One of the questions that I can no longer ask a potential associate is......"What is 42-17?" It would blow your mind to see how many college grad-u-idiots can't come up with the answer!! Many couldn't do it even with a pen and paper.
We should be scared...........very scared!
You're right, xseler. We should be scared.
Not long ago one of our local television stations showed a screen inviting people to apply for the position of staff meteorologist. But they spelled it 'meteoroligist'.
I said, "Huh! They spelled that wrong". There were about a half dozen people in the room. It happened to be silent at that moment. They heard me. They looked at me and they looked at the screen.
They made no comment. Their faces were blank.
They didn't know who was right about that and who was wrong.
They also didn't care. Yes, it's a small matter that wouldn't seem to merit much concern. But it's indicative of something that has troubled me for some time; the people around me have little to no curiosity-for-it's-own-sake.
Isn't curiosity one of the defining characteristics of human beings? One of our most striking characteristics? Some animals also have an obvious sense of curiosity. Yet the curiosity of no other species has left such an astounding mark on the world as ours has. Yet the people around me (others, probably, as well) have no use for it whatsoever.
It's true that they are interested, to one degree or another, to learn about matters pertaining to their particular occupation. And a lot of them are interested in learning a great deal about the NFL or the NBA. A lot of people are quite interested in the fictional world in our television sets. But suggest that they amuse themselves with mathematics and they'll look at you as though you've come from Mars.
Ask someone you know a question like, "What's the difference between malevolent and malignant?" Your friends and family will usually try, at least, to explore the question with you. They'll do it out of loyalty to you. Not many of them will really get far, though.
Ask this question of a mere acquaintance and you're overwhelmingly likely to get, "I don't know" as the answer. Some of them will be indifferent about it. Others will be annoyed. They'll suspect that you have some ulterior motive for asking such a strange thing. Perhaps they instinctively fear that they'll be pinned down by the Socratic Method. It can't be conscious, though, because they don't know what the Socratic Method is.
Folks like Aristotle and the aristocracy of the middle ages felt that commoners were simply naturally lacking in curiosity, intellect and so on. They believed them to be more akin to animals than to themselves. But they were overlooking something important; these people had no access to esoteric information or musings. Mere subsistence, in fact, took so much of their effort that they'd have had no surplus time or energy to spend pondering the elemental nature of creation or other non-bread-and-butter issues.
But the modern age is different. Even those of us who are worked pretty hard and paid pretty little have access to, literally, far more information than we can possibly handle in a lifetime. Plus we have a bit of leisure to pursue it.
How many people do we know who go to Wikipedia and type, let's say, 'bolshevik revolution' or 'Themistocles' into the search box? I strongly doubt that I know a single person who does that. Perhaps a few of my more distant acquaintances. Yet what they could read there is far more interesting and enlightening than the garbage they swallow watching CSI:Miami. I know plenty of people who do that.
But before I get too worked up I ought to step back and remember that my perceptions might be based on incomplete information. I can easily see, for instance, that there are folks right here on this forum who go to places like motorbicycling.com or youtube to learn about motorizing a bicycle. This would certainly seem to be more akin to that curiosity whose lack I've been bewailing than it is to the anesthesia of the soul produced by too much television.
Perhaps those folks around me, who I perceive to be half-zombies, actually are exercising and stretching their brain muscles in ways that I'm simply not perceiving?
I sure do hope so. I wish I could see more evidence of it.
Could it be that the natural, average, level of curiosity in humanity is somewhat less than I believe it
should be?
Or could it be that something in our culture is suppressing and suffocating what would otherwise be a healthy level of curiosity?
If the answer to that question is "Yes", then we'd be well advised to start investigating in order that we might find and eradicate this suffocating influence.
But that's sure to be a big, big job.
