The Decreasing Median

I have started to believe that despite our current culture of self improvement and lifelong learning, we are becoming less intelligent and certainly less cultured.

James, our singer, in a text message, intimated to me that he wishes to discuss Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. The prospect of a challenging heated 'hero-off' (James has recently been reading a Hughes biog and I have been a self proclaimed fan of the former for some time) really doesn't appeal to me as my identification/admiration of Sylvia Plath is something quite introspective and personal and does not require validation however never wanting to be underprepared, I took some time to revise my knowledge just in case. Whilst reading from Hughes' book, 'Birthday Letters', I read a piece called 'Wuthering Heights' which through my interpretation speaks about them visiting the Bronte's home in North Yorkshire, not too far from Heptonstall where the Hughes family live(d). Also from my interpretation, Hughes seems to question how Emliy Bronte would have viewed Plath and implies in the negative calling Bronte something like austere.(I really wanted to include a quote to back this up but as the internet is being stingy today that would mean going all the way downstairs to find a copy of 'Birthday Letters'. Not today)A feeling I am not unfamiliar with despite not being an accomplished author or anyone who can rightly judge such as a peer. (in the wider sense I have acheived nothing in life) Is this just an intrinsic quality in the psyche of an artist to feel inadequate to those who have gone before (I'm reminded of Homer Simpson and Thomas Edison) or is it that for me to feel inadequate next to someone who had suggested inadequacy is a slowly decreasing line (I'm making no sense I know, people are getting stupider. let me put it another way)

Television I think is a factor and an indicator of the stupidity of the general population if average intelligence is anything to go by. I recently took an online IQ test and got just above 'average' intelligence. However if average intelligence is having to have Philip and Fern on 'This Morning' trying to simplify an already simple concept like the tv programmes 'Echo Beach/Moving Wallpaper' or the online virtual social networking/game site 'Second Life' then I despair. It could be argued that the average target audience for 'This Morning' are not as moderately tech savvy as I (with regard to Second Life) and someone like me should be using this moderate tech savvyness (it is a word!!) to go out and earn some money instead of watching daytime tv and drinking endless tea (I'm trying).

I don't want to bang on like a petulant teenager saying (be who you want to be) but another example is the apparent digestion of programmes like 'Ladette to Lady'. Blatantly an attempt at propaganda which would assume that progression from boorish immoral working class to refined immoral upper class is a positive thing. It is clear that the higher classes can be just as immoral and unpleasant as the working class and the comparison of equally flawed human beings placed into brackets defined by largely inherited socio economic factors is at best subjective. The show is also obviously engineered to cause conflicts which apparently make 'good tv'

I'm such a geek. Also I'm aware of the irony that a blog which attributes television as a factor/indication of stupidity also references television quite regularly ha ha ha
Also I'm talking about general intelligence across the popluation not individuals (which matter more). Put people in a large group and they start to resemble cattle, anyone who has worked in a customer focussed role will know what I mean.

Letters I've written never meaning to send

Dear Buz,
I think I've just written a large portion of your next play. I've just been watching Superman II and after the inital guilty one liners about Chritopher Reeve or Margot Kidder that regrettably pop into your consciousness (Or the further guilty musings that 'that's not the last time a fine snow of rubble fell over the streets of New York City' or 'That's not the last time a flying object ripped through several floors of the World Trade Centre'. America please forgive my poisonous mind that chats like the insane deformed cousin locked in the cellar like I forgive your right wing establishment or your biggoted boorish nature, I love you I'm going to hell!)
I Digress,
after all that it occurred to me that thanks to the unconscious education we as children received from these films, there is no wonder that for some of my generation, the apple never totally cleared the canopy of the tree. Here's a quick reminder of the plot and you'll get the point.
Superman gives up his power for the love of a woman despite the warnings of his parents that 'once it is done there is no going back'. One timely ass kicking later, he returns bloody and beaten to discover that indeed there is no going back. OH! except for that convenient escape clause we neglected to tell you about. No wonder some of us are full of bargaining against circumstance and unable to accept consequence and in the face of a bad decision choose to run back to our parents in search of a positive resolution.
I think that a more mature resolution to the film and a far less '80s blockbuster' angle would be ok Clark Kent gives up power gets ass kicking and killer line from Lois about 'where's the man I fell in love with' (ouch!) and the rest of his emotional journey is spent learning to deal with the fact he can't do what he did before. He can't be everyone's saviour or the toughest guy in the room, sometimes you have to be the bigger man and walk away from the dickhead who took your seat in a diner and possibly accepting that the woman he fell for is a fickle two bit skank who basically did fall for the hardest guy in the room. I think that our new humbled protagonist should spend the rest of his days in a Manhattan studio apartment writing a column filled with semetically sharp observations about life and his new found method of adaptablitiy. Sadly the film wasn't made this way and for some of us emerging from the ABC cinema, blurry eyed from the sun we'd been starved of for the past two hours or so, filled with the blind (no pun intended) optimism of one part youth two parts Hollywood razmatazz, being taught there was no such thing as absolute consequence if you bargain enough and that no one really needs to take responsibility for their bad decisions became the rule.
Remember that mother, next time I need money for Car Insurance