Fighting against pressures to 'Dumb down'

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People who ae busy in community movements to better the world and fight injustices can overlook or even deny what prevents the majority of the people joining them. We are aware of oppressions, sexism, racism, ageism, bigotry, militarism and the destruction of the earth. Ask why most people still seem unconcerned. Keep this question in mind. We cannot have a fair-go democracy unless all the people can be active citizens.

Edward Gibbon saw history as the record of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. The Victorians hoped that human progress would match their technological progress. Prophets like H G Wells, George Orwell and Jacques Ellul have warned that instead, our striving for greater intelligence could roll back, and ‘intelligence’ even be seen as elitist, rather than what it is - the ability to work out what needs to be done in a situation. Arthur C. Clarke in ‘I remember Babylon’ not only foretold satellites, but also how global communication could be used to control and stupefy the masses. Political and commercial interests benefit from mass culture that keeps people ignorant, apathetic, helpless and consuming, and prevents connected thinking, organized knowledge and co-operative action to stop injustices.

‘Dumbing down’ is ‘whatever makes people less able to think, speak and act in their long-term interests.’ However ‘dumbed-down’ people may whinge, they may be unable to consider solutions except more government money.

1. THE EVIDENCE. People behave more stupidly than their own potential when they act against their own long-term interests. When they vote against their own interests. Take up self-destructive habits and behaviour, including gullibility, greed, gambling, debt, and superstitions new and old. (There are now 43 astrologers in Melbourne Yellow Pages, up from 15 a few years ago.) See how consumers are manipulated. Why is it a term of approval that something will ‘blow your brains’? Disordered consciousness is deliberately induced. Social problems increase rather than are eliminated. Costly efforts for all our social problems are mostly to remediate too late, rather than to prevent. Signs of life-style changes include the dramatic changes in women’s magazines, the shortened concentration spans in television entertainment, the limited English of many teenagers, and declines in University standards of written work. Political and commercial advertising now openly as well as successfully aims at emotions not reason. Theodore Dalrymple’s Life at the Bottom describes real lives, even though he blames intellectuals rather than our whole culture for the mind-sets that imprison them. Research shows how we are all affected, even if we feel immune.

Frogs in fact jump out of heating water without waiting to be boiled. It is humans who accustom themselves to destructive cultures, as history shows.

Our culture is mostly harmless when there is balance and moderatation - but not when excesses prevents independent thinking and active living. The greatest energy crisis today is a crisis of human energy to face and deal with the crises that face us. Mental energy is drained by poor health habits or diversions from what needs to be done into, for example, cults of superstitions, obsessions for cosmetic beauty, sporting lives dedicated to moving fast up and down, and frantic energy in exhausting forms of music.

2. WHAT CAN BE DONE? A culture cannot be legislated. But cultural changes always begin somewhere and every individual can do something. We can think outside our own boxes. We can connect ideas. Much action that is needed is obvious.

Everyone can resist dumbing-down attitudes and behavior. Keep alert to what is happening and promote alternatives, as individuals and as groups, as artists, writers, journalists, teachers, parents, innovators, unionists, business operators, activists, poets, thinkers and doers.

COUNTER The DESTRUCTIVE MYTHS with better concepts, knowledge, ideas, living examples, schools, films, songs, the press, and books on current affairs that everyone can read.

People are being encouraged to believe that it is human nature to want the worst, to be motivated mainly by greed or fear, that they cannot control themselves, that they are helpless, it is no use trying to do anything, that people in public life are all venal, that the world can only get worse, that ‘the good life’ is to consume and relax, that knowledge does not matter because ‘you can always look it up’; that the frontiers of artistic daring are sexual rather than more courageously revealing what is not being told about what is going on in the world.

Alternative experiences can include more non-TV reality to contrast with TV ‘reality’, school day-exchanges, and more interludes of meaningful and gentle entertainment in current-culture shows and festivals. The myths of ‘no happy families’ and ‘child-rearing is awful’ can be countered by real-life sharing and television demonstrations more than by group-talks. Everyone needs to know about history, other cultures and other people, and their own potential for fulfillment as citizens
PRECIOUS BRAINS. Everyone needs to know that their precious brains are their greatest resource, and the most important part of health. They need to know they can make the most of being alive by being fully conscious, rather than seeking escape. We can get our thrills from challenging the frustrations and troubles of everyday life, with ‘escapes’ as a sauce, rather than letting the culture-pushed goal be to escape by any means, from chemicals to passive entertainment or the obsessions of problem gambling or internet voyeurism. Promote re-creation in its literal meaning. Promote action research on the mass experiments on the mind that are being made globally without our consent and without control groups that can stay immune. The forms of our entertainment can affect our powers of thinking and delight in thinking as seriously as thalidomide and asbestos have affected bodies.

Adolescents especially like intense stimulation, but thinking processes may be affected by repeated insults to the brain through intense distortion and numbing of consciousness, hard-impact physical noise rather than multi-dimensional music; epileptogenic and hallucinatory-style visual experiences; addictions to computer and gambling games that stimulate unreflecting reaction times; and cultural and peer pressure for self-damaging behavior including bingeing. People assume their brains will bounce back from every insult, but impairments can remain. The less you have to start with, the more you can lose. Even moderate cannabis is now found to risk long-term effects on social judgment, motivation and sensitive higher nervous centre functions. Psycho-medical research is needed on the numbing effects on problem-solving and reflective thinking of repeated exposure to unmodulated electronic drumming.

Symptoms of dumbing down include shortening attention spans, preference for sound-bites, uncontrolled acting out, form valued over content, tolerating meaninglessness in entertainment and the arts, gambling beyond resources, identifying with crime, public politics reduced to personal confrontations and trivia. Fight the causal factors that damage public mental health, and that affect us all, as well as the specific factors that are harmful in childrearing and individual experiences.
FORMS OF PLEASURE are learned. They vary in different cultures and times. We might as well learn pleasures and skills for physical, mental, aesthetic and social enjoyment that do not harm ourselves or others and that do not waste the earth. They will usually not be commercially promoted, because they do not make profits.
GENDER AND CIVILISATION. Societies have been most civilised when creative masculine and feminine characteristics are combined and valued in both men and women. Societies have been most brutal when they give priority to pathological extremes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity - male aggression and female helplessness. Women can lose even what we have gained unless we stop on the one hand, the pressure from women’s magazines to trivialise female minds with absorption in gossip, cosmetic appearances, and being sexual bunnies, and on the other hand, permitting misogynist practices in the name of any religion or culture.
EDUCATION IS PRIMARILY OUTSIDE SCHOOLS today. The mass media and advertising seek mass markets by targeting the largest and most gullible sector of the population, at the cost of debasing the rest, who could respond to better. Boycott products when advertisements use irrational over rational persuasion, and interrupt programs at closer than 20 minute intervals. Promote meaningful and innovative features, that extend curiosity into neglected areas such as social improvement. Constantly re-state the function of taxpayer-supported national broadcasting, to encourage thinking and knowledge, innovating and setting standards, doing what commercial channels do not do, and not duplicating what they do do. A three percent rating for Radio National thinking and information programs is a comment on the state of national intelligence and curiosity rather than an argument for extinction of this rare source.
RADIO has essential functions. It can provide information that does not require visuals (a reason why TV news has such a narrow range); give access for community voices; its programs can convey thinking through language. Kindergartens of the Air are as valuable for child development and language as TV Playschools, and could replace the ABC’s cost-cutting adult story-readings, even if only re-runs were affordable.
THE PRESS defeats its own future by dumbing-down to chase declining readerships. It could develop the attractions and utility of reading, including for the young, even in details such as ‘social inventing’ on the puzzle pages, and publishing responses to readers’ questions for information about current affairs. Even obituaries of goodies can give the young knowledge of better role models in wonderful lives, however flawed, to contrast with the criminals and celebrities on page 1. ‘Serious Pursuits’ and quizzes can omit ephemeral celebrity trivia.
SCHOOLS can show dumbing-down trends to be wary about, especially when policy documents sound like Don Watson’s Weasel Words, but miss out on ideas about goodness, beauty, truth or practical life-skills and goals. Money, technology and constant curriculum change are not panaceas. Schools should be where students learn what they cannot learn outside school, to build on what they do know, and not merely reinforce the culture that immerses them. Learners deserve to taste the range of music, art, story and other worlds in time and space, in environments that are beautiful, with teachers unhassled and undistracted. Curricula should respect children’s development and childhood’s need to acquire knowledge bases and schemata, practical skills, and ways to find roots that are familial, local, national and global, with heroes more admirable than the media offer. To discover adult goals and what ‘adult’ should really mean. When bins are filled daily with throwaway ‘activities’, there are message and effects for children’s minds.
LITERACY skills give power to know and to communicate. Reading books can be a major developer of intelligence as well as thirst for knowledge, and thinking as a pleasure. Check out the mental age of children’s books - two years old? If children read only a little, what they read should be worth reading and re-reading. Classrooms even in Year 1 need new and old books for browsing, above as well as below the children’s mental age, to inspire adult goals and act as advance-organisers, such as Arthur Mee’s ‘Children’s Encyclopedia’ (new costly version needed) and Peter Spier’s ‘People’ picture-book (Pan Macmillan, reprinting needed).

I have two dreams to help bring down barriers to literacy. That everyone everywhere has the right to free access to a short internet/DVD/video that gives them a quick overview of the writing system, an advance organizer for beginners and clues for clearing up confusions for failing learners, with graphics made by the very best artistic talent and production. A pilot version is at www.ozreadandspell.com.au.

Secondly, cut out the unnecessary difficulties in English spelling, the great barrier to English literacy world-wide. This is feasible today. (A Spelling-without-Traps version of this paper is posted on the OzIdeas website, http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/dum.htm.)

See also classroom barriers to literacy. Once recognised, these classroom barriers can be removed without cost.

POPULAR READING about social reforms and political policies. Where is it? Make it happen, for teenagers, adult-literacy students, average people, and primary-schoolers. Even written in Spelling ‘without Traps’. More readable citizens’ books for everyone, and how everyone could read them is a field for Ph.Ds in English, Politics, Commerce, Communication and Education.

THESE PAGES may seem to connect too many ideas - but it is not just a shopping list. It still has not mentioned essentials such as child-care to raise up thinkers and doers. We are being conditioned to cope with only one idea at a time. But if readers take away even one thought, that thought is: There can be no real democracy unless all the people are freed to be active citizens - Down with Dumbing-Down!

REFERENCES: Look around you. Enjoy libraries, and bookshops such as the New International Bookshop.

ORGANISATIONS - Work with all the contacts and the activist issues you have.

Use and contribute to e-magazines, and websites such as www.globalideasbank.org and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas, (no www needed) with links to pages such as /concepts.htm.

This document is re-ritn in Spelling without Traps for Readers, for lerners to be able to read more esily.

Read it aloud to see how to see how litl needs to be changed to make reading much easier for beginners.

The ònly decisions needed are whether c or g ar voiced or unvoiced as in circus and garage. In Spelling without Traps for beginning Rìters, èven these decisions ar not needed.
Note that 31 very common irregùlar werds and the werd-ending -ion remain unchànged. Easy for beginners to recognìze only 31, and it keeps print looking litl chànged.

Pèpl who are bisy in comunity muvements to better the wurld and fight injustices can overlook or even denì what is happening that is preventing mòst pèpl joining them. We can see oppressions, sexism, racism, ageism, bigotry, militarism and destruction of the erth. Why do mòst pepl still seem unconcernd? How can reformers reach out to the pèpl unless the pèpl can hear? We cannot hav a fair-go democracy unless all the pèpl can be activ citizens.

Edward Gibbon saw history as the record of the crimes and follies of mankìnd. The Victorians hoped for hùman progress to match thair tecnological prògress. Profets like H G Wells, George Orwell and Jacques Ellul hav wornd that insted, the strìving for gràter intelligence could ròll back, and 'intelligence' èven be seen as elètist, rather than the ability to wurk out what needs to be dun. Arthur C. Clarke in 'I remember Babylon' not ònly fortòld satellites, but also how glòbal comùnicàtion could be ùsed to contròl and stùpefì the masses. Political and comercial interests benefit from mass cultùre that keeps pèpl ignorant, apathetic, helpless consùmers, and prevents connected thinking, organized knoledge and còoperativ action to stop injustices.

'Dumming down' is 'whatever makes pepl less àbl to think, speak and act in thair long-term interests.' However thay may whinge, thay may be unàbl to consider solùtions exept mor government mony.

Pèpl behave mor stupidly than thair potential when thay act against thair own interests, in every airèa of life - vote against thair òn interests; take up self-destructiv habits and behàvior, inclùding gullibl greed, gambling, det, and sùperstitions new and òld. Obsurv how consùmers are manipùlated; 'blòwing one's brains' as a term of apprùval; disorderd consiusness deliberatly indùced; sòcial problems increasing rather than redùcing, with costly efforts to remèdiàte, rather than prevent.

Dramatic indicàtors of life-stile chànges inclùde what has happend to wimen's magazènes, the shortend concentration spans in television entertainment, the limited English of meny teenagers, and declines in Ùniversity standards. Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom describes real lives, even tho he blames intellectuals for the mind-sets that imprison them. Political and commercial advertìsing sucsessfully and now òpenly aims at emòtions not reason. Reserch fìnds that we are all affected, èven if we feel immuùne. Frogs in fact jump out of wauter without waiting to be boild; it is hùmans who accustom themselvs to destructiv cultùres, as history shòws.

Much of our cultùre is harmless when it is balanced and moderat - but not when it is exessiv and prevents independent thinking and activ living. The gràtest energy crìsis today is a crìsis of hùman energy to fàce and deal with the crìses that fàce us. But mental energy is draind bì poor helth habits or divurted from what needs to be dun - into, for exampl, cults of sùperstitions, obsessions for cosmetic bùty, and sporting lìves dedicàted to mùving fast up and down.

2. WHAT ACTION IS POSSIBL? A cultùre cannot be legislàted. But cultùre chànges always begin somwhere and every individùal can do somthing. We can think outside our òn boxes. We can connect ìdèas. Much action needed is obvius.

Everyone can resist duming-down attitùdes and behavior, and encurage alturnativs - as individùals and as members of grùps - as artists, riters, jurnalists, teachers, pairents, innovàtors, ùnionists, bisness operaàtors, activists, pòets, thinkers and dùers. Be alurt to what is happening and promote all alturnativs.

COUNTER DESTRUCTIV MITHS with better concepts, knoledge, ìdèas, living exampls, scools, films, songs, the press, and books on current affairs that everyone can read.

Pepl are being encuraged to believ that it is hùman natùre to want the wurst, to be motivàted mainly bì greed or fear, that thay cannot control themselvs, that thay are helpless, it is no ùse trìing to du anything, that pepl in public life are all vènal, that the wurld can ònly get wurse, that 'the good life' is to consùme and relax, that knoledge dus not matter because 'u can always look it up'; that the frontiers of artistic dairing are sexual rather than mor curageusly revealing what is not being tòld about what is gòing on in the wurld. Everyone needs to kno about history, other cultùres and other pepl, and thair òn potential for fulfilment as citizens.

Alternativ experiences can include mor non-TV rèality to contrast with TV 'rèality', and interlùdes of mor meaningful and gentl entertainment in current-cultùre shòs and festivals. The miths of 'no happy families' and 'chìld-rearing is awful' can be counterd bì real-life shairing and television demonstràtions mor than bì grùp-tauks.
PRECIUS BRAINS. Everyone needs to kno that thair precious brains are thair greatest resource, and the mòst important part of helth. Thay need to know thay can make the mòst of bèing alive bì bèing fully consius, rather than seeking escape. We can get our thrills from challenging the frustràtions and trubls of everyday life, with 'escapes' as a sauce, rather than letting the cultùre-pushd goal be to escape bì eny means, from cemicals to passiv entertainment or the obsessions of problem gambling or internet voyerism. Promote re-crèation in its literal meaning. Promote action reserch on the mass experiments on the mìnd that are bèing made glòbally without our consent and without contròl grùps that can stay immùne. Forms of entertainment can affect our powers of thinking and delight in thinking as seriusly as thalidomide and asbestos hav affected bodies.

Adolesents especially like intense stimùlàtion, but thinking pròcesses may be affected bì repeated insults to the brain thru intense distortion and numing of consiusness, hard-impact fisical noiz rather than multi-dimensional mùsic; epileptogenic and hallucinatory-stile visùal expèriences;addictions to compùter and gambling games that stimùlate unreflecting reaction times; and cultùral and peer pressùre for self-damaging behàvior inclùding bingeing. Pepl assume that thair brains will bounce back from every insult, but impairments can remain. The less u hav to start with, the mor u can looz. Èven moderat cannabis is now found to risk long-term effects on sòcial judgment, motivàtion and sensitiv higher nervus center functions.

Psìco-medical reserch is needed on the numing effects on problem-solving and reflectiv thinking of repeated expòsùre to unmodùlàted electronic drumming.

Simptoms of duming down inclùde shortening attention spans, preference for sound-bites, uncontròlled acting out, form valùed ùver content, toleràting meaningless inputs in entertainment and the arts, ìdentifìing with crime, public politics redùced to personal confrontations and trivia. Fight the causal factors that damage public mental helth, and that affect us all, as well as the specific factors that are harmful in chìldrearing and individùal expèriences.
FORMS OF PLESURE are learnd. Thay vairy in different cultùres and times. We might as well lern plesures and skills for fisical, mental, esthetic and social enjoyment that du not harm ourselvs or others and that du not wàst the erth. Thay will ùsùally not be commurcially promòted, because thay du not make profits.
GENDER AND CIVILISÀTION. Socìeties hav been most civilised when crèàtiv mascùlin and feminin caracteristics are combined and valùed in bòth men and wimen. Socìeties hav been mòst brùtal when thay giv prìority to pathological extremes of 'masculinity' and 'femininity - male aggression and female helplessness. Wimen can looz èven what we hav gaind unless we stop on the one hand, the pressùre from wimen's magazènes to trivialise female mìnds with absorption in gossip, cosmetic appearances, and bèing sexùal bunnies, and on the other hand, permitting misoginist practices in the name of eny religion or cultùre.
EDUCÀTION IS PRÌMARILY OUTSIDE SCOOLS today. The mass mèdia and advertìsing seek mass markets bì targeting the largest and most gullibl sector of the popùlàtion, at the cost of debàsing the rest, who could respond to better. Boycott products when advertisments ùse irrational òver rational persuàsion, and interrupt prògrams at clòser than 20 minut intervals. Promote meaningful and innovativ fetùres, that extend cùriosity into neglected airèas such as sòcial imprùvement. Constantly re-state the function of taxpayer-supported national braudcasting, to encurage thinking and knoledge, innovàting and setting standards, dùing what commurcial channels du not du, and not repeating what thay du. A three percent ràting for Ràdio National thinking and information prògrams is a comment on the state of national intelligence and cùriosity rather than an argùment for extinction of this rair sorce.
RADIO has essential functions. It can provide informàtion that dus not require visùals (a reason why TV news has such a narro rànge); giv acsess for community voices; its programs can convay thinking thru language. Kindergartens of the Air are as valùabl for chìld development and language as TV Playscools, and could replace the ABC's cost-cutting adult story-readings, èven if ònly re-runs wer affordabl.
THE PRESS defeats its own fùtùre bì duming-down to chase declìning readerships. It could develop the attractions and ùtility of reading, inclùding for the yung, èven in details such as 'social inventing' on the puzzl pages, and publishing responses to readers' questions for information about current affairs. Èven obituaries of goodies can giv the yung knoledge of better role models in wonderful lìves, however flawd, to contrast with the criminals and celebs on page 1. 'Serius Pursùts' and qizzes can omit efemeral celebrity trivia.
SCOOLS can sho duming-down trends to be wairy about, especially when policy docùments sound like Don Watson's Weasel Words, but miss out on ìdeas about goodness, bùty, trùth or practical life-skills and goals. Mony, tecnology and constant curricùlum chànge are not panacèas. Scools should be where stùdents lern what thay cannot lern outside scool, to bild on what thay du kno, and not merely rèinforce the cultùre that immurses them. Lerners desurv to tàste the rànge of mùsic, art, story and other wurlds in time and space, in envìronments that are bùtiful, with teachers unhassld and undistracted. Curricùla should respect children's development and childhood's need to acquire knoledge bàses and scemata, practical skills, and ways to find roots that are familial, lòcal, national and glòbal, with heroes mor admirabl than the mèdia offer. To discover adult goals and what 'adult' should really mean. When bins are filld daily with throwaway 'activities', what message and effects there are for children's mìnds.
LITERACY skills giv power to kno and to communicate; Reading books can be a màor developer of intelligence as well as thirst for knoledge, and thinking as a plesure. Check out the mental age of children's books - tuw years old? If children read ònly a littl, what thay read should be wurth reading and re-reading. Classrooms even in Year 1 need new and òld books for browsing, above as well as belò the children's mental age, to inspire adult goals and act as advance-organìsers, - such as Arthur Mee's 'Children's Encyclopedia' (new costly version needed) and Peter Spier's 'People' pictùre-book (Pan Macmillan, reprinting needed).

I hav 2 dreams to help bring down barriers to literacy. That everyone everywhere has the right to free acsess to a short internet/DVD/video that givs them a quick overvew of the rìting sistem, an advance organìzer for beginners and clues for clearing up confùsions for failing lerners, with grafics made bì the very best artistic talent and production. Secondly, cut out the unnecessary difficulties in English spelling, the gràt barrier to English literacy wurld-wide. This is feasibl today. See also 'Classroom barriers to literacy'

POPÙLAR READING about sòcial reforms and political policies. Where is it? Make it happen, for teenagers, adult-literacy stùdents, average pepl, and primary-scoolers. Èven ritten in Spelling 'without Traps'. Books for Everyone, and how Everyone could read them is a field for Ph.Ds in English, Politics, Commerce, Commùnication and Edùcàtion.

THESE SHORT PAGES may seem to connect too meny ìdèas - but it thay ar mor than a shopping list, and still hav not mentiond essentials such as chìd-cair to raise the next generation as thinkers and dùers. We are being conditiond to cope with ònly one ìdea at a time. But if readers take away èven one thaut, that thaut is: There can be no real democracy unless all the pepl are freed to be activ citizens - Down with Duming-Down!

REFERENCES: Look around u. Enjoy bookshops and lìbraries.

ORGANÌZÀTIONS - Wurk with all the contacts and the activist issùes u hav. Ùse and contribùte to websites such as www.melbourne.indymedia.org, www.globalideasbank.org and http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas (not www) with links to pages such as /concepts.htm

See also:

Spelling

and the Rules of English spelling on one page

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