The Orwellian Paradox: Killing You For Your Own Good

Three decades ago, cultural commentator Neil Postman wrote in Amusing Ourselves to Death that television’s gradual replacement of the printing press has created a dumbed-down culture driven by mindless entertainment.

In this context, Postman claimed that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World correctly foresaw our dystopian future, as opposed to George Orwell’s 1984.
Contrary to Postman’s critique, however, the principles of Newspeak and doublethink, collectively known as Politically Correct thinking, dominate modern political discourse. Words are proscribed and by exluding them from acceptable language, thoughts are controlled because they cannot be expressed and therefore communicated. The widespread use of doublethink (A Liberal’s dilemmas) and a form of newspeak which inhibits free speech compels us to sterilse our language because truth and ideas may be offensive to those who hold differing opinions is a testament to Orwell’s profound insight into how language can be manipulated to restrict human thought.
In another precognitive literary work which I describe in Slaves To The Macine the poet Ted Hughes wrote of the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie), her feelings hurt because children did not believe in her any more, setting out on a journey to London to find out what is going on. On her way south she passes through towns and villages where people, glued to their televisions, have no curiosity about the mythical monster that is visiting their community.
With the growth of the internet things have become worse. There are many sites full off very interesting information but the majority of users want to be spoon fed a diet of trivia, sensationalism, celebrity gossip, goat porn and fart lighting videos.

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Jedward Proof Of Dumbing Down

Earlier this week we learned that the government regulator Ofqual is to investigate falling standards in schools, some bright spark having noticed there is a contradiction between the education industry’s claimes that rising grades and record numbers of exam passes each year are due to excellent teaching standards and pupils getting brighter and the complaints from employers that school leavers with a million A levels to their name can’t read, write or brew tea.

Boggart Blog has eidence to put before the enquiry that proves the world is dumbing down

In the last century, seeing as we are coming over all nostalgic today, Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid aka The Proclaimers entertained the world with their music, singing hit songs like Letter From America and 500 Miles.

Last night in the Eurovision Song Contest Irish twins Jonathan and Edwards Grimes aka those two little twats of the X Factor, aka Jedward entertained the world with their silly hairstyles and idiotic jumping around.

QED.

There Is Only One Man Dumber Than The Eurovision Song Contest

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Proof Of Dumbing Down In GCSE Exams

Every year as the percentage of those achieving top grades in GCSE exams continues to rise and the number of GCSEs gained by pupils continues to rise there is the usual debate about whether exams are becoming easier or kids more intelligent.

But now Boggartblog brings you the definitive proof that exams are indeed getting easier.

A young man has been sent down for two years for breaking into a house and attempting to steal a Playstation.

The robber was dubbed ‘The Brainiest Burglar in Britain’ when it was discovered that he has 17 GCSEs.

Proof of dumbing down in exams was demonstrated when it was also disclosed that he has 23 previous convictions.

Doh!

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Dumbing Down Our Expectations

We have all heard once more in the past week how A levels are getting easier, the usual geriatric whining that even mediocre students are now picking up 2million Grade As each when in the 1970s two A-levels at any grade was good going. We have also heard as usual that employers hiring people with two million A level Grade As are having to teach their new hirelings basic maths and English. But we oldies (i.e. over 35s) are missing the point.

We have computers to do the thinking now so why does society need educated people who can think for themselves. Modern society needs people who only know that you must never question authority, so while education is seen as the factor defining a persons worth then the education system must be geared to promote stupidity. It is absolutely unrealistic to expect people with A – levels to be able to write their own name.

The system’s success in dumbing down is unquestionable. Even thickissimo Glyn (I’m Welsh you know) from Big Brother managed to do well in his A levels despite:

( A ) being thicker than Jade.
( B ) being banged up in the Big Brother house on exam day.

But it is not just that the system suits the dimwitted, intelligent people have lost interest in education. As Oscar Wilde put it “nothing worth learning can possibly be taught.” Education is dull and uninspiring.

Lessons conforming to National Curriculum so alienate bright pupils that anybody with a grain of sense has given up on school by year eleven and is either a dotcom entrepreneur, a drug dealer or has joined a terrorist organisation.
So we should not bother ourselves about falling standards in school. The question we need to tackle is the redundancy of the human race.

Conspiracy Theory of the Month #1

Dumbing Down

Many commentators on the Right of the political spectrum have banged on for years about the steady lowering of standards in education. Left of Centre opinion holds that a different type of education is needed if modern children are to grow up able to cope with the emotional demands of post – industrial society. The truth ought to lie somewhere between these extremes but the Greenteeth investigative team have found what is actually going on to be much more sinister. Evidence suggests that the trend known as Dumbing Down has been engineered by a conspiracy of the Government, the Press and that bloke with the jam – jar bottom goggles on the Halifax ads.

Consider the evidence. When the social reformers of the nineteenth century introduced free education for all, the life expectancy of a human adult was 47 years. By the end of the century it was 74 years. Who but a stupid person would want an extra thirty four years of declining libido, failing memory, gradual loss of physical abilities and finally senility and incontinence?

The advantages of a stupid population to government, financial institutions and businesses are indisputable. The business benefits are obvious. A generation ago the majority of people understood money. You worked. Each week you got money. When that money was spent there was no more until payday. Simple. Everyone knew that spending more money than you had could only result in a visit from several big men with baseball bats. The idea was so good that humankind developed advanced civilisations using it as a model. Then somebody realised that if people could be encouraged to spend money they did not have the banks, rather than sitting on a pile of cash would own lots of debts which were earning interest.

Debts have to be secure of course. Give people £50000 and they will head for Vegas. Tell them “we will buy a house for £50000 which you pay for in installments and on the day it becomes yours it will be worth £100000 and they think its a great deal. To have something worth £100k, more money than our great grandparents dreamed existed, would appeal to anybody. Nobody reads in the small print that the bank only agrees to buy you a house for £50k so long as you pay back, over twenty years £250k. Also, so long as a person lives they need somewhere to live so homebuyers are only rich when they are dead. Anybody with a live brain cell knows its no fun being rich when you are dead so the establishment had to make sure there were plenty of dumb people to fall for it.

The house scam worked so well it was extended to cars, consumer goods and holidays. We are so stupid we all think we are affluent even though the money we are spending does not exist. The cash that the banks are advancing today is underwritten by the money we will earn tomorrow. In the end the Banks own everything. How dumb had we to be in order to fall for that.