Mediocre is good enough
Times are changing. In other words, things are not how they used to be. Also means there is nothing you can do about it. Whenever someone says this, they also mean things are going from bad to worse. If you want to sound like your grand-father, you can say that things used to be better before. Of course they were, it always has been like that. I am sure his father would have said the same.
Death of the Intellectual Aspirations
There used to be a time when we were growing up when everyone tried to learn more out of curiosity than out of compulsion. Although Nature has built in the firmware into Humans to be curious, it has also given them a brain which might override the curiosity in favor of being outright lazy, 'What difference does it make?'. Over years as the physical energy vanes, laziness takes over, and humans do not act on their intellectual curiosity. It can be observed that this intellectual laziness seems to be setting in even before one gets their college degree. Everyone seems to be interested in learning and gaining knowledge in what might earn them more money.
This is visible in the quiz competitions. There was a time when only highly intellectual quiz competition were held, these used to have questions which the mass audience did not know. Remember Brittania Quiz Competition, BBC Master-mind, and Jeopardy. At the time, everyone in the audience who did not know the answers would strive hard to learn more so they could increase their level to be able to answer them.
One could also see informative programming on television, people would go to lengths to listen to news and views on MW and SW channels on radio, and increase ones vocabulary to understand the excellent analysis by insightful writers in newspapers. If this is compared with today, it seemed a time of the upward trend in intellectual progress.
At some point in time, some of the business houses realized that by lowering the difficulty levels of quiz competition and churning out pointless drivel attracts more audience as they can understand it without having to 'think too much'. This seemed like a masterstroke which took their advertisement revenues off the roof. So this soon became the order of the day.
Today, the excellent content on Radio, TV, and newspapers has been replaced with programming that feeds the stagnating intellect. These are the times of never-ending soaps and sms-centric reality shows, annoying radio jockeys with their loud songs interspersed with advertisements on radio, and newspapers with most of the pages sold to different brands as advertisement slots and the rest occupied by articles which reeks of yellow journalism. The unfortunate part of all of this is people are lapping this up, ensuring more such "entertainment" are being prepared to fill up the spaces which are not already been occupied with such junk.
Thanks to the lack of stimulus and free availability of the pointless drivel, no one strives to improve upon their knowledge. So today we have generations of individuals who refuse to engage into serious rational discussions which could improve the thinking of everyone involved. The thrust today is on trivial, superficial knowledge, and entertainment. The population of such people has today increased to such large proportions that all the business who cater to such people are flourishing, and thus ensuring the remaining few firms who want to continue with highly intellectual programming are losing revenue. No viewer-ship means no advertisement revenues, which mean they must change to cater to the masses or shut shop.
Majority Wins! Weed out the Specialists
The mass population today has been successfully dumbed down to appreciate trivial shows such as “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” and other never ending soaps. Since they are being fed more and more of the same junk, they have become comfortable and do not see a need to change. Specialized programming by definition caters to specialized audience and hence a subset of the entire audience base, this is not lucrative from a business point of view. Population in generally has stopped expecting specialized services for their needs, they are very much willing to adapt their tastes to big business houses. Gone are the days where one would go to restaurants because they liked the food and ambiance there. These days everything is preprocessed, cooked just-in-time, and served hot. To ensure the mass produced food is catered to larger audience, the tastes are kept neutral. The population at large have adapted to these neutral tastes and thus ensuring the demise of specialized caterers.
This lack of appreciation of specialization and excellence has crept in to all aspects of our lives. Take simple household furniture, the price point is the most important aspect today, thus telling the manufacturers that do whatever it takes to keep the price low. Creating something above average and specialized costs more money, this in turn increases the price of the product. Thus Chinese and Malaysian mass produced furniture sells more than locally handcrafted furniture. Mass produced furniture is lower in quality due to the lower quality of the raw material, but that is not a factor when the end price is much lower.
Thus today the mass population in general does not expect excellence if the price is right, and is not willing to pay extra for better quality. It has come to a point that these days everyone is just concerned about getting the job done, not well done! Businesses have understood this and have moved out of all the areas where innovation is required and have started focusing on areas where things can be mass produced. Thus specialists are being weeded out and are being replaced by resources that are expected to push predefined buttons. By doing this we are telling the population in general that it pays not to specialize, and stay at a level where you are not required to think too much.
All in all we are saying excelling is not required, mediocrity is good enough. Since we are asking the majority population to not worry about improving themselves, they are readily getting comfortable with their intellect or lack of it and do not have the desire to improve it. To take a totally pessimistic view: eventually all the remaining aspiring intellectuals will be weeded out or converted to mediocrity. As one thing is true in this age, Mediocrity sells!
Death of the Intellectual Aspirations
There used to be a time when we were growing up when everyone tried to learn more out of curiosity than out of compulsion. Although Nature has built in the firmware into Humans to be curious, it has also given them a brain which might override the curiosity in favor of being outright lazy, 'What difference does it make?'. Over years as the physical energy vanes, laziness takes over, and humans do not act on their intellectual curiosity. It can be observed that this intellectual laziness seems to be setting in even before one gets their college degree. Everyone seems to be interested in learning and gaining knowledge in what might earn them more money.
This is visible in the quiz competitions. There was a time when only highly intellectual quiz competition were held, these used to have questions which the mass audience did not know. Remember Brittania Quiz Competition, BBC Master-mind, and Jeopardy. At the time, everyone in the audience who did not know the answers would strive hard to learn more so they could increase their level to be able to answer them.
One could also see informative programming on television, people would go to lengths to listen to news and views on MW and SW channels on radio, and increase ones vocabulary to understand the excellent analysis by insightful writers in newspapers. If this is compared with today, it seemed a time of the upward trend in intellectual progress.
At some point in time, some of the business houses realized that by lowering the difficulty levels of quiz competition and churning out pointless drivel attracts more audience as they can understand it without having to 'think too much'. This seemed like a masterstroke which took their advertisement revenues off the roof. So this soon became the order of the day.
Today, the excellent content on Radio, TV, and newspapers has been replaced with programming that feeds the stagnating intellect. These are the times of never-ending soaps and sms-centric reality shows, annoying radio jockeys with their loud songs interspersed with advertisements on radio, and newspapers with most of the pages sold to different brands as advertisement slots and the rest occupied by articles which reeks of yellow journalism. The unfortunate part of all of this is people are lapping this up, ensuring more such "entertainment" are being prepared to fill up the spaces which are not already been occupied with such junk.
Thanks to the lack of stimulus and free availability of the pointless drivel, no one strives to improve upon their knowledge. So today we have generations of individuals who refuse to engage into serious rational discussions which could improve the thinking of everyone involved. The thrust today is on trivial, superficial knowledge, and entertainment. The population of such people has today increased to such large proportions that all the business who cater to such people are flourishing, and thus ensuring the remaining few firms who want to continue with highly intellectual programming are losing revenue. No viewer-ship means no advertisement revenues, which mean they must change to cater to the masses or shut shop.
Majority Wins! Weed out the Specialists
The mass population today has been successfully dumbed down to appreciate trivial shows such as “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” and other never ending soaps. Since they are being fed more and more of the same junk, they have become comfortable and do not see a need to change. Specialized programming by definition caters to specialized audience and hence a subset of the entire audience base, this is not lucrative from a business point of view. Population in generally has stopped expecting specialized services for their needs, they are very much willing to adapt their tastes to big business houses. Gone are the days where one would go to restaurants because they liked the food and ambiance there. These days everything is preprocessed, cooked just-in-time, and served hot. To ensure the mass produced food is catered to larger audience, the tastes are kept neutral. The population at large have adapted to these neutral tastes and thus ensuring the demise of specialized caterers.
This lack of appreciation of specialization and excellence has crept in to all aspects of our lives. Take simple household furniture, the price point is the most important aspect today, thus telling the manufacturers that do whatever it takes to keep the price low. Creating something above average and specialized costs more money, this in turn increases the price of the product. Thus Chinese and Malaysian mass produced furniture sells more than locally handcrafted furniture. Mass produced furniture is lower in quality due to the lower quality of the raw material, but that is not a factor when the end price is much lower.
Thus today the mass population in general does not expect excellence if the price is right, and is not willing to pay extra for better quality. It has come to a point that these days everyone is just concerned about getting the job done, not well done! Businesses have understood this and have moved out of all the areas where innovation is required and have started focusing on areas where things can be mass produced. Thus specialists are being weeded out and are being replaced by resources that are expected to push predefined buttons. By doing this we are telling the population in general that it pays not to specialize, and stay at a level where you are not required to think too much.
All in all we are saying excelling is not required, mediocrity is good enough. Since we are asking the majority population to not worry about improving themselves, they are readily getting comfortable with their intellect or lack of it and do not have the desire to improve it. To take a totally pessimistic view: eventually all the remaining aspiring intellectuals will be weeded out or converted to mediocrity. As one thing is true in this age, Mediocrity sells!
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