The human population has been getting less intelligent for a while now. I had not fully realized it until Donald Trump was elected. Since the advent of the internet, this reality has gradually become more clear to me. In fact, several years ago I hypothesized that, though the internet had the potential to make everyone a professor, it had the more likely potential of spreading stupidity like the plague.
Attack of the meme
Everyone loves internet memes. They can make you laugh. Usually, they don’t. But many, many people share them anyways. Some people share nothing but memes.
Some groups won’t allow any other posts, within their venue, but memes.
Folks if you are spreading internet memes, unless you’re the one making them, you’re just being intellectually lazy and Attention Deficit. Those creating the memes(admission: I’ve created a few) are not much brighter. Since memes tend to foster intellectual laziness and subsequently, stupidity if you’re spitting them out as if by conveyor then you may just be of the dumbest in the bunch.
Predator vs prey vs machine
Memes are but a very basic example of a serious symptom. Within the process of evolution, animals and plants are subjected to environmental stressors. A primary example of this is the predator/prey relationship.
Evolutionarily speaking, both species depend on one another. The relationship is symbiotic.
For the prey, the unending need to be hyper-vigilant, see farther, run faster, jump higher, etc., drives that species’ evolution. In the same sense, the predator, usually an obligatory carnivore, has an unending need to feed. As the prey evolves to run faster and/or see farther, so too must the predator in this timeless dance.
Human beings may or may not be at the top of the food chain. It’s been debated. But, the fact still remains, that we have created a world, for ourselves, practically void of evolutionary stressors. Technology, for those that create it, is an evolutionary stressor, but for the vast majority who merely use it, it’s practically the opposite.We have garbage disposals, automated coffee machines, drink machines, cars, planes etc..
All the things we have created to make life better for us are likely to be what causes our species to fade away.
Mankind’s evolutionary decline
Set aside for a second that our species has helped to foster the greatest environmental stressor of all time and for all species, but also the clearest example of collective human stupidity; climate change. By the time it kills us, our species may just be too stupid to know or care that they’re dying. Evidence of evolving stupidity can be witnessed everywhere within our species. Memes are but one example.
In my 47 years, I have witnessed stupidity growing in several areas of human ingenuity. “Pop” (popular) Music is a great rule with which to measure intellectual expression or lack thereof.
If I need to tell you how it has degraded, you’re probably one of those that are degrading with it.
Screaming chimpanzees and ancient aliens
The content of popular music has declined dramatically in the last several decades; to something akin to chimpanzees screaming and banging on things. Another area in which, at least in America, the withering intellect of our population has become clear, is television.
With content chosen by popular opinion in the form of “ratings”, very little on television is intellectually stimulating anymore. Some channels that used to be intellectually stimulating, like the History Channel have been producing material that is based on science fiction, such as “Ancient Aliens”.
What television apparently appeals to now is the primal self, the lizard brain, if you will.
With the advent of social media and the attention deficit nature of the video clip and the internet meme absorbed via hand-held devices and earphones, the situation has evolved for the worse. A crucial part of our species’ existence is falling to the way side, human contact. Bear in mind, for social species, physical contact is crucial for the forming of the brain.
In summary, despite all of our technology, we are collectively becoming less intelligent, attention deficit, and lazy.The means with which to find facts and information is still available, but human beings are becoming collectively and intellectually lazy.
Because, why make dinner when it’s easier and rewarding to drive over and pick up a cheaply made, sodium filled, fat laced, assembly line burger and fries? Why watch scientific programming, when it’s much more satisfying to just watch, “Jackass”?
