I was thinking about anti-intellectualism and the limiting of ideas in our national conversations. Our society is made more restrictive by limiting the number of things we can think about. If certain ideas are "beyond the pale" or "not worth thinking about" or "offensive" or whatever emotional label we can use to cordon them off, we can banish entire arenas of thought from our mental landscape if we accept these ideologies running through our culture. Ideologies increasingly promoted by corporate-owned media.

5 media companies own 95% of American media. In 1983, that number was 50. The diversity of the message is limited, and with this russian nesting-dolls game of corporate consolidation that has become all the rage over the last 30 years, people are now trapped in what is effectively a pro-corporate echo chamber, regardless of which channel you watch or popular website you go to.

The most irritating thing about all these ideologies is the strain of anti-intellectualism that has become so fashionable in the last decade or two. It's cool to be dumb, and it's annoying to ask too many questions. Our education system reinforces this, by training people that they're dumb unless they happen to be among the top 5% of students. These students then inevitably become attached to this system that rewards them, so it effectively makes all the most intelligent students very pro-authority, pro-"the system", because the system has always worked well for them. Then they are comfortable joining the military, working for the government, or working for large companies. So they are "captured" by large bureaucracies as a mindset, and become dependent on them to function and maintain a sense of self-value. This serves the status quo.

And the kids who didn't succeed in the system, well, they now hate the system because it told them they were failures. So they want to rebel against the system, not learn about it and work within it, but they're often too poor to do anything but remain agitated wage-slaves. Especially if you trick them in to taking out a bunch of debt, then they're trapped forever. They don't see legitimate ways to act to improve their situation on a long-term basis, and so all this pent-up energy gets put in to trivial spectacles like sports. They get the rage out in a way that doesn't challenge the power structures, and everyone is satisfied. Except the people stuck in the wage-slave lifestyles, of course.

Anyway, all these causes bleed in to the same effect: Anti-intellectualism. America hates people who are smart. People who ask too many questions suck. People who have "moral issues" with things are losers. Etc, etc. These are the ideas of a person who was wrung through the ringer of the school system and the media and the society we live in. These all feed anti-intellectualism, which serves to maintain the status quo. If smart people are never listened to (in terms of social organizing and things like this), then difficult problems will take much longer to fix. This serves the interests of the people already in power.

Anyway, some food for thought on a Friday evening. Curious if anyone else has anything to add.