Humanity’s most useful tool is its ability to acquire knowledge.
Few species are capable of being introduced to something that evolution had not prepared them for, being able to understand that unfamiliar stimulus, and then configure it into something innovative.
Cattle know how to eat grass, because evolution has ingrained it into them as an instinct.
Birds know how to fly, because evolution has ingrained it into them as an instinct.
But right now, you, a human being, are able to decipher these seemingly arbitrary symbols, comprehend them, and even formulate a response to them - not because evolution prepared you for such tasks, but because you learned how to do it from scratch.
Evolution has, at most, placed “curiosity” as an instinct within the human mind, as well as the urge for exploration and discovery - everything else, however, we achieved on our own. Evolution has never instructed us to specifically know things such as reading English or how to drive a car - we were able to learn those things on our own, with very little aid from nature’s instinctive knowledge.
Not only are we able to learn as individuals, but the knowledge we do learn is capable of being shared with other people so it may benefit them as well.
Perhaps most importantly, human knowledge is able to build off of itself over generations - it accumulates collectively and is passed on, so that knowledge from one generation does not go to waste when that generation passes away. This is perhaps humanity’s greatest gift besides life itself. With it, we are able to change the fate of our own species outside of what nature imposes on us - we are able to improve our world, and advance our human society. We can escape nature’s function of organisms becoming forgotten after death, which is a function that all other species of the animal kingdom are bound within.
If there is a direction humanity is headed in and working towards, we could certainly say it is a direction towards knowledge and understanding.
Education in America
The foreign image of America is something like a nation populated by gluttonous imbeciles and pompous idiots. Although I do not know the accuracy of that myself (I live in Northern Minnesota USA, and have only been familiar with a small fraction of what people are like in America as a whole), as it might not be much better in other countries. However, I do not deny the foreign perception as probably being accurate. Based on my own experiences in this country, I’m pretty confident in assuming that the foreign image of America is completely true. So, as a warning, I have written the next few paragraphs with the assumption that my scope of reality is accurate, although it might not be.
That being said, a primitive sluggish imbecile is the epitome of American Culture.
The Zeitgeist of America is so pathetically and ridiculously dumb, that people, who would otherwise be intelligent, are actually made dumber simply by being here and living amongst idiots. Yes, its contagious, especially in rural towns - where expressing intelligence is such a risky social proposition, that people actively try to make themselves stupid for fear of social rejection. Simply feigning stupidity isn’t enough, they judge it as being more energy efficient to just transition themselves to a state of total stupidity instead of being burdened with having to constantly act stupid. In some cases, the act of saying something intelligent can be just as taboo as shouting out loads of profanity. The lack of intelligence in rural communities is presumably due to social connections being confined to such a small amount of people - the lack of any exposure to other cultures causes what little culture that does exist to begin decomposing and degenerate into something like a bunch of apish mongoloids grunting and howling and throwing feces at each other.
I truly feel sorry for some of the people in rural areas who would have otherwise been intelligent; just from the way that they talk and act, you can tell that they could have turned out to be a somewhat intelligent person if they were born someplace normal - its like observing some sort of Tarzan-kid who was raised by primates in the jungle; for a second, the kid has this faint glow in his eye, a sort of drawn out and dissociated look in his face, indicating that, for a few moments, the bizarre and perplexing thought had crossed his mind “I feel like maybe I don’t belong here, like maybe I’m different than these dudes. I wonder if there is maybe something more out there in the world, something greater than spending all day grunting and throwing around my own feces… Oh well, its best not to think too deeply about these things.” shortly before returning to all of his mongoloid brethren to continue throwing feces at each other, never to become aware of the life that he missed out on. Yeah, its something like that.
In Urban areas, it can also get bad, but I think there it is mostly due to the fact that education isn’t a priority, and trying to make ends meet is rightfully more important. For people in urban areas, tolerance of individualism is a social luxury that can’t be mentally afforded - asserting oneself to get what is needed and survive in life is what matters. When I say “survive”, I don’t mean to make it sound like living in the city is some dangerous life or death struggle, but the common perspective there is simply on a different tier than that of a suburban perspective - the urban perspective is more in touch with and aware of the lingering truth of mortality; contact with such a wide variety of people shows them the best and worst that humanity has to offer, and the Zeitgeist reflects a higher sense of awareness with the grim and gruesome nature of humanity. The need for money is a given priority above morality, honor, respect, and virtue
With suburban areas, well, not trying to say that people in suburban areas are more intelligent… but, on average… well… people in suburban areas end up being more intelligent. The mix of social classes provides individuals with enough social exposure to get a good grasp of what the world around them is like, while not stunting the growth of intelligence - it aligns their perspective with reality, whilst keeping the awareness of mortality at a distance. This is opposed to the much more subjective perspectives of rural areas, where virtues and ideals are held through popularity and not through logic.
If we are going to point the finger and blame something for America’s stupidity, it seems logical that it should be the education system. When looking at most other countries, we can see that their education standards are much higher, and children attend school longer as well. As a result, the people there are noticeably more intelligent and in tune with reality.
There is the stereotype of a “European Thinker” is an individual who is intellectual, philosophical, and concerned with the higher ethics - I don’t know the truth of this, haven’t been to Europe, but considering all the innovations we owe Europe, I think the stereotyped “European Thinker” is true to an extent. Most of Europe has a very high standard of education, and kids in American schools are two or three years behind the level of a same-aged kid in a European school.
There is the stereotyped “Smart Asian”, who crunches numbers, memorizes uselessly huge amounts of information, and is good with technology. I’ve never been to Asia either, but I’ve met people from there who fit the stereotype well. I mean no offense to Asians at all by mentioning the stereotype, its complimentary more than anything. If I’m not mistaken, some schools in Asia have highest and strictest educational standards in the world, and students literally fear doing poor in academics.
We look around the world, and the correlation seems apparent that education received is directly proportional to the average intelligence of those receiving it; so why is America slacking? I’m going to talk more about the politics of education later in this post, as the politics are likely to be behind it.
What is going to happen to America if we keep getting progressively dumber? Maybe nothing will happen, maybe it will balance itself out - or maybe some event will happen and the Zeitgeist will make some sort of significant “turn”, the rebound of the pendulum, and people will start becoming more intelligent again. Or maybe we will experience total economic and societal collapse, an entire nation of lost idiots who don’t know how to keep themselves alive - total mayhem and anarchy, mob law, and the absence of all reason in morality.
Education in Politics:
Politicians are burdened with the task of assisting and improving the economy, the legal system, commonwealth, foreign affairs, and indeed all aspects of society.
Education, however, is the only aspect of society that, when improved, will also improve all other aspects of society, and make society more efficient overall. The more educated and intelligent society’s people are, the more smoothly society will operate. Education is the oil that lubricates the gears of civilization.
When educated, the population is more capable of understanding and connecting with the concerns and propositions given by politicians. A sort of relationship, a unity, is forged between an intelligent population and its government. As a result of education, the people understand the importance of working together - that society needs cooperation to sustain itself. With all members of society having this shared perspective, the society is able to work towards common goals that were otherwise unreachable.
An educated population is better at solving problems in society, and can even avoid those problems altogether. The more educated a person is, the more likely they are to be an employed, tax-paying, law-abiding citizen. Poverty, unemployment, health problems, crime - all of these problems can be resolved with education.
It would seem obvious then, that education should be the top priority of any government. Why isn’t it? Our government exhausts itself on attempting to fix problems such as crime, poverty, unemployment, war, and economic recession, but any attempted solution will only temporarily hide the problem without fixing the source of the problem. The question we are posed with is not “What is the source of the problems?”, the question is “Why aren’t we trying to fix it?” since it is without a doubt that the source of the problem is a deficit in education.
Improving education may not show immediate results, but the rate at which they arrive will increase exponentially. From a purely mathematical standpoint, the resources spent for improving education will ultimately yield a result that is many times greater than what it would have been if that same amount of resources had been spent anywhere else. The fact may seem questionable that improved education will produce increased results at an exponential rate, but this is because we think of improving education as a purely moral concern with no impact on anything else - politicians think of improving educations as being a dead-end investment that could serve no purpose to them - but the effect of improving education isn’t so much what is being improved, as much as it is increasing the rate of improvement itself.
Yes, improving education will also increase the rate at which other things improve. Medical health problems would diminish since educated people will avoid the cause of those health problems (obesity, lack of exercise, unsafe sex, etc) and higher education will also lead to more improvements in the field of medicine. Crime would diminish since educated people will be less likely to resort to crime - crime is also the result of poverty, which would be diminished since educated individuals are more likely to find employment. The economy would improve since there would be less unemployment and educated people are better able to manage debt (which is a source of our current economic recession) as well as finances in general.
Some might also think “education only leads to higher employment rates for individuals because so much of the population is uneducated - therefore, if everyone were educated, it wouldn’t have as much of an impact”. This may be true to an extent, but we must also consider that communication skills and planning skills are improved in individuals who are educated, and if everyone in the population were educated, they could re-evaluate society’s situation to accommodate for more jobs.
We do not see these improvements right away, since those being affected have yet to become adults and start making their own contributions in society. Also, education is more influential when the recipient is younger, so it may take up to 10 years (for the affected children to graduate) before the benefits become fully apparent. Perhaps this is why most politicians are hesitant to focus on improving education; with candidates only serving 4 year terms, the benefits do not emerge until they are out of office. Some politicians might be focused on their own financial gain instead of helping society, and therefore completely ignore education. Also, the voting population may be more concerned about their own well-being as opposed to the well-being of future generations (who aren’t old enough to vote) - making “education” a less important issue for the voter when they are considering a candidate.
The only explanations I can imagine is that our politicians are more stupid than I give them credit for, and the importance of education is not common sense for them, OR they don’t care about education, and they have a personal (perhaps financial) incentive in politics.
Conspiracy?
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, and I try to avoid conspiracy theories as I think most are made by quacks, but perhaps a mild sort of conspiracy is responsible for America’s lack of education?
Perhaps it was realized by politicians (most of whom own corporations or businesses) that consumers tend to buy more if they are less educated. It could then be theorized that a lot of politicians either “don’t care” about the education system, or try to intentionally sabotage it, in order to maintain the materialistic and consumerist culture of America by depriving it of education.
I’d assume that sometime in the late 1940s after the 2nd world war, it was theorized by economists that previous world superpowers had collapsed because their economy exported too much to foreign countries (which were unstable) and ended up becoming reliant on foreign countries in order to maintain stability. They then theorized that the best way to maintain an industrialized superpower would be to have its population rely on the exports of other countries - to be a complete consumerist nation. As a result, all other countries’ economies (providing exports to the superpower) would become reliant on the economy of the one superpower. The superpower would then have total influence over other countries – the superpower wouldn’t be able to collapse without the rest of the world collapsing with it.
If you wanted to incorporate it with over conspiracy theories which talk about a “world government” or “Europe secretly owning USA”, we could suggest this: Although such a superpower would have total influence over all the nations exporting to it, the collapse of such a superpower would be inevitable - since its consumerist economy had been in “full throttle” for so long, it would be like a snowball growing larger as it rolls down a hill, eventually becoming an unstoppable self-sustaining avalanche; due to its eventual collapse, it would be best for the “superpower” to simply be a scapegoat, a puppet that was ran by a few other nations, i.e. Europe. Essentially, the superpower would become a powerhouse for a few other nations to feed off of - the country would be ran by a few wealthy corporation owners who would essentially run the world. MUWAHAHAHAHA! Although I don’t really think the part about Europe is true, but the paragraph before it might be.
After the second World War, the allies found themselves in a unique position – they had the opportunity to essentially grant themselves complete control over the world (ironically because the people before them who tried it fucked up, i.e. the Axis in WW2). What better way to take over the world than to do it in the act of stopping someone else? That way, you don’t look like the bad guy. Basically, with the Axis defeated, the Allies realized that they were at the same type of position where many previous empires had failed – they had one shot to do it right, so they should plan it out every detail and calculate every variable. The economists (mentioned 2 paragraphs above) might have shared their theories with the leaders of the Allies (or just been hired by the Allies or were the leaders of the Allies themselves), and decided that converting the USA into a complete consumerist nation would be the best way to go about doing it.
All the things we buy, all the advertisements we are bombarded with on TV and the internet, celebrities, our entertainment, our sources of information, our entire media, the stores we go to, all the useless shit we spend money on, our jobs, our hobbies, our ambitions, our ideals, our dreams – all meaningless and all placed within our heads for the sake of getting a few corporate leaders ridiculously rich.
Or, maybe not, or maybe its slightly true but not as “menacingly evil” as we perceive it to be – subtract the monacle, the evil laugh, a bunch of ugly old evil-looking dudes sitting around a giant table, the projector showing a diagram illustrating some evil scheme, the pit full of hungry lions, and the cool underground lair with all sorts of spy gadgets, and maybe our perception might actually be accurate. Who knows. Oh wait, I think I just described a typical Monday for Wal-Mart executives 
