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?