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Misunderestimating stupidity
Is the communication age making us less verbally adept? And what does our paucity of words say about our intellect? Romita Ray tries to fathom our mental decline.
- By Romita Ray, freelance writer
- Published: 00:08 July 2, 2008
- The stupidity arguably reached new depths in Dumb and Dumber.
- Image Credit: Supplied Picture
Is the communication age making us less verbally adept? And what does our paucity of words say about our intellect? Romita Ray tries to fathom our mental decline.
Driving past a sign for Chick-Fil-A emblazoned across a billboard the other day in upstate New York, I found myself trotting down memory lane. Needless to say, this unexpected bolt of nostalgia had little to do with chicken.
Instead, it was the dim recollection of realising what this mysterious trail of letters meant. Granted, I did not shout "Eureka" like Archimedes when he leapt into his bath.
But it did feel like I had conquered a conundrum. At first encounter, the initial confusion of a stranger in a strange land had raised its ugly head. What kind of outlandish Americana had I stumbled upon?
Then arrived the snobbery of an academic for whom words are like best friends. Utterly stupefied by this odd sprinkling of terms, I felt let down by the English language.
Until it dawned on me that Chick-Fil-A is chicken fillet. Never mind how one fillets a chicken. Or why one needs a fillet of chicken. So what is the moral of this story? Mind your words. And mind your stupidity.
Time is precious.
Acronyms and abbreviations can be found everywhere these days. Simple three-letter words have been stripped down to "u" and "r". LOL and TTYL have become common parlance in emails and chat rooms.
In comparison, Chick-Fil-A seems positively epic, like some grand sonata whose climax unfurls when one lands upon the "A".
This was clever word play on the part of the advertising gurus in charge of spreading good cheer about chicken. But the problem is that Chick-Fil-A doesn't stop at your friendly neighbourhood drive-in restaurant and LOL doesn't simply float about in virtual space.
Shrinking words seem to contain some dumb version of The Da Vinci Code. Simply put, are we turning stupid in our clever attempts to communicate faster?
Don't get me wrong. Stupidity can be endearing. Take Charlie Chaplin, who frequently played the sad fool. Or Jon Arbuckle, whose geeky, doltish ways launched his glib tabby cat Garfield as an overnight celebrity.
And who can forget Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber single-handedly promoting stupidity as the golden key to a beautiful woman's heart. Even a quick glance at a thesaurus reveals charming synonyms like soppy and owlish.
But all is not well in the land of stupidity. Pondering this issue and other matters of cosmic proportions, Albert Einstein once put the matter across quite succinctly: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former".
Now Mr Einstein's ideas about stupidity may have been a tad bit different from what the rest of human civilisation thinks about owlishness. But his point is well taken.
Our "infinite" capacity to be stupid seems to go hand-in-hand with an inability to concentrate when gadgets and gizmos abound precisely to help us focus better. For every shrinking word, a new and cool term has found a home in the venerable Oxford English Dictionary. Could we have imagined "googling" just 15 years ago?
Even the postal mail has been made archaic overnight with "snail mail", conjuring visions of postcards, envelopes and packages plodding across the world slowly while emails, e-cards and instant messages fly back and forth in seconds.
In a world where time is measured according to nano- and milliseconds, it is no surprise that language has been recalibrated too. Shave off a few letters here and there, and save time. Brevity is hip.
Or is it? Shrunken words point an accusing finger at a steadily shrinking attention span. If we cannot take the time to spell, then what are we giving up in this quest to protect our time? Thinking requires clarity.
Clarity requires time. Ergo, taking the time to think means we have to dig beneath the surface to gain clarity. We have to listen to ourselves. And so we can express ourselves with depth.
Shrink your words and your communication will be just as truncated. Stupidity is now the lip-gloss of communication, the raspberry flavoured coating that maybe a pleasant surprise at first but that swiftly loses its fruity charm.
The "u"s, "r"s, LOLs, TTYLs and Chick-Fil-A may look cute. But they also appear infantile. There is nothing hip about an adult spelling like a two-year-old.
Dumbing down of language has even graver consequences. Once we begin forgetting what the original word or phrase looks like, we can just as easily forget its meaning.
As university professors, we see the warning signals far in advance. And nine out of 10 are howlers. Take for instance, the student who was asked to define a myth. Pat came the response, "a myth is a female moth".
Barring the side effects of brain-stimulating potions and pills that can lead to exquisite flights of the imagination, such an answer is neither cheeky in a sweet, innocent way, nor is it some bold existentialist statement.
Bluntly put, it is stupid. If you are 18 and can decode TTYL in a jiffy, then the word "myth" should not unsettle you. Perhaps, if we had come up with a cooler, more cryptic version like MIT or simply "Y", then and only then would the correct answer have been coaxed forth. Instead, we got moths.
At the end of the day, however, it is not about myths or moths. It is about the inability or unwillingness to engage with words, the most fundamental unit of human exchange. Words have power.
They can inspire, humble, humiliate, excite, stimulate, clarify, hide, rectify, anger, heal, help, make you laugh, cry, reflect, shine, giggle and even enjoy a good game of Scrabble.
Name one other thing in life that can do all of the above and more. Sacrifice your words and you let go of your power to articulate your thoughts and receive other people's thoughts.
The time saved by our speedy, slick patterns of communication can turn us into caricatures of ourselves, dim reflections of our humanity.
The infinite combination of words, phrases and sentences bubbling away in the giant cauldron of life are reduced to a dull, tasteless gruel. Stupidity makes us lose our spark.
The story loses its grip and we teeter on the edge of becoming crashing bores. In short, we stop taking risks. Yet the very mission of higher education is to learn how to take risks.
For teachers are charged with the responsibility of accomplishing this noble goal, the onus falls on them to equip students with the words and critical skills to face the Big Bad World.
But how do we even take a step in that direction if we don't know how to spell? Or are nonchalant about the meaning of words?
To begin with, we are talking about adolescents who are caught in a vortex of information. Between digital pets, podcasts, iPods, text messages, blogs, palm-pilots, virtual blackboards, chat rooms, i-phones, television programmes, advertisements, video-games and a plethora of extra-curricular activities, who has time to think about words?
I am no psychologist. But it seems logical that in this whirlwind of information, the ability to pay attention is bound to get fragmented, a problem manifested by the number of students diagnosed with learning disorders by university health services.
Living in the age of infotainment is exciting and fun. Yet it is also disorienting, eliciting the desire to homogenise everything and to escape from the unfamiliar. Welcome to the Walmart of adolescence.
Take American adolescents, for instance. In his best-selling book, Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School, Theodore Sizer astutely observes that we need "to help our adolescents break out of their existing mediocre harmonies," the "sameness" of routine that makes them expert podcasters but poor risk-takers.
Are we exhausting our young minds to the point where we are draining them of curiosity and thereby of the motivation to take risks? To reach beyond oneself is a fundamental skill of life.
Exams, essays and pop-quizzes may challenge how much a student has learned but at a deeper level, they also test one's ability to stretch oneself.
This seems even more vital at a time when American students need to think beyond America. Alas, here too, the moth flutters its wings. A 2006 National Geographic poll revealed that nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds didn't think it was important to know the location of Middle Eastern countries.
American troops may be in Iraq but even three years into the war, just 23 per cent of those with a college education could find Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
The problem is that powerful people have elevated stupidity to an art form. If leaders of the first world believe "misunderestimate" is a valid word, then we are in deep trouble. Stupidity is now an effective mask, a clever distraction from the harsh reality of bloodshed and the indignity of war.
Never "misunderestimate" stupidity. It can build empires, fool entire populations, decimate civilisations, destroy the economy and strip the world of hope. No amount of LOLs and TTYLs can rectify the situation.
If anything, they exacerbate the desire to accept everything at face value. It is comforting to accept things as they are instead of questioning them. And we all like to be comfortable.
Stupidity is especially comforting. It carries the indulgence of not having to think, not wanting to think, and not thinking. Enjoy your "chikin" at Chick-Fil-A and as Bobby McFerrin once crooned, "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
Stupidity has become a way of life. And why ever not? Kill some and you will receive a hero's welcome at home complete with waving flags, confetti and the ride in a convertible along Main Street with a sea of happy, shining faces eagerly waiting to catch a glimpse of you.
The rewards are staggering. Charity begins at home. There are other gratifying forms of stupidity too. Consider the mall, for instance. For a self-confessed shopaholic with a weakness for stilettos, there is something deliciously stupid about a mall.
Here Aldo shoes rub shoulders with Barnes and Noble, creating the illusion that beauty meets brains in a bubble of retail glitter. In reality, we are trapped like rats scuttling about mazes in search of a tasty slice of cheese.
Teenagers hang out dressed in their best grunge chic. Mothers bond with daughters at Macy's. Lovers peek into Victoria's Secret. If you are bored, go for a stroll in the mall. Or better still, catch a flick with a bucket of popcorn. There's even a Chick-Fil-A if you fancy a meal.
Some clever people behind-the-scenes know just how to tap into our stupidity even as we gladly fatten their pockets. Not unlike those leaders whose masquerade of mind-boggling dumbness have given us unique words and phrases.
Even universities have started to resemble malls with students as their prized consumers. The customer is always right. Never "misunderestimate" stupidity. We are all part of its great game.
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