Three Ways to Be a Smarter Person | by umair haque | May, 2023 – Eudaimonia and Co

I titled this little essaywellyou know. But really? The battle today is about being not a dumber person. The forces of ignorance, in all their guises and forms, have us surrounded today. Encircled. Theyre laying siege to us. Our societies, our communities our minds. From ban the books!! to shades of burn the witch!! we live in an era that feels profoundly dislocating because something strangely unfamiliar is happening.

The world is getting stupider.

Now, that might sound funny, but only because its only a joke in the sense that its not. Think about history for a second. What was true, for a very long time? The world was getting smarter. I dont mean that in a linear way, or a universalizing way. But by and large, for most of parents, grandparents, even grandparents lifetimes a great trend in human civilization was that the world was getting smarter. Great systems of education were built, then advanced across gender and castes and races. Universities opened their doors to all. Science became a true public good, and anyone could access it, or at least enough of it. And sothe world got smarter.

This was an essential part of the story of human progress. But as now know, human progress has flatlined, and is going into reverse. And part of that Great Reversal in human progress is the facepalm-inducing fact that the world is getting stupider.

Theres a reason it feels as if all the people around you are getting dumber: They are. A study published in the journal Intelligence found that American IQs are dropping for the first time in ages. An analysis of 394,378 scores on intelligence tests taken between 2006 and 2018 showed that IQs had fallen in every category except for spatial reasoning. In logic and vocabulary, computation and mathematics, and visual problem-solving and analogies, scores dropped.

Now think about howweird everything feels. How everything feels so bewildering, unfamiliar, dislocating, strange, even sinister. Its not everything. Its justpeople. Scientists are still out there making advances, thinkers thinking, writers writing, artists arting (can I say that?).

But these days? You dont know. Youre sitting at the cafe, in line at the store, walking down the street. Hey, is that person amaniacwho believes that climate change is a hoaxand wants to wipe out the nearest girls school, gay bar, or library, with an AR-15? Maybe theyre just an everyday Trumpist or DeSatanist (can I call them that?), and are on a human hair trigger, ready to turn you in forreading a book with a gay character in it. Maybe they deeply, genuinely believe in the Satanic conspiracy to rule the world with microchips that are in vaccines so that Hillary Clinton and the Illuminati can gain immortality by drinking kids blood (thats Qanon, folks.)

Why do you have that creepy feeling when you dare to venture outside the door? Thats the feeling of the world getting stupider.

So the fight today isnt just to get smarter. That parts easy, actually. Here, let me tell you the secrets. Read. A lot. Real books, not bestsellers, and while they can overlap a bit, its rare they do often. Pick a favorite academic journal or three. Read those, too. Find a favorite mind, and read everything theyve every written. Do that for the living and the dead. Make an hour every day, without fail, at least, to reflect on what youre learning. Choose an activity that helps your mind do it lets it just tick away without even really thinking explicitly running, having a bath, making music. Turn off Netflix, Twitter, Facebook for all that time. Be uninterrupted. And finally, take some personal tuition reach out to people for coaching, advice, lessons, learning, whatever the subject is.

Got all that? The problem isnt that, really, though. Its the forces of ignorance encircling us, and laying siege to our societies and minds. So that far too few of us are capable of ever doing much of that. So lets begin with the meat of the subject. How to become a smarter as in less stupid person.

Number one. Dont politicize science. You know whats odd about today? Sciences claim to truth has been unseated socioculturally. Let me put that in plain English. Go on YouTube, and there, presented to you as equals, will be videos saying that climate change is a hoax!!and it actually exists. Therell be plenty more of those saying its a hoax, or it doesnt matter, or so forth, in fact, because, well, theres more money to be made that way. And for that reason, writ larger both-sidesing its now become a social norm to politicize science.

And this norm has come to dominate our societies. Its now perfectly acceptable to take some kind of flagrantly anti-scientific, anti-reality stance. To play the contrarian. And youll get plenty of time, in newspapers and on cable news and so forth, because for them, controversy sells. Demagogues license all this, by not just politicizing science, but actively legislating against it. Think of how many American states have a climate change plan LOL. Meanwhile, an impoverished country like Pakistan has a Climate Change Minister.

Think of Ron DeSantiss Florida. Why do demagogues attack science? Precisely because they need to unseat truth, so they can claim the throne for themselves. Only if science has been delegitimized can their Big Lies have room to grow, spread, multiply, proliferate. Demagogues need to claim their own big mouths as the one truth, gospel, objectivity, the final word thats how you exert authoritarian control over a society.

It wasnt always like this, by the way. Science and I use the term broadly here, to include everything down to social science was respected, once upon a time. In the 50s, 60s, 70s? Nobody was crying that the moon landing was a hoax. Even in the 70s when abilities like ESP or telekinesis go ahead and chuckle were a fad, they were scientifically investigated, even by, LOL, the CIA. Science had a legitimacy it doesnt enjoy today, and were all the stupider for it.

How did that happen? Well, decades of disinformation took their toll. People lost trust in institutions and systems as they got poorer, as downward mobility bit. And the watershed moment was probably Covid, where far too many even intelligent people, whole societies fell prey to incredibly foolish myths, like herd immunity. Even today, Covids been declared over whileitsstill one of our leading causes of death. LOL. And you expect people to believe in science when youre giving them that kind of free pass not to? When leaders treat truth with contempt, in order to claim its mantle for themselves we can hardly expect the average person to have much respect for it.

Two. Dont idealize philosophy. Treating science with contempt instead of reading it, engaging with it, learning from it, from climate change to biology to physics to sociology to economics is the first step in a process of radicalization. The next step is that person getting radicalized is told that their opinions count more than objectively established truths as long as they have the backing of some usually ancient philosopher.

You can see this happening on YouTube, too. Philosophys all the rage. Hey! I believe women and minorities arent really people, because this guy said so! And he said it because, hey, didnt someone say that human nature is cruel, and were only here for powers sake! And didnt the guy before him say that tradition and ritual is all there is? Or else were just animals!

LOL. Look philosophys just that. Its not meant to be idealized. When we begin to treat it as gospel, we make a serious mistake. Lets take a pretty simple example. Once upon a time, there were plenty of guys who said that democracy wasnt a worthy pursuit. People couldnt do it! Even if they did, what point was there! And over the last several centuries or so, something remarkable happened. The world became more democratic, and an explosion in living standards and human progress went hand-in-hand with that. What do we learn from this?

Philosophy is just ideas. Ideas meet the real world, and they can be road-tested. Every philosophy we encounter should pass a certain set of tests: hey, has this old beater been taken out on the road yet? How did it do? Did itgo anywhere? If not, that philosophys a failure. The second one goes like this: does this philosophy comport with what we know to be true? Plenty of philosophers have said and still do that some people are superior to others. What do we know from, wait for it, science? Thats not remotely true. Were all profoundly the same. Plenty of philosophers have said that human beings are innately cruel, selfish, etcetera. What do we know? Were all born profoundly empathic, giving, curious, and relational.

Dont idealize philosophy. Any philosophy. Life is here to be lived. Not according to the dictates of anyone, really, but you. You already know everything you need to know to live a fulfilling and sane and moral life thats the part about being born empathic, loving, curious. The rest is really just acting on it. In that respect, it was probably Aristotle, amongst philosophers, who got it right.

This drama has become a charade. Lets go back to radicalisation or as I call it, watching some poor soul get stupider. First they learn to hate knowledge itself, treating science with contempt. Then, theyre told their opinions not really theirs, the ones disinformation puts in their heads are bigger and better, because This Ancient Philosopher Agreed. And that makes a certain kind of person feel Very Smart. Wow, look at me! ImImDiogenes over here! Why, Im goddamned Pythagoras in the bathtub, shouting Eureka!!

No, youre not. And of those great, ancient minds? If they were alive today, you know what theyd be doing? Theyd be marveling at how much we know. Learning it, voraciously. And then philosophizing. About what it all meant, said, taught us. In moral, human, social, civilizational terms. About who we are, why were here, what were made for, etcetera. See the lesson? You have to know before you philosophize. Otherwise youre just engaging insophistry.

Do you want to know what one of the big problems with our world today is? The rise of modern day sophists. Whats a sophist?

In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly in Athens, sophist came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince othersSophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.

The boldings mine. See the parallel? Make you chuckle for a second? Todays sophists are called pundits. Influencers. All these crackpot, wackjob figures that surround us. Who dont actually know much of anything but will opine on subjects they dont know about for hourson podcasts, videos, cable news, bestsellers, newspaper columns. And like the sophists of old, there they are, pretending to teach young people, who are dazzled, often, by their seeming display of intellect. But its mostly just rhetoric. Plus a change. Sophistry surrounds us because we have a sophist industry now, thanks to YouTube, Instagram, CNN, etcetera and its making the world painfully, shatteringly stupider.

That brings me to point number three. Dont devalue the arts. I mean that as an act. In the way you live your life. How do you.read? Listen to music? Do you ever evenI dont knowwatchdance? Ballet? Opera? How about music from around the world? Ever tried to learn another language?

You see, we live in a world now where the arts have little to no value, and I mean that almost in a literal economic way. Theyre fields which have imploded. Streaming pays so little that your favorite bands cant earn a living from it. Writing, such a meager income your favorite writers are perpetually struggling, unless theyre basically CEOs of their own industries, like, say James Patterson.

We can all stream, download, collecteverything and anything now. And yet precisely for that reason, the arts have no value, and its making us stupider. We have now a model of shallow engagement with a trillion things and depth with none. You listen to a song for 3.5 seconds, over and over again, and appreciate almost none. You put Netflix on in the background, surf the internet, barely pay any attention to both, and your brain is numb by the end of it. We need to choose depth over shallowness when it comes to our own attention and thinking if we want to be smarteror not just get dumber.

Let me give you an example from my own life, which is always risky, but its an interesting one. I make music. Disco. One of my favourite singers is French. I asked her to do a song with me. She said yes. I was thrilled. I went back to my song, and had a thought: wouldnt it becoolif half of this was in French? Problem: my French isrusty. LOL. Its definitely not up to lyrical standards. So I had to improve it. And it wasa marvelous and beautiful thing to experience. Writing lyrics in another language? Like poetry. And now I could see why French poets swore by the language. Write lyrically in it, compared to English, and its on another dimension of expressivity, beauty, purity, truth. The song was way better for it, but thats not the point the point is that I didnt want to devalue the art, and I challenged myself to learn something instead.

Art is there for a reason. Sure, therell be four guys, grad school freshman nerds, wholl want to dispute that Im sure your professor would love to. But in a real sense? Art is there for a reason. It teaches us. About ourselves. What it means to be us. Human, finite, frail. Tiny things, on a spinning ball of dust, in an endless universe of light. The struggle. You see it another person, a character, a protagonist. Whichever one it is, theyre all the same struggle and this is arts secret. Love. Grief. Longing. Death. Existence.

Art teaches us how to exist in this world. And when we devalue it as our systems almost force us to do these days, downloading it, streaming it, in quantities more fit for databanks than human engagement, intellect, thoughtour lives are diminished. We grow stupider, in the deepest way. Morally, socially, emotionally. We dont even recognize our pain as pain anymore, and then it becomes hate, spite, violence. The cycle of human folly repeats itself. Demagogues laugh. Sound like the world today? Yup, as in getting stupider.

Me? Theres a thought that runs through my head these days. I dont know how to exist in this world anymore. Its not just the spite, hate, ugliness, resentment, cruelty, lies. Not just the demagogues, their flocks of the fanatical, their legions of the murderously virtuous. Itsmore than that. How do you live in a world getting stupider? And isnt that a pretty good starting definition of dark age, anyways?

I guess, in the end, you fight em or you join em. Me? Im weary of the fight. Against human folly. Ignorance. All its names, from violence to war to cruelty to spite. But here I am. Because I cant join em, either. And that leaves me right here. I dont know how to live in this world anymore.

Good thing we have all that knowledge, all that art, all that philosophy, all that science, isnt it?

UmairMay 2023

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Three Ways to Be a Smarter Person | by umair haque | May, 2023 - Eudaimonia and Co