I want to respond to Garrett’s post about whether or not America is getting dumber. The WP article by Susan Jacoby is full of good points, and I agree that the numbers she references are scary. I agree that, as she says, we’ve seen “the triumph of video culture over print culture”, and that that’s a very bad thing. I’m also frustrated by how uninformed many people seem to be, and how complexity of thought is often tagged as “elitism”. Intelligence is probably the most important gauge of whether I’m attracted to someone (romantically or platonically), and I think it’s ridiculous that it’s so often ignored in the name of PCness.

But I think she gets some stuff wrong. I heartily believe that large chunks of our entire culture are rotting away before our eyes — but I don’t think it’s directly caused by a decline in national intellect.

First off, it may be true that we’re reading less as a nation and getting crasser, but I don’t think it’s anything like a seismic shift. Most Americans — most people everywhere — have always turned to ridiculous, base things for entertainment: bear baiting, minstral shows, 50s sitcoms, whatever. People are naturally attracted to violence, schlock, gaudiness, and sex. Most 13-year-olds in any decade, unlike Susan Jacoby, weren’t spending most days “reading for hours in a treehouse” — they were probably playing games or secretly feeling each other up. Yes, I’d rather see kids rolling hoops down some idyllic street than playing Halo for hours on end, but hoop-rolling is hardly a more “intellectual” activity. Developing the ability to appreciate and understand more “intellectual” stuff takes patience and training, whether it’s self-imposed or taught by someone else.

I know the low culture of the past and of the present aren’t entirely the same. I think there are two big differences between a crowd of Midwesterners gawking at Siamese Twins in a carnival sideshow and a TV audience watching fellow human beings humiliate themselves on a reality show. First, the scale of spectacle, since you can’t cram 25 million viewers into a single circus tent. Second, the intensity of the spectacle, and I think this IS a real problem. The money and psychological sophistication of mass media, coupled with the competition of the entertainment industry, means purer and purer doses of excitement are available at all hours of the day. We’ve upped the voltage on our entertainment to the point where we’re immune to smaller crass pleasures (like, say, staring at sideshow freaks). Jacoby is dead on about the erosion of American attention spans, I believe. I don’t know how to solve that problem, though, other than to avoid TV as much as possible (always good advice) and encourage others to do the same.

But be that as it may, I also think the Jacoby article is wrong in completely discounting the idea that living in a tech-saturated world is purely destructive. To be clear, I agree that it’s fucked up we plop babies in front of the TV for hours. I think World of Warcraft is creepy and alarming. But, the ability to navigate the Internet, utilize technology, and generally participate in an ADHD culture IS its own set of skills and its own form of intelligence. In fact, developing that particular form of intelligence is necessary for survival in the modern world. And, it doesn’t spell the end of human critical thought. The most successful (and also probably most content) individuals among our generation will be the people who can do both — who can navigate the shallow “video culture” of mainstream America while also developing the complex analytical and empathetic and creative abilities associated with reading, writing, etc. Of course you can certainly overstate that case and many do (”we don’t have to read books now that we have Wikipedia!”), but the truth is that we develop new intelligences to replace the old ones that are left behind as our culture shifts. The idea of “multiple intelligences” (yes, I recognize the irony of linking that) is an old one. And as a whole, it’s debatable whether “intelligence”, whatever it means, is declining over time. In this article by the serious badass Malcolm Gladwell, he mentions the fact that IQ scores have been steadily rising over the course of this century, to the point that the threshhold level for mental retardation has had to be steadily raised to account for upwardly-shifting medians in the IQ bell curve. As Gladwell says, this just drives home the point that intelligence isn’t any single measurable figure, whether an IQ score, an attention span, or a knowledge of geography or literature. Those are all pieces of the human mind, not ultimate yardsticks of its intrinsic value or power.

Finally, I think Jacoby is missing something about the role of “smartness” in our culture. As much as contemporary American anti-intellectualism might be a real phenomenon, Americans also have a seriously weird complex about the idea of being “stupid”. Americans can’t stand thinking they’re stupid, which is one reason they get all defensive about their lack of knowledge. When pundits or talk show hosts rail against liberal elites, intellectuals, and politicians, the message to the viewing audience isn’t “fuck smart people”. It’s “these poweful people think they’re SO SMART, but look how stupid and lacking in common sense they really are; you, the viewer, are the smart one. You can clearly see the solutions to the problems. (”Build a wall!”. Or, “End the war now, at all costs!”) Doesn’t it enrage you that they’re in control? We Report — YOU FUCKING DECIDE.” That’s not to say that politicians and intellectuals and whoever else in positions of power don’t do stupid, arrogant things or don’t deserve to be skewered. They do, and they do. But the ravenous public appetite for that skewering suggests something else is being satisfied in those news programs outside — a fulfillment of the need of the viewer to feel smart and validated. Hearing Lou Dobbs or Bill O’Reilly or whoever make their simplistic arguments makes the viewer feel he’s wiser, not through informing him but through lending credence to his preconceptions and implicitly reinforcing the idea that the viewer doesn’t have to learn new ideas and think critically about the story at hand in order to be intellectually worthwhile.

Jacoby calls this attitude, the “arrogance about [a] lack of knowledge”. Yeah, true that, but the smugness also masks a deep, deep insecurity that pervades the American consciousness, a perpetual fear of inadequacy that is itself created by a popular culture that innundates us with reminders of our shortcomings followed by pitches for products to cure or conceal those flaws. Some of those pressure points of psychic insecurity are well documented: unattractiveness, obesity, social anxiety. But just as important, we are also all terrified of exposing our ignorance, irrationality, and dullness. Even if we aren’t overly ignorant, irrational, or dull, we’re as frantic and anxious as a normal-bodied teenage girl castigating herself for being too fat. Secretly, we don’t want to be stupid, which is why it’s so important that we redefine “stupid” as “the other guy’s position”, be it religion or secular humanism.

But I think that up to a point, at certain times, presented in the right way, most people are also quite willing to learn new things if they can see the value in learning them and they’re not already clammed up from distrust. It’s just that in our depersonalized, lunatic, capital-driven, neurotic society, the opportunities for that kind of truly constructive discourse are minimized. That’s true both in the school systems and outside. And there’s a feedback loop: our abilities to learn new things and pay attention and consider thoughtfully opposing viewpoints become atrophied through disuse, making it less likely we’ll try to think critically. And then the problem only gets worse. So, although I agree with Jacoby that “it is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality”, I wonder — is calling Americans stupid really helping a single goddamn thing?

A few days ago I became especially interested in an article called “The Dumbing of America“, where she cast aside any fear of being labeled an “elitist”, and strictly argued that Americans, for the most part, are not only becoming increasingly stupid, but are acting the part more openly. It brings me a bit of guilt sometimes to realize that I, an elitist of sorts, agree, but how can her point really be effectively countered? When book and periodical sales are continuing their slow descent into futility, and shows like The Bachelor seem less and less likely to have a limit to the size of their audiences, it’s not difficult to see her point.
Very little, if any, of this argument is new, and it has been argued time and time again by Americans (and our cousins to the immediate north, I’m sure) for centuries. What amused me most about reading The Dumbing of America was that my experience was interrupted by two coworkers who (not so quietly) began discussing the absolute hilarity of Good Luck Chuck, I forced myself to stop reading the article and get back to work before my head forced itself into and through my computer monitor.

As I recounted the experience to my girlfriend later that evening, I began to laugh so hard that the last sip of 1967 Cheval Blanc I had taken sprayed right out of my nose, forever ruining my only copy of The Fountainhead.

As an aside — I’d like to suggest a rule of thumb for NPR hosts. Stay away from discussing at length anything associated generally considered hip or associated with youth culture, because it’s usually just embarassing. Especially with music. Something about NPR and contemporary music is like oil and water. I love you people, NPR hosts, but for your own good, just avoid anything that’ll require you to use phrases like “In this hour, we interview indie rock trendsetters _______”. I don’t mind it when you review world music albums, because that’s your element. But no matter how nice you are, Terry Gross, there’s just no way that you can really ask the right questions of Thom Yorke without sounding like a patronizing aunt. I’m sorry.

Anyway. The point is that I was listening to ol’ Diane Rehm today and she interviewed the author of a recent autobiography on Charles Schulz. The interview was pretty interesting — if you want to listen, it’s available streaming here — and the book sounds like it’s worthwhile too. But what really caught my attention was passing mention of Bill Watterson, who both idolized Schulz and quietly disapproved of his marketing of the Peanuts brand.

Considering I read it religiously and repeatedly during the most formative years of my life, Calvin and Hobbes probably had more influence on my development than anything outside of my own mother. So, while I made cookies (today, oatmeal raisin and pecan shortbread) I thought about Bill Watterson. Watterson, as you may know, refused to license his Calvin & Hobbes characters to anyone, ever. And, after he retired from drawing the strip in the mid-90s, he pretty much entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. Rumor has it that he now devotes all of his time to painting landscapes in oil — then burning each one after the canvas is finished. That’s about all I’d heard about the guy, so I went looking for news online…there’s not much.

Here’s an “interview” with Watterson in which he answers questions submitted by fans by being really vague and cantankerous. I do like this line, though:

Q: What led you to resist merchandising Calvin and Hobbes?

A: For starters, I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo. . . . Actually, I wasn’t against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life.

Here’s an article by Some Cleveland Paper about how goddamn hard it is to find him:

“No doubt we have an industry,” says Kim Campbell of Paws Inc., the company Garfield built. “What’s so wrong with that? Jim understands some people look down on [licensing]. It doesn’t bother him. Jim feels an obligation to make us chuckle, and is happy to strictly entertain. All he really wanted was enough money to buy beer and cigarettes.”

Let us pause for a moment and recall that Hobbes is a stuffed tiger. What fan — kid or adult — wouldn’t want one of his or her very own? The strip was primed and oh, so easy. United Press Syndicate and Watterson stood to make gazillions. But Watterson wasn’t interested.

He mentioned this dilemma in his address at Ohio State. “One syndicate developed a comic strip after it had settled on the products; the strip was essentially to be an advertisement for the dolls and TV shows already planned. Lots of heart and integrity in that kind of strip, yes sir.

“Of course,” he went on to say, “to be fair to the syndicates, most cartoonists are happy to sell out, too.”

“Too bad Mr. Watterson doesn’t cheer up,” Campbell responds.

And finally, here’s a piece that Watterson recently wrote — a recent WSJ book review about the previously mentioned Schulz biography: “The Grief That Made Peanuts Good” And here’s an article about the WSJ book review about the…ah, fuck it. But, it does have a picture of the man: “Wall Street Journal Somehow Tracks Down Bill Watterson”

Bill Watterson, what are you doing? Why don’t you come back to us? Give us what we want! Why can’t you please draw a full length Calvin and Hobbes graphic novel as the liner notes to that new Pixies studio album that’s going to be popped out any day now?

In other news: it’s cold! And that’s novel.