Thursday, February 25, 2010
Dumbing down America, continuing
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This article was going to be about how to remember names and not lose your house keys, addressed to members of my generation who learned at school by memorizing dates, events and names, and who read newspapers. There is a whole Internet and technology schooled generation of us who have been taught not to bother remembering but to look it up, who cannot do crossword puzzles and do such numeric puzzles as Sudoku to keep up their wits, and who read Japanese style manga cartoon and anime picture books instead of fiction. E-books also worry me you cannot pull them off the shelf, mark pages and write notes. And public libraries--- I seem to hear their death knell.
What is going on is a dumbing down of the American mind. Assume the brain is a matrix of billions of memory cells, like a set of spreadsheets, truly multi-dimensional. The learning process fills these cells and connects them via nerve networks, multi-level synapses. Thus, if you learn about Ben Franklin, you will be able to relate to Pennsylvania, printing, Parliament, lightning, Socrates, George III, Louis XVI, Continental Congress, postal service, or inoculations. Your mind has a search engine, better than Sergei Brins Google, that can spider through your brain cells and bring out related information. Miraculously, the more information your mind has, the more easily it will store new related stuff.
Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. If you do not learn simple things, such as arithmetic, you can be like those supermarket checkout clerks who need to enter the payment amount you tendered, in order to find how much change to return to you. I have asked young checkout people: you did not really need the cash register to find that you had to return nine cents, did you? In response, I get a shrug, or they want us to enter the payment. At the supermarket near 3rd Avenue and 17th Street I heard I dont need the calculator, I went to school in Barbados, and I am not American, I can do sums. It appears that not only the school system is inadequate, but that the business enterprises foster more degeneration of mental facilities by demanding that the simplest arithmetic functions not be entrusted to people. The vaunted American technological superiority is also a pipe dream. People in third world countries get better high school and college education, undiluted by diversions. Of course, they have better motivation, economic advancement. This is lacking in the US, where we have everything, household necessities supplied by China on credit, and Americans need not soil their hands in factories and repairing roads, hungry immigrants are glad to take on the dirty and demanding jobs. Even when the recession cuts all those paper- pushing (oops, keyboard) jobs, unemployment insurance and plastic cards pay for daily necessities, and theres an easy 14% rate, supposed to be a good rate, what a mockery put up by the banks. While the government is keeping its interest rates in the low single digit range, when you repay only the monthly minimum on a credit card $3,000 balance, it will keep you indebted for ten (10!) years. No wonder banks literally push their credit cards on you, at these rates they can afford the heavy defaults due rising unemployment.
The economic situation also contributes to the dumbing down of the American mind. Daily work keeps the mind alert, unemployment leads to escape activities and fantasies, and acquired but unused skills deteriorate. Out of work people may gamble, dream of easy money methods, resent everybody, develop anger against all forms of government and imagined oppression, with insane solutions. Think of the computer scientist who killed himself and several innocent people by flying an airplane into an IRS office building. Elected officials flock to the Tea Party, trying to associate with populist ideas and despaired peoples eruptions of hatred for authority, to avoid becoming targets of anger. This movement has no uniformity, no consistency and no solutions other than fantasized ones. TP needs lack of uniform ideas to retain its insane momentum, how much commonality can there be between people who variously find the seatbelt laws, free choice, emission control, budget deficits and any taxation as encroachments on individual liberty and the Constitution, whatever the definition.
But that does not stop the Republican and Conservative parties from capitalizing on dissatisfaction, uniformly defying all legislation proposed by the Democratic congressional majority. The same guys that led the country into despair, initiating immense $multi-trillion deficits, with interest costs that will choke our future generations, conducting no-win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , and leading the economy directly into a depression, they are the ones that accuse President Obama of incompetence, when he is struggling to find unifying solutions in an impossible environment. Next thing youll find Dick Cheney running for President, claiming to be the next Savior.
The Republican resistance to cooperation is defying the principle of majority rule and minority rights, resulting in bringing governance to a standstill . Meanwhile opportunistic individual Senators in both parties, (e.g. Ben Nelson, NE and Richard Shelby, AL) have held legislation and government appointments in ransom, for special benefits. This also applies in New York State, where Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate (now ejected) have held up the NY Senate, emerging with more authority and committee power. Can the American democracy recover? Some 85% of us feel that the government is definitely broken. Can it be mended? Yes, but It would take laws passed by the same congress people to have their power limited, so figure it out.
Meanwhile, Obama is trying to fix all problems simultaneously, and curing the $600B balance of trade by probably requesting a Value Added Tax for imports. Good luck to all of us.
Next time, lets talk about remembering names and not losing our house keys and glasses.
..
This article was going to be about how to remember names and not lose your house keys, addressed to members of my generation who learned at school by memorizing dates, events and names, and who read newspapers. There is a whole Internet and technology schooled generation of us who have been taught not to bother remembering but to look it up, who cannot do crossword puzzles and do such numeric puzzles as Sudoku to keep up their wits, and who read Japanese style manga cartoon and anime picture books instead of fiction. E-books also worry me you cannot pull them off the shelf, mark pages and write notes. And public libraries--- I seem to hear their death knell.
What is going on is a dumbing down of the American mind. Assume the brain is a matrix of billions of memory cells, like a set of spreadsheets, truly multi-dimensional. The learning process fills these cells and connects them via nerve networks, multi-level synapses. Thus, if you learn about Ben Franklin, you will be able to relate to Pennsylvania, printing, Parliament, lightning, Socrates, George III, Louis XVI, Continental Congress, postal service, or inoculations. Your mind has a search engine, better than Sergei Brins Google, that can spider through your brain cells and bring out related information. Miraculously, the more information your mind has, the more easily it will store new related stuff.
Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. If you do not learn simple things, such as arithmetic, you can be like those supermarket checkout clerks who need to enter the payment amount you tendered, in order to find how much change to return to you. I have asked young checkout people: you did not really need the cash register to find that you had to return nine cents, did you? In response, I get a shrug, or they want us to enter the payment. At the supermarket near 3rd Avenue and 17th Street I heard I dont need the calculator, I went to school in Barbados, and I am not American, I can do sums. It appears that not only the school system is inadequate, but that the business enterprises foster more degeneration of mental facilities by demanding that the simplest arithmetic functions not be entrusted to people. The vaunted American technological superiority is also a pipe dream. People in third world countries get better high school and college education, undiluted by diversions. Of course, they have better motivation, economic advancement. This is lacking in the US, where we have everything, household necessities supplied by China on credit, and Americans need not soil their hands in factories and repairing roads, hungry immigrants are glad to take on the dirty and demanding jobs. Even when the recession cuts all those paper- pushing (oops, keyboard) jobs, unemployment insurance and plastic cards pay for daily necessities, and theres an easy 14% rate, supposed to be a good rate, what a mockery put up by the banks. While the government is keeping its interest rates in the low single digit range, when you repay only the monthly minimum on a credit card $3,000 balance, it will keep you indebted for ten (10!) years. No wonder banks literally push their credit cards on you, at these rates they can afford the heavy defaults due rising unemployment.
The economic situation also contributes to the dumbing down of the American mind. Daily work keeps the mind alert, unemployment leads to escape activities and fantasies, and acquired but unused skills deteriorate. Out of work people may gamble, dream of easy money methods, resent everybody, develop anger against all forms of government and imagined oppression, with insane solutions. Think of the computer scientist who killed himself and several innocent people by flying an airplane into an IRS office building. Elected officials flock to the Tea Party, trying to associate with populist ideas and despaired peoples eruptions of hatred for authority, to avoid becoming targets of anger. This movement has no uniformity, no consistency and no solutions other than fantasized ones. TP needs lack of uniform ideas to retain its insane momentum, how much commonality can there be between people who variously find the seatbelt laws, free choice, emission control, budget deficits and any taxation as encroachments on individual liberty and the Constitution, whatever the definition.
But that does not stop the Republican and Conservative parties from capitalizing on dissatisfaction, uniformly defying all legislation proposed by the Democratic congressional majority. The same guys that led the country into despair, initiating immense $multi-trillion deficits, with interest costs that will choke our future generations, conducting no-win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , and leading the economy directly into a depression, they are the ones that accuse President Obama of incompetence, when he is struggling to find unifying solutions in an impossible environment. Next thing youll find Dick Cheney running for President, claiming to be the next Savior.
The Republican resistance to cooperation is defying the principle of majority rule and minority rights, resulting in bringing governance to a standstill . Meanwhile opportunistic individual Senators in both parties, (e.g. Ben Nelson, NE and Richard Shelby, AL) have held legislation and government appointments in ransom, for special benefits. This also applies in New York State, where Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate (now ejected) have held up the NY Senate, emerging with more authority and committee power. Can the American democracy recover? Some 85% of us feel that the government is definitely broken. Can it be mended? Yes, but It would take laws passed by the same congress people to have their power limited, so figure it out.
Meanwhile, Obama is trying to fix all problems simultaneously, and curing the $600B balance of trade by probably requesting a Value Added Tax for imports. Good luck to all of us.
Next time, lets talk about remembering names and not losing our house keys and glasses.
..
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:51 AM 
