The Griffon News

I have an 84 I.Q.

That is merely 14 points above the topside of mild mental retardation.

Despite this, I am not a stupid person.

I may have questioned some of the wisdom I let dictate my life upon retrospection but that has lead to me to forming the “Decade Hypothesis.” The hypothesis is based on the idea that if you look back ten years and reflect upon your wisdom, you will ultimately find it lacking, and this is a constant.

Try it now. Ask yourself a few questions.

In 1994 did you dance to the “Macarena”?

Would you dance to that same song when 2004 came around?

In 1996, did you think the Backstreet Boys were a really good band?

Did the movie previews lead you to believe that “Independence Day” was going to the best movie ever? Maybe this is just me. Needless to say, every ten years you can look back and realize that you were a moron and an idiot.

Ten years from now I will look back and laugh at what a moron and idiot I used to be.

So what does intelligence prove anyway?

How does one define what it is to be smart?

Surely it is not just the ability to read and memorize.

Ask any high school English teacher and they will tell you there is a difference in reading with comprehension and scanning a page, downloading that data in your brain frame and then erasing it after you have gotten your uses of that tidbit of knowledge.

I bet everyone can remember that girl back in high school who achieved straight As and was in all the honors classes but still she daily fell for the trick where you get her to look for the footprints on the ceiling. Ah, you remember her now.

Soren Kierkegaard, recognized as the first existential philosopher, once said “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

So many people in the world today have these brilliant machines of logic resting just behind their eyes, but they don’t ever set the mental wheels to spinning. Intelligence in its inert potential state means nothing. When I was younger I worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store.

I was amazed at how many times I saw literate people trying to operate a fountain machine that was clearly marked “Out of Order,” or how many times people asked me where the bathroom was when they were standing in front of a large sign designating that very fact with a big red arrow.

Clearly literate doesn’t mean someone takes the mental effort to read.

So are we getting less intelligent as a society?

Rumors abound the information super highway about secret societies planning the “dumbing down” of America, and we are falling behind in international university ratings in math and sciences, but there is evidence that on average, the human intelligence quotient is actually rising.

We are capable of producing more spectacular works of art than ever before, but some of the most watched television shows are “The Bachelor” and “Dancing with the Stars.”

The answer falls on your furrowed brows.

Ask yourself if you can name the primary colors of the print on the books you lug to and fro campus everyday. I couldn’t.

Each day we have to get those synapses snapping and let the brainstorms have their global climate changes, because baby, it is time! In the words of 19th century English economist and author, Harriet Martinea, “Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.”