Collective Evolution

Was Carl Sagan Right About The Dumbing Down of America?
I was recently reminded of a Carl Sagan quote that tells our current times. The quote comes from Sagan’s final book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark written in 1995.

It goes like this:

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

There are certainly some obvious truths to this observation that we see today, some of his predictions are almost creepily accurate.

One aspect of our culture he touches on is sensemaking. Right now critical thinking is a problem all over the place. On every side of the political spectrum, in the mainstream, and in the alternative. The fast pace of modern life mixed with the incredible access to information has pulled us into a space where we are often dysregulated from stress and yet still trying to make sense of complex ideas within minutes.

Are we listening to more subtle ways of knowing?

I believe the quality of our attention, both internally and externally is declining. In my understanding, this can change the structure of our brain via changes in neural connections, including ways in which stress can change our brain. As this happens, we limit our ability to perceive reality more holistically. In some cases, more primitive areas of our brain begin to run the show, easily misguiding us as protection and emotion drive our sensemaking. Mixed in with that, our sensemaking can become entirely cognitive.

If don’t cultivate our sense of self-awareness along the way, we can cut ourselves off from being able to observe how our sensemaking and behaviour have become limited.