I was on the way to Walmart this morning just after 5:30. They opened at 6 and I had my first cup of coffee beside me so I would wait the five or ten minutes there and enjoy a stolen quiet moment alone.
It was pitch black across the skies as sunrise wouldn’t be for another hour and a half and there was no hint yet of any brightening that gave me any type of horizon.
My normal route to Walmart takes me along some unlit country roads, so other than an occasional traffic light and some oncoming traffic, this was very much a drive into darkness.
The car was using automatic headlights, which is where I normally leave them. When it detects darkness it comes on and in brightness they turn off. You probably have the same.
I had been thinking about possums before I left the house and how this time of day is a very common time for them to be returning to their homes after a night of foraging. So, I adopted a very keen sense of awareness and concentration so that I wouldn’t scare or heaven-forbid, kill one.
Half way through the drive it suddenly dawned on me that the headlights were in their naturally dipped state, so I threw them onto full head.
The difference was startling. You may not notice it that much when driving city streets or on well lit roads, but do that on a dark country road and you see one hell of a difference.
Anyway, I asked myself why I hadn’t done that earlier as the difference fully supported my need to be more aware and concentrate on what might be on the road.
And that’s when the thought for this morning’s blog occurred to me. A growing majority of people now have these types of lights in their cars and completely rely on them to activate when it gets dark and the restore again at brightness.
In fact, I read recently that 28% of Millennials don’t even know how to switch their headlights onto full. Such has been the reliance on a car’s ability to function automatically for them.
The car’s use of technology to take over functions that we oldies had to do is obviously helpful and possibly even increases safe driving aspects. Things like blind-spot detection sensors, proximity sensors for reversing, seat belt alarms, passenger seat sensors for airbags, and that wonderful reminder that you get when you are into the last fifty miles of gas in your tank. Mine even tells me again at 40 , 30, 20, and 10.
Tomorrow’s cars (some of you might even have them already) automatically drive for you, park for you, brake for you.
The level of the dumbing down effect on us is quite emphatic and that is what concerns me.
But this is way more than just cars. It took me years to get my camera off auto mode. I initially (like most of you) left the intelligence of the camera decide on exposure, focus, aperture, ISO …. all the stuff that makes a picture, in fact.
The ability to just point and shoot is wonderfully comfortable and I would be lying to say that I never use it any more. I absolutely do. But only in instances where I am busy doing something else, or need to be able to catch a creature that is moving quickly.
By the way, the pictures at the end of the blog were ones I took a couple of months ago with a peacock feather that I found on my driveway. I wanted an example that I hadn’t already used that would show what manual control of the camera allowed me to capture.
Sorry they aren’t new ones, but I hope you enjoy, anyway!
Anyway, back to the point of this blog.
Our reliance on automatic functionality is happening around us and while in many ways such a shift helps us in life, we end up paying an awful price for it. And worse still we don’t even know that we are paying any price at all.
Our reliance on car dings and alarms is such that because there isn’t one that tells us a child is locked into a child-seat in the back, means that in the US alone an average of 38 children die from heat stroke every year after their parents forgot about them in a locked car.
I failed in finding out when the first child-death like this was, but I suspect that this is a rather new phenomenon. At the very least, it has now become so common that it barely makes the news cycle any more.
But my point isn’t really about how tragic events occur because of the level of automation we have allowed into our lives. It is more about the gradual dumbing down that we have so willingly accepted.
There used to be a time when children going through a school system graduated with a pretty decent percentage of the knowledge needed to embark on life. I don’t know what the percentage is, but let’s imagine it is somewhere around 40% and then over time, the graduated child picks up more knowledge through work, or even life experiences, until one day as a mature adult, they have a pretty decent handle of around 60 to 70% of what they need to know in life.
I am pulling these percentages out of my ass but in reality, the actual numbers are unimportant to the point I am trying to make.
You see, the educational system and then the assimilation in life is probably still hitting the same percentages of what we need to know as functional citizens.
But when automated processes assume the responsibilities for us, in a world that is inherently more complex, we actually end up knowing much less than our predecessors. We become dumbed down.
Don’t believe me? As yourself why we graduate so many children that don’t know the basics of geography or history any more. The answer is that they are taught how to look it up online, should they need it. So, they realize they don’t have to remember it. Just know where to find it.
And therein in lies the problem. Not knowing where the Ukraine is geographically, isn’t a disaster. Although I bet you that 50% of graduating students couldn’t even point correctly to where it is on the globe.
But not knowing what Soviet expansionism was historically, is a disaster. When you don’t know history, you will be inclined to react to things like increased gas prices at the pump as being a failure of the current administration, rather than the reality of how the world is reacting to try to stop this expansionism from re-occurring. So, in the mid-terms you run out and vote republican because Fox news tells you to.
Way beyond politics is the universal level of dumbing down that allows machines to take on functions and processes that we humans once did, or at least knew how to do. Machines are great. I truly believe that. But humans have a responsibility to know more than the machines we use.
Unfortunately humans are lazy and often just happy to not even think about it.
I know several people whose property is less than a quarter acre and yet they have rider mowers. And even others that use a lawn service.
We are happy to delegate tasks which we consider menial, to someone or something else and the fatter and lazier we get, the more menial everything seems to be.
… just a thought!
