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Interesting reads in here.
The genesis of all these problems lies in the industrial revolution. Consider that the mass media began in the late 1800's along with rapid advances in technology. There are several things to consider:
1. Are people getting dumber or are complex things reaching more people?
Things like the political process, economic models, biology and other things that only academics would of known are now taught to all people at some fundamental level. My point about voting rights being extended has a similar problem in that the rights were denied to those who never got a good education to begin with. There is no doubt that the oppression of groups many years ago still trickles down to today's generations. Certain things like black culture and the amount of women in jobs like aviation clearly show this. How long until everyone is really equal? How much does this even affect things?
2. Too much information or too much misinformation?
There is a wealth of information out there, with just as many, if not more lies for each one. There are anecdotes for what causes cancer, how to stay healthy, and so forth. There are entire multi-billion dollar industries based on lies (rapid weight loss, body detoxification, cults, etc) and thousands of myths.
3. Class warfare
Abortion can get rid of children we don't want. Organ transplants can let us live when we should be long dead. Medicine in general extends our lives far past what they should be. Technology makes us more efficient, faster, stronger. We can replace body parts and some organs with machines. What do these have in common? Only the rich can afford them, usually at the expense of the poor. Class warfare is the root of a lot of our problems and not surprisingly, it stems from technology. A rich girl can abort her child and bypass the costs she would of borne, while the poor one takes the burden of a birth. A rich man can get a new heart, but at a massive cost. $150,000+ to extend your life by 2+ years. We should be glad that organs cannot be sold, or there is no doubt that the poor would be harvested for the rich, as the rich need the organs and the poor need the money. High technology widens the class gap, but there is no obvious solution. When the poor stay poor, they stay uneducated and feed into this cycle of dumbness.
4. Artificial Selection?
Now, my point on artificial selection was in jest, although there is no doubt that humans bypass just about every obstacle of natural selection. AIDS is an excellent example, as there is no way someone with little to no immune system can survive in the wild, but they can live and die as they want with medicine. Medicine cures or alleviates the young of genetic cancers, heart problems, mild re ation, being born a "runt" or sickly, and many other factors that would kill the person off. Yet these people grow and pass their defective genes onto another generation. I am sure it won't be long before we can scan DNA and abort anything that we don't like.
5. The Cycle
There is little doubt that anyone born poor can make themselves brilliant, but it takes a large personal effort. Part of the problem is that stupidity breeds stupidity. A child going to a bad inner-city school can still get a great education from their parents. Unfortunately when the parent knows nothing, it is hard to teach. This is one of the prime reasons that the poor stay poor and the dumb stay dumb. There are not many ways to avoid a class gap. The naive solution is welfare on a large scale, but this unfairly removes liberties from the middle class and the rich. There are many ethical arguments towards issues like organ transplants and such that avoid the politics and debate over the ethics of implementing different schemes. These are excellent reads, but I'm afraid I checked them out of a library quite a while ago, with no names handy.
Like most things in life, there are many reasons that people seem less educated as time goes on. A lot of it is relative as in more information gets to people who never had it before. A lot of it is serious, such as the gargantuan influence that the mass media has over a wide audience. One only has to look at Nazi Germany and current-day North Korea to see how a propaganda machine can delude a huge percentage of a state's population into thinking anything. While I am not silly enough to compare today's mass media with Joesph Goebbels, I am bold enough to say they have the same influence over people. Hundreds of years ago people young and old begged to be able to read, while nowadays showing interest in being an intellectual is grounds for being outcast from your peers.
I'm sure there's a lot more on the subject. I imagine this problem arises naturally in any society. We have yet to see the solution.
