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How can this be? With more information accessible for us all than was dreamt of even twenty years ago, surveys show that more and more people are knowing less and less about things that affect their own future. More and more people can think about only one thing at a time, and complain that anything more is a 'shopping list'.Media surveys love to ask one single question, to which no modified answer is possible, and not two pieces of information are included that might be essential to understanding it. For example: "Should taxes be lower?" will get a YES answer unless people understand the severe challenges ahead that should be prepared for now - as our grandparents prepared in building new countries less than a century ago. We live on what they did. Surveys show how many Americans do not know where Iraq is, or how big Iran is; how many Christians do not know what Jesus taught; how many fanatics know nothing about the fanatics of history. How many people know about other civilisations that have died through wasting their resources?
Junk for the mind is as serious as junk for the body. If your mind is full of rubbish, badly cooked, and not even digestible, it gets diarrhoea, or severe constipation, and the movement of information through the nervous system clogs up with mental obesity. (And why not spell that word diarea or dìarèa?) A little junk is fine - but keep it down to 5% if you can!
Keep away from whatever can harm your Precious Brain. And that can include TV with constant change, non-sequitur and meaningless collages. And noise that is loud and numbing, a physical sensation on the ears, not music for the mind. Keep away from drumming that is like a factory beat.
Promote Book Literacy.
The other multiliteracies are fine as long as they do not take over the school curriculum. Books and Nature can expand creative and applied imagination far more than just playing from an empty script. And not a flood of rubbish-books. Sort out what IS worth while. See Books worth reading. It is a sad comment that the biggest selling novel - yet, some say - starts with a scene of gratuitous horror, to be a mishmash of diversions from whatever historical facts can tell us about scriptures, the Catholic church, Leonardo da Vinci, and other matters about which readers do not know the historical facts or contexts.
Honor and status for those who use their brains for public benefit! We honor the sports stars, entertainers and celebs. We should honor and give high status to the people we most need to keep our society alive and going, so that children desire to emulate them.
Open minds that are not sieves. People need to be able to get their minds around new ideas and new ways of doing things. Their automatic rubbish-rejectors should not automatically rubbish anyone with new ideas, even if most of their ideas seem no-goers.
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