Culture Clash

(March 2008)

I'm with Stupid

Gayms mayk u dum

Americans, says this book, are dolts.

Some Googling suggests that's true. Evidently, half my fellow countrymen can't find New York on a map; two-thirds can't find Iraq. 60% believe the Book of Genesis is the literal truth, straight from God to us (no info on why people believe Genesis but ignore the Bible's “love thy neighbor” parts). Americans apparently don't read books, except maybe Harry Potter, never realizing the irony that it's about a school. 20% read below fifth grade level, unable even to enjoy Harry's adventures. Dumb is the new cool. In fact, here in the States we have TV shows glorifying imbecilism, hosted by comics who've made careers of placing cognitive mediocrity on a pedestal, as though being ignorant were something of which to be proud. Some experts have posited that, as a people, our average IQ is 98.

That's kind of depressing, but I bet it explains a lot, particularly to international readers. Americans behave like dumbasses in the world because they're dumbasses at home.

Might be best if we rejected the statistics. Like, “We're not stupid, numbers are stupid. You're stupid.”

But let's get back to the book.

Which I haven't read because reading's for nerds.

The author of The Age of American Unreason cries the usual wolf when casting about for scapegoats to explain why we're morons now though we were clearly clever before (Moon landing! Internet! Atom bomb! Monte Cristo sandwich! We were smart once! What have you ever done, Luxembourg?). Susan Jacoby blames the “fast, video-oriented culture.” People have iPods and Unreal now, and that makes them dumb.

“Fast, video-oriented culture” is often blamed for stupidity, moral degradation, fat kids, or whatever else is about to incite the collapse of civilization. But rapid audiovisual information transfer doesn't make people stupid. It might shorten attention spans, but that's not necessarily bad: attention spans are shorter today because we receive and process information faster. Games and simulations are part of that. No game has ever actually been “mindless.” It's impossible. Videogames engage three senses simultaneously, and the brain is collating, prioritizing, interpreting and acting on information at a staggering rate. Gaming creates unbelievably abstract, nonlinear problem-solving scenarios. This is supposed to dim people's bulbs? Absurd. Perhaps instead it's time to overhaul education so it communicates more information faster.

Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You offers a cheerier verdict on the fast, video-oriented culture. One of Johnson's arguments is that popular amusement trends upward in complexity, so today's entertainment is inherently more sophisticated than yesterday's. This is pretty easily borne out; compare Heroes (2006) to Hill Street Blues (1981) and tote up the characters, locales, plotlines, themes and story arcs you're expected to track in each from episode to episode. If consuming these media is becoming more challenging, than it literally cannot be responsible for the dumbification of American society.

Similarly, the last few years have indicated a sharp rise in games that increase the collective consciousness in unique and unexpected ways. I bet Bioshock caused at least a small spike in sales of Atlas Shrugged. Until S.T.A.L.K.E.R., many westerners were mostly ignorant about Chernobyl, except as a vague concept, and completely ignorant of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and novelists Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Tri-Crescendo's Eternal Sonata, in addition to being one of the most lavishly beautiful games in recent memory, familiarizes the musically uninformed with the work and life of Frederic Chopin. No, games don't make people dumber, they make them smarter, often in ways missed by schooling.

Assuming the statistics and contents of Jacoby's book are indeed true and Americans are witless, it's not because of the fast, video-oriented culture. If anything, that's slowing the process. They're stupid and growing stupider due to indolence (definition here for readers at <5 th grade level), spawned from a sense of entitlement that grew rapidly in the years following the second World War. It's not that uncommon when nations become powerful, as ample historical evidence of Rome , Parthia and various colonial empires demonstrates. Societies that must struggle to achieve parity with the dominant national forces of the time are energetic and vibrant – getting smarter, essentially – until eventually they fall victim to the same forces that claimed their predecessors on the world stage and fade from relevance themselves. It's a cyclical process. America isn't a bad place, it's just the IBM or Microsoft of international culture: huge and mighty but overassured of its own importance and dwindling in actual consequence.

This being the International Game Developers Association, one might wonder what significance a discussion of this book, which centers on American attachment to “junk thought,” would hold for those overseas. The answer: plenty. Attempts to lay blame on new things aren't limited to insistence that modern media consumption triggers idiocy. The “fast, video-oriented culture” is also held responsible for violence, and that's a problem elsewhere than just the United States. In fact, dumbasstic as Americans may be, we're ahead of many other developed nations in avoiding censorship. We can't spell censorship, but laws supporting it are regularly smashed.

Assuming this column doesn't get me shot outright, I'll surely receive lots of email saying that if I don't like America I should leave. But I do like America. America 's awesome. We usually get consumer products first, we're too far away to conveniently bomb, the weather is pleasant and I don't understand the metric system. Why would I leave? It's a great place to live. America I like just fine; Americans not so much, because they tend to be stupid. But I could say the same thing about people in general. After all, anyone of any nationality who can look at a medium as vibrant as gaming and say it reduces intelligence, this medium that conjures so many emotions and thoughts and discoveries and joys and strategies and memories and connections and solutions… well, anyone who can say that with a straight face is just a big stupid old stupid stupid-head.