute and committed, and he did all that while lugging around a pair brutally uncomfortable and heavy leg-braces.
Amazing men, both. Can you think of a political leader in the world today who would have the right, in terms of ability, to even apply a whisk broom to the greatcoats of those men? I can't. That's distressing. Distressing because, as nasty as the world was in 1940, the potential for disaster on a cataclysmic scale is much greater today.
It's greater today, but the joint is being run by C-minus students.
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