In my lifetime I have had 3 "careers" and at least 24 jobs, ranging from janitor, cook and bottlewasher (literally) to Executive Officer and Assistant Attorney General. I consider myself intellectual, as I like to think about all kinds of things, including what I think and do, but, notwithstanding some posts to the contrary, not arrogant. But... I have noticed, even in myself, a creeping pattern of discourse that is both crude and dismissive. It's not just here on this forum, it is in our newspapers and magazines, on our televisions, and in our daily lives. Conversations are boiled down to "tweets" and text messages (email is so passe), or, if particularly loquacious, a brief exchange while waiting for our lattes at Starbucks. People don't interact with each other as fully as they did even a few decades ago. They get their information and form beliefs from headlines, not the articles.
I've noticed it particularly on weighty topics like climate change, global economics or the Mueller report. In lieu of in-depth study or reading, we post and respond with pithy points based upon cursory knowledge or beliefs. Again, it is not just on discussion forums like this. It seems to be everywhere. We have become a nation of simpletons. Complex thoughts and understanding are becoming rarer and rarer. Part of it is the deteriorization (that's deliberate, not a typo) of our education system, and the divisions between the haves and have nots - but it infests every strata of society. The apotheosis, in my view, is Donald Trump in the White House, the apex simpleton, and a cabinet full of singularly unqualified appointees. But again, it is not a political thing. We, as a society, have attention deficit in the worst way. We can't hold onto a line of thought to the end of a sentence, much less a paragraph, and even less a 448 page report. Our understanding of a topic has to be reduced to a bumper sticker, 288 characters, or a single double-spaced page with bullet points. In that environment bad actors get away with murder, and much worse.
I haven't determined whether our political divide is a symptom of this or merely an accelerant of the trend. Our beliefs are becoming binary: With me, agin' me; fascist or socialist; crackpot or nutjob. But there are big, complicated issues that we have to address both individually and as a nation - security (social, national and personal), environmental degradation, national and international economics, social justice - and soon we are going to be faced with even more, like a worldwide water shortage, dwindling fuel supplies, loss of natural resources and population growth. These are issues that are not amenable to bumper-sticker sized solutions or pithy programs. We need to emerge from our simpleton stupor, but the question is, how?
