Switched Keys

This month's Mensa newsletter includes an article by Mark Morford SF Gate Columnist where he writes about AMERICAN KIDS DUMBER THAN DIRT? with the subtitle Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history.

I've suspected a dumbing down in society for many years but in the last five years or so I've become fully persuaded that much of society is either corrupt incompetent or just plain lazy. I see it at the UT Health Center at Tyler where I've worked for a decade now and at other institutions of higher learning. In education from K though MBA the focus is on generating revenue and securing the institution not educating.

Degrees are not so much a reflection of what you've mastered as they are of what you've paid for. Business and administrative policy at many levels is more philosophical than professional. Many of the practices I see in business now don't just ignore the basic principles in their field they contradict them. People rely on the power of persuasion that they developed as a teenager and don't even see the importance of what is right or wrong smart or not.

Our economy is driven by finance and salesmanship. As a society we are living on borrowed and stolen money. Other than some key industrial companies very few businesses exist to actually produce anything but sales. The producers are living in countries like China and Indonesia. Our nation is driven by a "perception" of wealth that doesn't exist either in the stock market banking politics or salesmanship. We don't know how poor we are.

The new generation of idiocy is a little bit of a shock but outside of some catastrophic awakening it's inevitable. Contrary to principles of evolution we aren't evolving. Instead physical spiritual and mental atrophy is taking over leading to our degradation. We are so distracted that we can't focus on anything. The current cell phone craze is actually contributing to our inability to communicate effectively and we think we are so smart.

There are theological reasons for this. When Adam sinned he was promised death and 4000 years later the scripture still promises that the wages of sin would be death. It's not just that we will eventually die but we will live or die spiritually based on our response to God's law. Nor does it stop with the spiritual. It continues with our mental capacities. The world is filling up with people that are brain-dead and it is even God's intention to give them over to a depraved mind.

It's a principle that pervades all of life. Individuals companies and governments live and die based on how they approach truth physically spiritually and mentally. We can't pick and choose what type of truth we want to embrace. Anything but full truth is a deception. The only thing that may help us out of this quicksand may be that catastrophic awakening.