Comment: Disturbing trend lines

A phenomenon little known outside the realms of psychologists is the “Flynn effect”. This concerns the constant increase in IQ test scores over time. The average rate observed is about 3 points per decade. This does not sound much, but it means that someone with average intelligence and therefore scoring 100 on such tests today would register as being 26% more intelligent than someone scoring 100 in 1930. This trend seems to have taken place on a global scale and at all levels of test score, so even the most intelligent are becoming smarter than in previous times.

However, with this rise in intelligence have come three other significant overall changes – a declining interest in geographical, historical and philosophical knowledge; a sharp reduction in attention spans; and a growth in egotism.

Back in 1999, the US educational standards body ACTA surveyed seniors at the nation’s 55 most prestigious colleges and universities to see if they could answer basic questions about US history from the school-level national curriculum. 81% of the seniors failed miserably. Then in 2012 they repeated the exercise, this time with graduates. The results were even more appalling. There is also ample evidence from a sharp fall in students taking majors in both history and geography. A favourite question of mine when interviewing Greek job candidates is to ask them to tell me about the Peloponnesian wars. Despite being not only the most significant series of events of ancient times, the consequence of this conflict changed the course of subsequent history and set back the course of advancing civilisation. Yet by far the majority of Greeks interviewed knew little or nothing about these events that took place in their own country. The philosopher Edmund Burke once pointed out that “those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it” and in business those who care little for the lessons of the past are hardly fit to command its future.

More disturbing still is the falling duration of attention spans. TV advertisers have known for years that the old standard 1-minute advert was losing its impact. Gradually the point at which people stop engaging with an ad has fallen so that today 50% of people have disengaged by 30 seconds into the video – no matter what clever devices are used to retain attention. The same goes for Internet browsing – with only 17% of people, on average, now staying on a website for longer than 4 seconds. In fact, even if they stay on a page, on average only 28% of words on it are read.

The principal conditioning force – as we all know – is social media. It is so familiar now to see couples in restaurants and cafes each locked into separate worlds as they flick their way through Facebook or WeChat. But what they view is also part of the creeping malaise. Millions of people each day track their every move, their every meal, shopping trip and human interaction with photos and twitter-like descriptions. But what they portray is largely window dressing. Photoshopped images, false claims and portrayals to make their dull lives impress others amongst their thousands of online “friends”. The selfie is now the norm and the ego on a roll. But where are these trends collectively taking us?

At the heart of the matter is the fact that although intelligence is rising and is (in statistical terms) “normally distributed”, there is much evidence to suggest that morality has always been bimodally distributed – i.e., half of the population in all countries are basically honest and half are basically dishonest. In what way, therefore, will a lack of geo-historical knowledge, falling attention spans and increased preoccupation with the self impact on this matrix of rising intelligence divided according to the perennial dichotomy of morality?

Curiously, present trends may be acting as a pre-conditioning process materialising via the big drop in employment that has already hit many young people in the West. But will not the progressive rise in intelligence eventually win out and populations react suddenly and sharply to their falling life chances? In many ways this is happening already, especially to those who are deprived of a university education. It is therefore maybe just a chance outcome – like the flip of a coin – which side of the moral divide will finally take a dominant position after the social change that inevitably lies ahead.

Past visionaries have often been surprisingly accurate in their predictions. So much of Oswald Spengler’s fears in his famous 1919 book “Decline of the West” have proven to be true. Perhaps, as he foresaw, we are witnessing the last death pangs of western civilisation? He estimated that by the year 2000, modern democracy would be passed its zenith and that authoritarianism would then take hold and last for two millennia. Certainly democracy (if it ever truly existed) has had its day.

The Achilles heel – and great threat to despotic rule – is technological change. This both extends the range for social control, but also potentially undermines it. Business must ride like “piggy in the middle” of these conflicting trends, hoping that it will be able to mould itself to whatever shape of circumstances arise. My guess is that the mounting intelligence of coming generations will eventually allow them to break the chains being wound around them by political and economic forces and lead to a fundamental change that we can neither foresee nor readily adapt to with the present personnel skill base that we have.

 

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