Thomas_More
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https://phys.org/news/2024-04-evolving-attitudes-gen-evolution.html
21st century and Darwin still controversial as very hard for many humans to accept.
In Carlisle my mother and i asked several people about Hadrian’s Wall. They had never heard of it, including a policeman.
Real conversation. Hungarian waitress i knew decided to treat ignorance as it deserved.
Customer: “You’re foreign, aint ya?”
Waitress: “Yes, from Hungary.”
C: “Not erd o that. Wherezat then?”
W: “It’s an island near Japan ”
C: “Blimey. Far away then?”Thanks, Bijou.
What about the people asked to point to regions of the world?
When i started school (after Kindergarten) every boy was given an atlas. One seldom hears of atlases any more and i doubt they are handed out in school any more.
The advantages of printed books, including atlases, is that the child is free to peruse them in comfort, unlike skimming things on a screen.
We also had regular geography class, in which there was a wealth of books to delve into, and where boys could pick what they liked for personal projects, including drawing. Thus, by the time i was 12, i could draw a map of China and its principal cities and its provinces by memory. I could also write its 19th & 20th century history from memory of my juvenile reading. My town, like most, had a wealth of secondhand bookshops where worlds could be encountered. And for 2/6 a hardback classic could be had every Saturday, as well as library and school library books.
Toys and games, too, were often history and geography based.And it’s because people are unlettered and ahistorical that they fall prey to conspiracy theories and and other absurdities, and have short memories (“That’s before my time” – the commonly heard wail that negates history).
I don’t see any blossoming of culture any more until capitalism is overthrown, but that’s also a Catch 22 situation, as human intellect stagnates along with the system.
Only socialism, by freeing us from the wages system, can introduce leisure for the mass of people (see Lafargue and Morris) and raise intellect, bringing back what was once called “Renaissance Man” – a condition that cannot flourish under present conditions (see Wilde).
The problem remains – the climbing free in the first place and attaining the willpower for revolution whilst under present, capitalist, stifling conditions.The point is it doesn’t matter as long as we really dumb down ourselves when explaining our case. Start talking about history or materialism, and there’s no hope.
Defunct capitalism is making more and more people, in the digitalised world, stupid.
That’s not to say they don’t have skills needed for their wage-labour. That’s it: history and the Humanities are held in disdain because business is all that’s valued, and sciences and skills that channel workers into a specific avenue, their wage-slavery.No. But you won’t believe my own experience of other people.
And on quiz shows people win money if they answer correctly, so if they knew when the American Civil War ended, they wouldn’t say 1951, would they?
