The notion that humans are growing increasingly dumb has been
around for millennia. Socrates, in his Unapologia, noted
how his fellow Athenians didn’t know their “arse from an urn.” And
Desiderius Erasmus was equally appalled by the ignorance of
his Dutch neighbors. Not only were they all going to hell, he said,
but they would probably get lost along the way.
I’ve been saying the same thing to my lovely wife for
years, but she has always dismissed my thoughts as more examples of
my celebrated misanthropy. Now I can wave a new study in her face
and say, “Ha!”
That is, I can once I figure out how to download the pdf.
And, apparently, you have to be some kind of Einstein to print the
damn thing.
The news might seem like a no-brainer, but some folks are
skeptical. “How do researchers really know we’re getting dumber?”
they stupidly ask. According to
this article in Discover, over the past
20,000 years human males have lost a chunk of brain roughly the
size of a tennis ball. (I would have thought a golf ball, since
that’s the sort of thing we tend to lose most often, but I
digress.) This will not be news to women, who have been saying the
same thing for roughly 40,000 years. But before you gals get all
smug, the same research says women have lost about the same size
chunk o’ brain. And with each passing millennium, that tennis ball
is starting to look more and more like a tennis racket.
It makes sense. Anecdotal evidence of our incredible
shrinking brains is all around us.
SIGNS THAT WE ARE GETTING DUMBER:
• The Dallas man who recently tried to cash a forged check
for 360 BILLION DOLLARS.
• Last year’s public school test scores.
• This year’s public school test scores.
• Warning labels on containers of rat poison: “Harmful if
swallowed.”
• The fact that we are even talking about Jersey Shore’s
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi.
• The fact that we allow Oprah to choose the books we
read.
• Computer scientists create breakthrough technology and
we use it to keep tabs on the Kardashians.
WE USED TO THINK evolution was making us smarter. Mother
Nature was supposed to thin the herd of dummies, or, more
accurately, the dummies would take care of themselves, usually
while engaged in some dubious activity that involved a bungee cord.
You remember all those 1960s sci-fi films where the people of the
future had these ginormous brains that made their heads look like
environmentally unfriendly incandescent light bulbs? (Speaking of
dumb, didn’t the filmmakers realize that you’d need thicker,
weightlifter necks to support those massive brains?) Anyway, the
idea was that we’d evolve bigger brains, much like we’ve evolved
bigger butts and thighs.
Instead, our brains have been shrinking
since the Stone Age.
But just because we’ll all be pinheads in a
couple thousand years, doesn’t mean all hope is lost.
Or maybe it does.
Researchers aren’t sure what these findings mean.
(Apparently, evolution is affecting their thinking too.) But some
think that maybe the brain isn’t necessarily losing braininess,
it’s just becoming leaner and meaner, like one of those Fortune 500
companies after they have laid off all the liberal arts majors.
Only, in this case, the laid-off liberal arts majors are the chunks
of the brain that were just kind of sitting up there in the cranium
and taking up space (sort of like the liberal arts
majors).
Liberal arts majors, however, eventually go to law school
and become trial lawyers, while those large chunks of our brain
just atrophy, which is a waste, though not as much of a waste as
becoming a trial lawyer.
These researchers believe our big-brained ancestors of the
Upper Paleolithic era must have been a lot smarter than we are now
(and judging from the on-going health care debate, I would agree.)
So what were those ancient brainiacs doing? Apparently, they were
living in France and painting on the walls of their homes. And if I
know French caveman artistes, they certainly thought they were
smarter than us anyway.
I used to think that we were getting dumber because the
smart people were not passing on their genes. Now we know that that
no longer matters, because we’re doomed regardless. For some reason
I find this thought strangely comforting, but it’s probably because
I’m too dumb to know any better.
