The dearth of superiority

A discussion with my friend recently spurred me to write the topic for today's entry. Superiority. Whose? Ours.

Have you ever noticed that over the years, as our collective and specialist knowledge gets more and more advanced and higher, the base knowledge of the average people gets more and more..diluted? In other words, we're getting dumber as we get smarter?

Allow me to explain my perplexing statement. How are we getting smarter? As I said, more and more knowledge was dredged from the deep mysteries of the universe. Rate of new knowledge discoveries keep on increasing. We are definitely marching into the future with confidant stride...but only for the elite few. And how are we dumber? Look at the school going children nowadays. Instead of acquiring more knowledge (relatively), they are acquiring less than those of their forebears. Examination questions the world over was 'watered' down so that more child could pass, thus ensuring that "No Child Left Behind", which ironically means that all child move ahead in life dumber. Passing grades continue to fall over the years in an effort to 'pass' all students for (of all reasons) the purpose of obtaining 100% passes!! This is ridiculous!!

There you see why as we grow smarter as a species, we also, at the same time, grow dumber as each component member of Homo Sapien grows dumber? It is only by averaging the sum total can we get an increasing average year by year. I'll leave the maths to you. I'm too dumb to count. LOL!

What does this mean then? So what if they get dumber? Why indeed..."So what!" indeed.

In case you haven't noticed, we need to get off this rock, this 3rd rock from the Sun. It is getting too crowded, and the faster we get off this rock, the better the chances of humans surviving our next meteor strike (tentatively 'scheduled' in several thousand years). And the faster we spread through space, the faster will our base collective knowledge grows, and the faster our knowledge grows, the faster we will step up to our next step in evolution...(actually, I don't know what's our next step in evolution...)!

Now, to get there, first we need to intensify the collection of knowledge. Spread this across the entire human race, it translates into more people generating knowledge. But knowledge cannot be generated by just any people. Only a small percentage does, and to get that small percentage, a huge percentage needs to be there to support them. It is akin to saying "Training a thousand to find the one.". But the quality of the Few depends on the quality of the whole. This said means that only smart people can breed smarter geniuses. And smart people can only be groomed if the standard of knowledge transmission (layman term: schooling!!) is not compromised!

In other simpler terms, the standards of the exams must be tougher, more challenging. Rewards should be given to the top achievers. Mediocrity should be discouraged. And the useless discarded, if possible. Imagine, if more people were rewarded for revolutionary breakthroughs, wouldn't it be better for us?