In a recent blog, I asked the simple, rhetorical question, “Does Spelling Matter?” That generated a wide variety of opinions, and I think today’s topic will do the same.
I came across a report from Tia Ghose, a writer for “LiveScience.” The headline really grabbed my attention: “ARE HUMANS BECOMING LESS INTELLIGENT?”
First off, I don’t want anyone to comment about in-laws, cousins, or people who live in any specific suburban area. We’ve heard all the jokes before… save them for the amateur hour at the local comedy club.
So, here’s what Ms. Ghose wrote:
“Humans may be gradually losing intelligence, according to a new study.
The study, published in the journal Trends in Genetics, argues that humans lost the evolutionary pressure to be smart once we started living in dense agricultural settlements several thousand years ago.
‘The development of our intellectual abilities and the optimization of thousands of intelligence genes probably occurred in relatively non-verbal, dispersed groups of peoples [living] before our ancestors emerged from Africa,’ said study author Gerald Crabtree, a researcher at Stanford University, in a statement.”
The researcher contends the study shows it’s been “all downhill since then.”
The theory is that we have lost special abilities: those special skills that helped us avoid the tiger and the lion while we hunted for our next meal.
Those abilities gave us the basic abilities to compose music and play chess, but when we moved to a more agricultural lifestyle, we lost the basic need for those abilities and developed lesser, more sedate skills.
The researcher argues that between 2,000 and 5,000 genes determine human intelligence. He says these genes are particularly susceptible to harmful changes, or mutations. They claim that based on the rate of mutations, the average person harbors two intelligence-stunting genetic changes that evolved over the last three millennia.
However, over the last century, the average IQ has increased… dramatically. But the scientific community says that’s because of better prenatal care, nutrition and a reduction in levels of lead in our everyday lives.
So… here’s my question: IF we are getting dumber, should we not aim our marketing efforts at the masses with dumber promotions?
And isn’t that happening in a lot of ways? Think of all the TV ads that now use animation… and often very simple animation… as a means of communicating a complex sales benefit in a simple way.
I know we all want to elevate our efforts (and some want us to be Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton.) But could it be we have a smaller group getting smarter, and a larger group getting, well, dumber?
(To read Ms. Ghose’s article, please visit http://news.yahoo.com/humans-becoming-less-intelligent-173400651.html )
Peter T. Britton
Idea Generator. Wordsmith. Resultant.
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