Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`m with you on a lot of that.

But doesn`t lazier, sheeplike behavior lead to dumberer?

I think we`d have to isolate "dumb" in terms of IQ.

We have whatever IQ we`re born with, and it doesn`t change. Maybe a couple of points, but that`s about all. Certainly, we don`t improve or decline by tens of points. So what does anyone mean by the concept of "getting dumber?"

I`d say that as a society we`re getting far less critical, less analytic, and definitely much too quick to accept just about anything as a fact. Ultimately, though, that comes down to intellectual laziness.

The other aspect of this is that people seem to be unwilling to invest time in those things that used to make life enjoyable. The old "do it yourself" mentality of the 50s seems to have disappeared, in general. We buy fast food because it`s "too hard" to cook. We use credit cards because it`s too hard to forecast our daily cash needs or maintain a positive balance.

Setting aside our own choices, many times the manufacturers have decided to make things "idiot proof" in order to eliminate the costs of support. So Windows Me (Millenium edition) disallowed almost any "under the hood" access. The result was a disaster. So too, Web editors don`t allow access to source code, and things like that.

If you can`t even get into something to fix it, why learn to fix it at all?

Dumb ... a very subjective point. I`ve done a lot of dumb things in my life. In fact, if you have a server with a few spare gigabytes, I`ll start making a list.

Lowest common denominator as a mindset. Well, any belief system has but one aim: to align the minds of a large group of people. The "powers that be" used to use religion to align large groups of people ... ie the stock ... and keep order in society. Today it`s debt. I`m not sure if groupthink or groupaction actually increase stupidity or just weaken individuality. People want to belong to something or identify with something. But on the other hand, there are lots of people in our society who take advantage of this and promote packaged beliefs that look and feel a lot like stupidity.

I will also add. If there`s one thing I`ve learned about beliefs, it is this.

Respect what others believe, period. Even if they`re bigoted, arcane, or what have you. I certainly don`t like a lot of things I see in today`s world but the best way to change things is to lead by example.

Crowds act differently when they`re physically together, than people in a group will act if they`re separate. In other words, we can align a mindset in a physical crowd and sort of "take over" the actions of the people in that crowd.

But when we`re dealing with people and families on their own, there isn`t that physical connection leading to same actions. There`s time for critical thinking, questions, and research.

It comes down to education, and I don`t think modern schools do much in the way to teaching kids how to develop their own independent thinking. As a result, people do more stupid things, perhaps, but they`re not getting any dumber.

:-) I guess that begs the question, what`s the difference between "dumb" and "stupid?" LOL!

I had a conversation today about how many things we have to learn now.

And I do, often, feel dumb. What happens is that I expend so much brain energy working, marketing, running the house, managing finances and cash flow, working on building business credit, whatever ... I swear I can hardly remember how to tie shoes. (I made up for this by purchasing some cool airwalks with a bungee-cord tie system ... no knots required!) I swear some days I can`t even pick out what clothes to wear.

Modern times ... it`s just TOO MUCH at once and being a parent of a 1yo plus a business owner on top of that - it`s crazy! The conversation was about how there is just more to do now than there was 20-40 years ago. When my husband was growing up, his mom certainly wasn`t trying to teach herself new programming languages while monitoring her credit lines, managing several bank accounts, dealing with employees and clients, etc - she was just a mom with a couple of kids playing in the yard.

Just think of the things you do today that we didn`t do 20-40 years ago. Email. Credit watching. (Identity theft just didn`t exist!) Online banking. Feeds. 24 hour News. Yes, even online business networking sites. Throw on top of that the fact that NO ONE, it seems, has a 9 to 5 job anymore ... it`s a crazy, crazy life. No wonder why my brain has reached its capacity.

I won`t even start about how many passwords I have to remember ...

OK I have a question about education.  What happens between the first grade and high school graduation?  The academic requirements are much stricter in grade school now.  They are teaching multiplication, fractions, and science in the second grade and the kids are doing great. (I think we mostly wrote our ABC`s and painted when I was in the 1st or 2nd grade) Then we have seniors graduate who cannot string a sentence together.  What happens in between?  I see employment applications of high school graduates who cannot spell three letter words. It`s really frightening.

:-) I think you`re going to have a hard time backing up that statement. Time and again we see books and research about how academic requirements and expectation in the past were much higher.

Where you`re maybe correct would be in the *age* at which various subjects are introduced. Sadly, education and neurobiology seem to be totally divorced. The idea that a human brain isn`t yet developed enough at various ages for certain subjects seems to be missing from the equation.

I`ve been doing a lot of thinking about this, actually. Our brain hasn`t evolved much in the past 150,000 years, and we`re pretty much the same as our ancestors. We`re still basically the Cro Magnon model. So what`s changed recently?

After looking at all that I could, I`ve come to the conclusion that the single biggest problem in today`s technological society is lack of continuity.

We know that children require a fairly rigid structure on a daily basis. They need the security of knowing, in a way that`s undertandable to them, what`s going to happen in the immediate next time segment. They need repetition, security, and consistency.

In other words, when we learn a "fact" about something, we expect that fact to remain true for quite awhile. The "while" might get a bit shorter as we get older, but we still expect things to be mostly the same from one to the next day. (Kids think something is true forever.)

Think about how much effort it took you to understand that two dimes are more than one quarter, in terms of objects. But the value of the one quarter is greater than that of the two dimes. It takes a tremendous amount of brain power to understand these principles, and you expect the knowledge to remain true for a long time.

But now think about what it took to learn about cassette tapes, players, and how to convert our music library from vinyl records to those cassettes. No sooner have you accomplished it (organization, purchasing investment, technology skills, redundancy problems, etc.), than everything changes and goes to CD. Now it`s going to DVD. Tomorrow it`ll be Blue Ray or HD-DVD.

Our brains are designed to capture short-term information, keep it for about a week, then move it into long-term storage. But modern society seems geared more toward our never feeling comfortable putting anything into long-term storage.

For computer people, it`d be like building a machine with 256 gigabytes of RAM, then writing applications that never store anything to the hard drive. It can be done, but it`s not a good way. What happens when you run out of "memory?" Suppose there never was a way anymore to store information temporarily to the hard drive? It would either vanish, or the computer would lock up.

So too, we`re reaching a point where people`s minds are just locking up. There`s too much that`s changing, and not enough that`s staying permanent.

I wanted to comment on Janets post, but Im dumberer than the rest of you and cant figure out how to quote what she said.. DOH!

Here`s what I think.. and this is BY NO MEANS A SLAM against parents in todays society.  Im one.. a single one at that.  And I work as well as care for my kids.  But I think a lot of this starts at home.

Kids are darn smart, then and now... just differently.  My 2 yr old could operate the VCR and DVD player... she knew how to recognize the channels to get it to the right one so she could pop in a video (( am I proud? gosh no ))  My 4 yr old is adept at logging on to the computer and navigating to find the icon on the desktop for his learning games... his hand eye coordination is much better, I bet than the kids from the toy gun and pail and shovel era. (( Not that Im saying hes smarter.. just in a different way. ))

I worry that the quality of time at home is at stake these days.  Part of me actually longs to  know the simplicity of the consitancy of a dad going off to work and coming home at 5PM to a healthy and nicely laid out dinner.  Stories at 7, and bedtime at 8. 

Would I do well in this scenario?

As much as I want it.... nope.  I doubt moms did back then either. 

 I WISH I could be fulfilled by spending my day molding my kids, and helping them grow on a FT basis, but I need more.  Society tells me I need more.  Society says that staying at home is unfulfilling and not enough.  Women are encouraged more now, than ever to find what makes em tick... to be successful and to grow. Not that this is a BAD thing.. but we are only human.. somethin`s gotta give.

Maybe Im romanticizing the 50s and 60s or heck, even the 70s when I grew up, but I  would like to think that the stability, the slower pace, was good for growing little souls.  I think alot of it comes down to the quality of raising our kiddos.  Kids were DIFFERENT back then.

Teachers these days have to deal with scary discipline issues, that just weren`t paramount back then.  I visited a local jr high... the one I went to!  And witnessed a teacher politely tell a student to slow down in the hall.  Had this been back in the 80`s at this same school... we would have slowed down and smiled sheepishly.  Not anymore.  She got the bird.  She wasnt fazed.  I was SHOCKED!  And I live in small town America! 

School isnt all about learning anymore.. its chock full of a million distractions.  Cell phones ( my sons principal told me that one girl had 6000 minutes of texting one month... 6000!)  ipods, mp3s etc... add to that, the distraction of poor behavior that we didnt HAVE back then... the stress on the teachers due to the poorly behaved kids, and its a recipe for an atmosphere that is much less condusive to learning.

I don`t think we are getting dumber, but I do think we are getting lazier.  I think priorities are certainly changing.  We are a society of instant gratification.  Why spend time learning to write and write properly when we can whip off an email with no capital letters and get it over and done with?

It`s funny to me, how in this society where we have made great strides towards easier communication, it hasnt  gotten any better.  We do it alot, but like a lot of things.. its watered down now....  it`s quantity, not quality.

Other random thoughts are this.  I cringe when I see misspelled words or poor grammar in something other than the net.  I also cringe when I see public service announcements reminding us to spend time with our kids.  It shoudl be NATURAL to go for a gentle family walk after dinner... to play ball in the back yard.  Im as guilty as the rest tho... Im distracted.  By everything.  Bombarded from every which way with things that need to be prioritized...

When I DO encounter an innocent child these days, I do wonder about his mentality... my sons have an innocent girl in their small school and she`s a novelty to them.

I don`t think we are dumber..I think we are busier than ever.. not necessarily for the better, either.  But I can`t really say if it`s for the worse...

I ride the fence.. ;c) Took me long enough to tell yall that, eh?

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Going slow is for weenies!