"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" George Santayana.
I personally have never heard such an idiotic statement in our lives. The day America realizes how useless history is is going to be a day remembered forever. Sure, there are historic principles that need to be remembered today, but who cares in what years was FDR president? In the most recent release of NEWSWEEK from June 2, 2008 (http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536), wanna be intellectual Mark Bauerlein made the claim that today's generation is the dumbest generation in the history of man. He bases this claim off of the fact that my generation cannot recognize past people, are sub-par at geography and cannot recall useless historical facts.
Sure, maybe we are the dumbest generation by those standards, but we can call our parent's generation the dumbest if we use standards such as how to program a computer, how to set up an internet site, how to do modern math problems and criteria similar to this. Statistics can be so flawed so that any numskull can make any claim he wants. This kind of stuff gets me so angry, because no one will stand up to this guy because of fear of his self-tagged title of "intellectual." He's no better than anyone, but he just eliminated certain distractions along the way that normal people have trouble pushing aside. It also makes me angry because no one cares. I was irate after reading this article, but I'm sure that I am the only member of my school who read the article. Today's society may be the dumbest generation because the only topics worth talking about are parties and drama.
I also just finished reading 1984, by George Orwell, and this made me think about my generation a little more. It is evident that my generation could allow a totalitarianistic government to take control. We simply don't care. No one keeps up on current events, no one cares. Everyone is so egotistical in there own little world that anything that doesn't give immediate gratification is deemed useless.
So, all in all, we may be the dumbest generation. There are many more aspects to take into consideration than useless information, but if you are going to try and attempt it, use reasonable arguments. If we are the dumbest generation, we need to do something about it, before The Party takes over and we all are under the rule of Big Brother.
Well I do not believe that our generation is dumb. Now these days there is so much to remember that it is hard to remeber the most simple things. Some things in history are good to remember, but some are not. Good blog.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I agree that our generation is not dumb and that certain "ideas" of history are worth remembering, but when a person prides themselves on remembering trivial facts, this really gets me upset.