Dumbing Down

The Dumbing Down Of The American Mind: There is a very dangerous phenomenon that seems to be occurring in the United States of America; something that I refer to as 'the dumbing-down of the American mind,' a nearly willful tendency for Americans to forgo reality in favor of believing what they want to believe.

I don't think this is a recent tendency, is all. I think everyone, always, has this tendency. What might be different, in this point in time, is the hearty approval and enabling of our public institutions towards that end.

If we look back through the mists of time, we see the Red Scare of the 1950's, when many people were whipped into a frenzy at the idea that Communists were going to take over our government. Even further back, the Civil War was fought over the unconvenient truth that slavery was wrong, and economies based on such were not going to last. In each period, there were a great many people who would rather believe a comforting lie than the harsh truth.

Basically, it's just human nature to do that.

But, just like bloodlust and the desire to skate through red lights, this is a destructive tendency which must be curbed. Usually, there are enough people around to keep the truth inconveniently hanging around. And there still are. But more and more, our own sources of authority have become corrupted.

Our own government acts like abstinence education for teenagers really works. It pressures NASA scientists to insert the word "theory" after each mention of the Big Bang on their website. And it's pretty clear by this time that our President simply lies like a rug.

We all get our sense of working reality from our external world. In the century just past we saw how a even a sincere belief grounded in wanting to help people went wrong. Communism had an idealistic goal of distributing what was needed to everyone who needed it. So far, so good.

There were oppressive people who had more than they needed, and deserving people who had less than they needed. This was true. Everyone who had more than they needed were treated as oppressive, and everyone who had less than they needed were treated as deserving. This was not true, but it was useful to act as if it were so, or they would never get this process off the ground.

The next stage assumed that everyone would still work as hard as they did when getting what they needed depended on it. But since getting what they needed did not depend on it, this did not happen. But it was essential to the belief that everyone act as though this were so. When people did not act as though this were so, strong measures had to be taken for everyone to at least say it was so.

Thus the oppression, censorship, torture, and murders began.

I'm sure some people supported the goals of the conservative movement out of genuine conviction. Even now, they claim everything they tried to do has been distorted. But what were their goals? How did it go wrong? Are they really sitting down and thinking things through, seeing if Reality supports their contentions?

Because in Whole Grain Reality, it is massively messed up. Or we wouldn't have the oppression, censorship, torture, and murders.

That's a clear clue something has gone horribly horribly wrong.