Dumbing Ourselves Down

It’s been a sobering experience to see my brother – a former PhD chemist and notable plastics engineer – now confined to a nursing care facility – spending his days engrossed in watching television … which he increasingly enjoys more than visiting with friends or family.  Please understand, of course, that he doesn’t have much choice.  His body has deteriorated to a point beyond rectification and his mind has had to content itself with the mundane. 

It’s a merciful accommodation.  His world has gradually shrunk to the dimensions of a 12’ X 20’ semi-private room, which he shares with a revolving assortment of demented men, plus a 15” TV screen.  Life can get really tough. 

But it’s also alarmingly instructive.  To a large extent, the rest of us – who are variably, but at least somewhat, sound-of-mind and able-of-body – “accommodate” ourselves to a lot of benumbing circumstances that are outright deleterious to our overall wellbeing and ascendance in life.  And it begins … where else (?) … with television … and on to social media! 

I’ve tried to watch TV in odd moments – e.g., as a diversion during exercise or as a time-filler between engagements.  Yuck!   I do try to catch the news and a smattering of sports.  But if I happen to tune in the noon news early and catch Rachel Ray or tune in late and get subjected to “Days of Our Lives”, the wasteland of inanity quickly becomes suffocating! 

That attitude can change in short order.  I can get “desensitized” to mindlessness and as “hooked” as anyone else with only a few random clicks of the remote control in an unperturbed moment.  A recent study by Netflix documents the speed with which addiction to specific programs gets ingrained:  

 

Not that TV, movies, the internet and/or entertainment offerings of broad varieties don’t have redeeming features … Great art and education can be found in all.  The problem is choosing what enriches over that which usurps and diverts us from sanity and sensibility. 

Food is another great example of dumbing ourselves down.  There’s no deficit of information available in the universe about the nutritional value of different foods.  Yet we gravitate toward the highest calorie, salt and alcohol content – toward what “pleases” us rather than toward what is “good” for us – without either hesitation, angst or guilt. 

The wife of an esteemed colleague was recently given an easy, fail-safe recipe for Apple Cake, comprised of the following ingredients: Two units of canned apples, two sticks of butter and a box of Duncan Hines Cake Mix cooked in a crock pot.  (It was reportedly awesome … as in good enough [literally] “to die for”.) 

Our cat sleeps about 18 hours a day.  Sleep is a wonderful accommodation for an otherwise free-ranging carnivore who, instead of having to forage for prey, has food available, on-demand, 24 hours a day.  She would not survive more than a couple of weeks in the wild, having been “dumbed down” to the level of a house cat for 14 years. 

Further Point to Ponder 

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.  It is presumed that the dodo became flightless [an evolutionary “accommodation”] because of the ready availability of abundant food sources and a relative absence of predators on Mauritius.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo   [Unfortunately, for the rest of us living off the island, predators and competitors abound and we need our wings!] 

So here’s the take-away thought: The inclination we adopt toward the unscheduled, unchallenged, unperturbed moment … i.e., whether to permit “dumbing ourselves down” (thus “accommodating” unchallenging circumstances)  or to get engaged in “raising ourselves UP” … largely determines the degree of our ascendency – how far we will go and how high we will fly.  Let’s keep “Powering ourselves UP!”  Quartermaster 

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
…

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas