More on the Dumbing Down of Society
Almost two years, I wrote a blog post about the dumbing down of society. You can read it here https://differencesdiversity.blogspot.com/2016/04/conversations-dumbing-down-of-society.html.
In this blog post, I wrote about how we, as a society, have lost the ability to see the ideas and philosophies around us. This thought has been coming back to me a lot lately. I have noticed that not only have we forgotten how to communicate about philosophical ideas, we often do not even notice the people around us. We are so focused on what's for dinner and what we are doing for a job at hand that we do not notice if the people around us are happy or sad or hurt or in physical pain. If we do notice, we pass pleasantries but often do not want to take time away from our thoughts about dinner to take action.
I truly believe this is how our society has been conditioned. We teach our children to focus on what work they are handed, be it a worksheet or instructions to clean their room, without dawdling, without getting distracted. We do not allow mud or dirt or glitter or play dough or sticks or rocks to cross the threshold of our neat and tidy rooms. The rooms may become dirty, after all, if we allow such things. We have stifled creativity and daydreaming. We condition children into having tunnel vision and drive them away from being visionaries.
Today, in our housechurch, my family and I celebrated the first day of Hanukkah. People are often amazed when I tell them our older son, who was around five or six at the time, actually initiated our annual celebration of Hanukkah. It was all because of a book we read called Mrs. Katz and Tush in which one of the characters celebrates Passover. My son, whose favorite Bible character has always been Moses (his love of ancient Egypt probably also has something to do with this), wanted to celebrate Passover. This led into a celebration of Hanukkah as well.
Imagine, though, if I had said, "No, you need to focus on the book in front of you. Stop dawdling. Stop daydreaming. FOCUS!" Imagine if I had discouraged rabbit trails that could lead to other, interesting ideas.
How sad to think of the consequences.
But this is what we do everyday in our society. And we wonder why adults can no longer carry on conversations about topics other than what is happening right in front of them.
In this blog post, I wrote about how we, as a society, have lost the ability to see the ideas and philosophies around us. This thought has been coming back to me a lot lately. I have noticed that not only have we forgotten how to communicate about philosophical ideas, we often do not even notice the people around us. We are so focused on what's for dinner and what we are doing for a job at hand that we do not notice if the people around us are happy or sad or hurt or in physical pain. If we do notice, we pass pleasantries but often do not want to take time away from our thoughts about dinner to take action.
I truly believe this is how our society has been conditioned. We teach our children to focus on what work they are handed, be it a worksheet or instructions to clean their room, without dawdling, without getting distracted. We do not allow mud or dirt or glitter or play dough or sticks or rocks to cross the threshold of our neat and tidy rooms. The rooms may become dirty, after all, if we allow such things. We have stifled creativity and daydreaming. We condition children into having tunnel vision and drive them away from being visionaries.
Today, in our housechurch, my family and I celebrated the first day of Hanukkah. People are often amazed when I tell them our older son, who was around five or six at the time, actually initiated our annual celebration of Hanukkah. It was all because of a book we read called Mrs. Katz and Tush in which one of the characters celebrates Passover. My son, whose favorite Bible character has always been Moses (his love of ancient Egypt probably also has something to do with this), wanted to celebrate Passover. This led into a celebration of Hanukkah as well.
Imagine, though, if I had said, "No, you need to focus on the book in front of you. Stop dawdling. Stop daydreaming. FOCUS!" Imagine if I had discouraged rabbit trails that could lead to other, interesting ideas.
How sad to think of the consequences.
But this is what we do everyday in our society. And we wonder why adults can no longer carry on conversations about topics other than what is happening right in front of them.
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