DUMBING DOWN AND DRUGGING PEOPLE

The Problem: Dumbing Down People For at least 75 years there has been a sad and steady downward reversal as the world culture spiraled out of control toward disaster with fear mongering, bigotry, racial hatred, corrupt government, stupid actions by people, ignorance, homophobia, base decadence, debauchery, drug use, chemical additives in food and water, huge shift in crimes and punishment, and lowered ethical values. Instead of becoming a utopia led by technological advances, increased wisdom and knowledge, and progress for all people in our country and the world, the vast majority of people in our society have instead digressed into a crude and unsophisticated state where they have lost the ability to think and reason and are easily manipulated and controlled. Many have become dependent and addicted to sports entertainment, mass media, entertainment and merry making, drugs such as alcohol or worse, and given up the ability to think. A myriad of reasons explain what is happening - chief among them is that we are being dumbed down throughout our society with mind control and manipulation. We are being trained to become a world of serfs or slaves to serve the elite and become docile like sheep by not questioning or thinking about what is happening, which groups are behind this shift and what they have to gain by this, and to what lengths they will go to. Dumbing Down Society Although television, video, the computer and internet, computer games, and movies have the power to be a fantastic educational and information tools that could help a society reach and educate multitudes of people, these media has instead become a tool that is causing people to become a nation of passive observers who are mesmerized by news, sports, entertainment, and other programming that is for the most part used as propaganda and to influence the viewer to buy, behave, or react in certain ways. For example, why does the CIA spend $3 billion dollars a year to own newspapers, radio and TV stations to influence people in foreign countries to look upon the US in a favorable manner? Why does the military spend billions on mass marketing and computer game development? Why have individuals such as Conrad Black, Rupert Murdock, and Bill Gates to name a few purchase and own huge television and other media conglomerates, control software development of all types? Is it really for the betterment of society that they do this or is it to control and put their spin on controlling us? Dumbing Down the Media Within my lifetime, the news media (radio, television, newspapers, the internet, and magazines) and the people who reported news had integrity gave an attempt to report in a fair and unbiased manner what was news. It was not perfect, but honesty and integrity were valued. PBS actually gave both sides to the journalist story. Something happened to this and now we have the sad excuse for "news reporting" going on. In another era this was called yellow journalism and harshly criticized. Sensationalism, people's opinions, shock statements, propaganda, one-upmanship, outright lying, etc. have replaced ethics and integrity in mainstream journalism and the media. Government has created propaganda 'fake news stories' that have been aired as the truth. One reason for this is six (6) corporations own all the news outlets in our country - the main mission of the majority of the (6) corporations produce entertainment so it is no mystery that the news we get is based upon entertainment and not facts. By their very nature, corporations are more interested in profit than truth or integrity. The question that needs to be ask is why we are being dumbed down and what can a person do to avoid being dumbed down? Dumbing Down Education People rely upon an education system that panders to the lowest expectations (while claiming to have high expectations),i.e. dumbing children down and subjecting them to obedience training so they will be easier to manage; is obsessed with teaching to tests and passing the tests, and rigid obedience and control while ignoring reading, writing, math, and thinking. The vast majority of youngsters who graduate are not really taught to function in the real world because the system has failed them. Our state and local education systems lie about how the test scores, grades, etc. of students continue to improve. In order to have "accountability" schools where students are "failing" are given a short amount of time to shape up or be "privatized" and changed into a "charter school". Privatization and charter school is a fancy name for stealing from the public and giving this public money to a non public Corporation or private school that has no accountability on how the money is spent or the students learn. Teachers are hired who can barely read or write, have no knowledge of their subject area, are more interested in a second paycheck, and who have not been trained to teach are also responsible for this decline. Many classrooms are staffed with full time substitute teachers since it is so hard to fill the positions. Poor pay, lousy Gestapo Hitler like principals, and unsafe learning environments are also to blame. While public education is political and dependent upon the whims of whichever political party is in power, our education system will be a failure. While the main focus of many of our high schools is on a sports program where millions are misspent, our schools will fail to educate. While our schools stress control and obedience to all authority, we have set our youngsters to become obedient "citizens" who will blindly and unthinkingly follow authority figures. Many people focus on a winning football team and never really look to see the dropout rate, or if the young people graduating can read, write, count change, balance a check book, etc. Children who rebel are labeled as behaviorally disturbed, special education, and/or are medicated with powerful mood altering drugs to mold them into an obedient state. We, the people, need to become involved in changing this around and demanding the best public education system for our children that we can have. Education can change the world if people are really taught to critically think, read, write, do math, be creative, etc. Students also are responsible since they exacerbate the problems by misbehaving and not taking responsibility for their own education - blaming everyone but themselves. Dumbing Down Politicians At one time a politician who misused and spoke their native language like our current President does with English in an ignorant and dumb manner would never have been elected to any office much less the office of governor or President. President George W. Bush is such a politician - he is not alone. What is really sad is that he is the product of one of the most exclusive private schools in America and university education where he was given a "superior" education to public schools and universities. In a recent political congressional hearing, many congress men and women from both political parties showed their ignorance about legislation they had passed when they admitted that they had voted on a bill that gave away their oversight and ability to hold hearings on US prosecutors that the President recommended. The bill in question was USA "Patriot Act II" without having read or understood what they voted on! Years earlier in 2001, they passed the original "Patriot Act" within two months where again the vast majority of them did not bother to read or debate what was in this law or the fact it would abrogate the US Constitution. The "Patriot Act" literally does away with constitutional rights of those US citizens deemed a "terrorist". The definition of a terrorist in this act is anyone or any crime that are committed in the US. This law needs to be repealed. Some Suggested Solutions to Avoid Being Dumbed Down What can you do? With in our society there are multiple examples of how we are dumbed down. The writer has just shown a few examples of these - there are more. One way to do this is make a resolve that you will change your life and our society for the better by becoming involved, avoiding stupid behavior and actions, and become more informed. This means you can empower yourself to help change your world. Because it is so easy to control those who fear, many leaders use fear and intimidation to dominate, control, and conquer people. In the United States our fear mongering leaders and media blast war, death, negative stories, stupid actions, and destruction out to people on a daily basis. We see images of people in prison, natural disasters, murder, mayhem, criminal acts, horrific acts, etc. They know if they can create fear in a person, that the fear will become a 'mind prison' and thus captivate the person. Many people become slaves to their fear because it is an illusion that they accepted. What can a person do to avoid this? 1. Limiting TV news viewing to 1 hour a day - until you can cut out TV altogether. 2. View positive and uplifting programs such as spiritual films, old classics, etc. 3. View films that challenge your thinking and beliefs and are educational media, etc. 4. Avoid news, journals, and newspapers that just give one side to a story only. 5. Avoid news, journals, magazines and newspapers that use fear based stories. 6. Read books that are interesting and have a positive uplifting messages or story. 7. Study the great religious literature, philosophy, and spiritual books. 8. Study books that enhance your thinking in mathematics, philosophy, spiritual matters. 9. Study history and science to increase your thinking. 10. Meditate and pray at a minimum of twice a day - in the morning and at night. 11. Find an animal, person or group that you can show compassion to and help everyday. 12. Avoid people who waste your time or worse cause you to have fear and panic. 13. Do not take microchips or other implants in your body - ever. 14. Watch what you eat and drink - distilled water and organic food. 15. Take vitamin supplements to enhance your immune system. 16. Eat 75% of your food raw and 25% cooked. Avoid refined foods. 17. Refuse to take vaccines - they contain chemicals that are deadly, i.e. mercury. In order to become enlightened and share the perfect love and compassion that man was meant to have, we need to become educated about the demeaning and destructive practices that are being done to us to manipulate our thinking and behavior to become docile and subservient to a fascist state. We can no longer afford to be ignorant and stupid in how we act. The above are some of the reasons why people who are grounded in perfect love need not fear anything and can avoid being dumbed down. If they kill me and I have perfect unconditional love, I will ascend and be with those who practice perfect unconditional love. A person who has this type of love in their life cannot be defeated or brought down with fear. This is why it is so important for people to start to practice love - both on themselves and then others and toward God. The Dumbing Of America Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces By Susan Jacoby Sunday, February 17, 2008; B01 "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations. This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era. The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture. Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels. Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book -- fiction or nonfiction -- over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games. Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter," the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their "vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen." But these zombie-like characteristics "are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus." Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times. Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos. I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time -- as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web -- seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news. No wonder negative political ads work. "With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information," the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. "A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching." As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible -- and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds. The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge. People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping "I'm the decider" may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio "fireside chat" so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, "they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin." This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today's public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it "not at all important" to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it "very important." That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it's the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism -- a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation. There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. ("Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture," Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a "change election," the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda. info@susanjacoby.com Susan Jacoby's latest book is "The Age of American Unreason." View all comments that have been posted about this article. © 2009 The Washington Post Company