I See Smart People

For those of you who don't get out much, this title is a taken from a line in the movie "The Sixth Sense". In this movie, the young character played by Haley Joel Osment is being counseled because he says that he sees dead people. (I don't think that I will be giving away the ending if I tell you that he does.) 

While I am not quite that delusional, I have begun to think that I seeing people who aren't really there ... Smart People. I know, I know, how can this be? After all, I live in Toledo, Ohio. I work in an industry that is dying faster than Ali McGraw in "Love Story". I have so little outside social interaction that cloistered monks are beginning to feel sorry for me.  Nevertheless, I am beginning to see smart people out there and I am not sure if it frightens me or not.  

Don't get me wrong, there are not a lot of them out there yet (and none currently in government that I have discovered), but the numbers seem to be on the rise. Try as I might, I cannot account for this gradual increase in people whose relative intelligence exceeds their shoe size. I don't think that it's genetics. Quite frankly the world is such a sheltered place these days that the stupid are no longer killed off in process of natural selection. Quite the contrary, we often seem to be mired in the shallow end of the gene pool, doomed to have stupid people take over the planet. 

No, as the late Arthur C Clarke said, "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." I certainly don't think it's the education system. While I believe that teachers make an honest effort to educate the youth of America, I also believe that they are forced to spend much more of their time enforcing government guidelines, filling out government paperwork, and attempting to instill a sense of responsibility and discipline in a group of hooligans whose parents failed to do so. No, there is no time for them to attempt to make their charges any smarter. TV and the Movies certainly aren't contributing anything to the process. 

I know that there have always been a number of bad or just dumb movies in the past, but the medium has changed drastically in recent years. With all of the cable channels out there looking for anything to put on, movies or TV projects that would have gone into the scrap heap are now ending up on the air or released directly as DVDs. Network TV certainly does nothing to help, as most of its characters (especially the male ones) are people that should not be let out of doors without a leash and a keeper. 

As I have stated on more than one occasion, I can find no other reason for the successful careers of Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Wil Farrell. Government is certainly not putting intelligence at a premium either as a hiring requirement or as a member of the voting populace. We no longer ask for great leadership, great intelligence, or even great oratory to place a candidate in office. Once there, we likewise no longer expect promises to be kept or responsibility shown. 

No, I fear it is "bread and circuses" for as long as they can make it so. (For those of you as dumb as me, this refers to the Roman emperor's supplying food and entertainment to the governed in order to keep them distracted from the freedoms that they were losing and the sorry state that the empire was in. Then, like now, it appears to have mostly worked.) 

Why then, are these anomalies of intelligence beginning to become apparent. Perhaps the Internet is finally reaping a first harvest from all of the seeds planted. Maybe the increased access to all of the available facts and the divergent opinions about how to interpret them is having an effect. Perhaps the ability of like-minded individuals (even ones that I disagree with) to find each other and discuss issues is having an impact on raising the overall level of discussion. 

Perhaps the sheeple (as some of my esteemed colleagues choose to call them) are beginning to raise their heads from the trough long enough to look around them. As I said at the beginning of this piece; there are not a lot of them yet, but the numbers are growing (even in Toledo). With that growing number comes my fear, that a critical mass will be eventually reached and the world will be profoundly and forever changed. With that fear however comes a hope, that we will know what to do with such an unprecedented opportunity.