From: pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel)
Subject: Re: The Marching Morons (was Re: Cindy the Disco Queen)
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 00:34:23 GMT

dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz) writes:
>In article <pete.725064249@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> pete@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Peter Alexander Merel) writes:

>> around the planet gives you power beyond the wildest dreams of most people on
>> the planet, for whom the twentieth century provides much the same level of
>> creature comfort and cultural advancement as the 19th, or for that matter the
>> first.

>Actually, if you look at the global statistics, the average person
>today is much better off than he would have been 100 years ago.
>Global life expectancy is up, average nutrition is up, literacy rates
>are at all time highs (the number, not just the fraction, of people
>who are illiterate is declining), and average wealth is up.  About the
>only places not making real progress are parts of Africa.

Interesting. I'll accept your stats for the sake of continuity, but I'd like
to know where you derive them from. Club of Rome?

If true they certainly put the kybosh on my 'creature comfort' comment,
but I'm not certain that they bear on the 'moron meme' idea. If we
refer back to Kornbluth's story, (which I confess I do not have handy,
so corrections will be gratefully accepted) I don't believe he
suggested that his morons were illiterate, just useless.

What I mean is that simply being able to read does not imply any more mental
agility than being able to understand the spoken word. If literacy, and even
basic numeracy are on the increase this means nothing except that an increasing
number of adults on the planet have the abilities that we would expect from a
well educated seven year old child. An adult with _only_ those abilities imho
qualifies as a moron.

>China, a place of periodic famine in the last century, is now poised
>to become the next "tiger" of the pacific rim.  Per capita GNP there
>will reach US levels within several decades at current growth rates.
>China's economy could exceed the size of the entire OECD's by the year
>2010 (source: The Economist.)

A good case in point. China, the most populous nation on the planet, has 
contributed very little to the great twentieth century enlightenment that
we enjoy. Its population is for the most part healthy and well fed, literate
and numerate, able workers and warm and loving people. But they do little by 
way of science and art.

The popular explanation for this lack is that their government is totalitarian
and brutal, suppressing such things in order to maintain its control. However
there are many nations on the planet that have been subject to such oppression,
and they have shrugged it off. China shows no sign of doing so. Why? 

Could it be because the population of mainland China largely consists
largely of "morons"?  It will be interesting (in the Confucian sense) 
to observe the 1997 assimilation of Hong Kong into mainland Chinese
society ... we might imagine that, should they come to power, the HK
residents would find themselves faced with a predicament not at all
unlike that of Kornbluth's atavistic man.

-- 
Internet: pete@extro.su.oz.au             UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!munnari!extro!pete
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