Intelligence related to society/media?

[GinnyLyn]

[color=crimson]This is just something that's bothered me for a while now. Here in America, we have many different kinds of people, cultures, and beliefs. Yet, it seems to me, more and more, that failure to keep up with the latest tv show episodes is given more jeers than keeping up with the latest information on the news. Yet the news seems just as contrived, sometimes, as the tv shows.

My question is, do you think that intelligence is based on just how much of society you are expected to know, understand, and possibly even support? (I hope I'm making some sense.) What about common sense and wisdom?

More and more I feel shut out of people's problems because they feel that I am too cheerful to seriously talk about bad things (NOT TRUE!) or that I'm just not intelligent enough (I'm more of an emotion based person than a logic one).[/color]

[Phantom]

[quote]do you think that intelligence is based on just how much of society you are expected to know, understand, and possibly even support?[/quote]I'm not sure, but I think your knowlege and understanding, maybe even supporting of society doesnt measure your intelligence..

[quote]What about common sense and wisdom?[/quote]It is all so different...Common sense is a different type of smarts than Wisdom...and wisdom is not even the same as knowlege...

Intelligence is not the know all end all...but, it is definately not measured by how much you know about society or how much common sense or wisdom you have....

Well I feel for you...about being shut out...but, maybe its not your fault...maybe they just dont want you help them..or in retrospect, hurt them....or dig into their personal stuff..I dont know...

[Dan L]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by GinnyLyn [/i]
[B][color=crimson]This is just something that's bothered me for a while now. Here in America, we have many different kinds of people, cultures, and beliefs. Yet, it seems to me, more and more, that failure to keep up with the latest tv show episodes is given more jeers than keeping up with the latest information on the news. Yet the news seems just as contrived, sometimes, as the tv shows.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE]

I watch very little TV any more, to be honest. The odd bit here and there. Because the News and Media are very selective. They rarely say a direct untruth, but they say truths out of all proportion, to mess with people's emotions, and to make them feel angry, sad, sympathetic, etc. A good example of this was a friend of my Mum's. He had terminal cancer, and was a doctor. He was planning a huge study, and the local newspaper decided to do a feature about it. Rather than talking about the study (which is a [i]really[/i] important study, and doesn't need a lot of words to describe why).. they focussed on the fact that he was dying, to get the sympathy of the readers.

In short.. media isn't about information as much as it's about [i]selling[/i] information. Which is perfectly understandable, but I choose not to go with that..

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by GinnyLyn [/i]
[B][color=crimson]My question is, do you think that intelligence is based on just how much of society you are expected to know, understand, and possibly even support? (I hope I'm making some sense.) What about common sense and wisdom? [/color][/B][/QUOTE]

If intelligence is based on knowing about all the latest in the world of soap operas, celebrity gossip, fashion, and whatever the latest trend is (which are just as much part of society as the News), then I choose to be ignorant and blissful.

I think intelligence is based on various things. There's different types, for a start.. theres the kind based on knowledge, and interpretation and application of that knowledge, and there's the emotional kind. I don't think keeping up with society shows intelligence, but it helps if people are going to talk about such things..

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by GinnyLyn [/i]
[B][color=crimson]More and more I feel shut out of people's problems because they feel that I am too cheerful to seriously talk about bad things (NOT TRUE!) or that I'm just not intelligent enough (I'm more of an emotion based person than a logic one).[/color] [/B][/QUOTE]

(very Christian oriented reply) we had a guy speaking at C.U. last week.. he left school at 14, by dismissal, and no other school would accept him after that. Up until 10 years ago, he was a drug dealer in liverpool, until he saw a vision of Jesus in a nightclub and was converted. He's one the the wisest, and most helpful guys I've met. There's a similar (in terms of education, at least) story behind an American guy I know of, called Ken Blue..

If those two can help people through bad times, with that much intelligence, I'm sure you can ;)

[Guest cloricus]

I'm not sure if you mean this in relation to TV shows or different classes in society?

If you are talking about classes in society I have been in the position to live in all the social classes, from the extremely rich the very poor.
(With out being either ? My family is middle-class)
So I find it very easy to blend in with any situation easily.

There is the problem of your views in society with this though.
For example I know some of my friends dislike rich people for the reason they are rich, now I've known many rich people and in their own way they are very good people but they are still dislike by people who have no idea about this so I normally just stay out of it and I normally put it down to gelasy(sp?) (on the friends part) but if I get asked what I think of those people and I say what I think I get told I'm wrong and get excluded. (Last case of this happening was when Raven was going on about some thing. I'm saying that so in future you don't ask me.)

Cultures and Beliefs mix in to these in a very complexes mesh.

[Charles]

Today, there's not much of a difference between children and adults. Children smoke, drink, have sexual intercourse, and know more about technology than most adults. The only difference between an adult and a child, presently, is awareness and knowledge of what is going on in the world.

Television, peoples' favorite soap operas and whatnot, are just distractions. They're instruments put in front of you to keep you from being aware--from asking questions. Without television, people would be worlds more political, aware of what's going on in the actual world.

The politicians probably love television, lol. Without it, people would be a lot less optimistic about having their civil liberties stripped away in favor of "safety precautions."

So, basically, the television stops you from thinking, excluding good, national news. Basically, television tells individuals what is acceptable, how to think and what to think.

[James]

[color=#507AAC]I would not say that the media and society affect a person's intelligence.

Rather, it affects their ignorance/knowledge level. You can be an intelligent person (with a high IQ) without actually knowing a hell of a lot. And if society continually bombards you with a certain message, then that is what you will accept as the truth or the moral norm. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's right...it's just a message that society at large sends.

An example might be singers like Brittany Spears and such. A lot of adults complain that they promote an "over-sexualization" of children. And it could be argued that some kids with more ignorance (and less knowledge) are going to follow that example. Whereas kids who are confident in themselves and who have a wider variety of knowledge might not choose to dress in a certain way.

I'm not saying that I approve or disapprove...just that the media has different effects on different people.

Sometimes the media annoys me because it can be very dishonest. Other times, I see media reports that truly cut through all the crap and expose something important. In reality, it's hard to use the word "media" as if it's just one entity. There are many media organizations; some more reputable than others. And I think the key with the media, as with almost anything else, is to be informed. As I've said before, watch a wide variety of news...read news and hear news on the radio. Listen to multiple sources and points of view.

That is really the only way to ensure that you're getting the right information. Or at the very least, that you are getting enough variety to form a balanced opinion.[/color]

[vegeta rocker]

I believe that enviroment is a major factor. Age i have learned is usually not as important in intelligence of the likes of technology. when it comes to commom sense however, that must come with experience.
I believe that i have common sense and am smart in certain areas. For example, i can write a A+ paper yet i still don't know what an integer is.

[Solo Tremaine]

Building on what James said:

There's a difference between knowledge and common sense, and 'intelligence', I'd say, is how well you are able to apply your knowledge to a situation, using common sense. If you have no common sense, you may be knowledgable, but if you can't do anything with all those things you know you might as well not know them. Knowing exactly who J.Lo is going out with now isn't exactly what I'd call a measure of intelligence. If you have common sense, it doesn't really matter how much knowledge you have because you'll more or less always be able to react in the right way to a given problem or situation, regardless of how little or how much you know.

I belive that the media and society may indirectly affect our intelligence, but not hugely. They may well affect your perception of various situations, which will affect your ability to make decisions in a social environment (and could be why there's an increase in certain behaviours). Like Deus said, the media's very sleective and this can make people see things in a certain way or from a certain viewpoint, so as to influence you- adverts do it all the time. So, it can affect your views and perceptions, but not necessarily your intelligence as a whole unless you consider intelligence a good knowledge of current affairs. Which I don't. It's good to know what's going on, but your intelligence is a greater measure of your overall levels of knowledge and common sense.

I apologise for any incoherence. I just ate.

[Kent]

Well, thats an interesting question.

I would have to say that the average person is being reflected wrongly in a large percent of the studies we all here about.

But I also do think that people have lost a sense of "importance" in the things they think about during daily life. (importance in terms of news and current events, as well as certain levels of "cultural interest")

The mis-representation I was referring to is most likely related to groups doing studies in urban areas that are already suffering from bad statistics in terms of reading, history, science and math scores.

But its also important to note that a large percent of the people interviewed and aired on news specials are people doing things like walking around on a college campus. Thats a horrible sign for the future, mostly because the urban stats can be fixed with work and care, the college grads that dont know where yemen is, are a much larger almost unfixable problem.

I do believe that you have a valid point, and I would personally support you.

It seems that a large percent of people under 35 have no interest in anything besides the most recent episode of friends. Even worse is the fact that, the lack of knowledge doesnt keep these fools from sticking their face into politics, activism and the recording of history. Oh well, we all have that right.

Plus, the biggest thing of importance to me with this growing problem is the fact that it is going almost completly un-noticed, simply because a large percent of the generation before the problem were semi/ if not more than that, responsible for the problems existance.

I believe the only way to answer these sorts of problems is to do away with over powerful teacher's unions which manage to dodge the blame when it is their fault (they also always seem to be able to blame the probs. on under funding). We also need to place more importance on teaching the urban areas with no lowered standards. Money cant fix these problems. We need to face them head on with work, concentration and close attention to the general population as well as the "problem elements." (those elements being the learning disabled and the less fortunate that dont have a home life to support and match the effort that the public servants are putting into each child.)

But the real catch with all of what I said is that it starts with the adults in the situation. (f' the college students, I'm in that group and I've got no problems with current events, so there are no excuses for their dumb butts.)

Point is, adults need to wanna help. We need to lose the teachers who are teaching even though they hate it. We need people who are willing to put just as much and more effort into the work they ask of the children.

Yes this is a problem, but the young ones can be taken care of. The people my age are just S.O.L.

Lets worry about the future, because the people my age are just not interesting in the more complex issues facing modern american (and global) culture.

(oh yea, I just love to rant on edu. so I can help fight those nasty anti-republican stereotypes.)

[Anna]

The word "sophistication" comes to my mind; "the quality or character of being intellectually sophisticated through cultivation or experience or disillusionment", "to cause to become less natural, especially to make less naive and more worldly", "to make more complex or inclusive; refine". The first and third definitions ought to be the sought-for standard for people truly seeking to grow intelligently, while the second definition is what things like the media try to pass off as best way to get there. Intelligence and wisdom come through experience of trial and error, or by watching others' mistakes and avoiding their footsteps. These trials "refine" character and actually teach one about the world. But to be "worldly" means to be [i]of[/i] the world. It is possible--and this is a creed that I live by--to be [i]in[/i] the world, and yet not [i]of[/i] it. To achieve this balance of living and striving amidst today's confusion and still come out as unscathed as possible takes true intelligence.

[Mitch]

[color=red] I believe true intelligence is found through correctifying the wrongs and rights, via experience. But, there's also book smarts, and the whatnot else.

Media, by no means, is complete intelligence. It has its intelligence increasing ways, but to truely be intelligent, one has to take the initiative to find it.

As for society. Things such as TV only serve, as CWB said, to dumbify the country as a whole into believing that questions should not be asked, and that they should contrast their lives by it. Ah, yet again, this brings up another good thing. [i]Farenheit 451[/i]. In the book, Montag's wife is consumed by her 'family' as she calls it. This 'family' is her 'viewing wall', a futuristic interpatation of what TV's would maybe once become. It's a large screen, four of them, covering all sides of a room. And in the society in the book, the people are not allowed to think, to ask why. They watch TV, they let that become their answers, let it entertain them.

Also in this society, fireman do the ironic opposite of what they should. They burn books, and any people whom read them, and keep them. But, this is mainly done because these books would allow the people to 'think' 'ask' and 'wonder'. In the story, Montag is a fireman. He then comes across a peculiar girl, and his thoughts change. I'm not going to give it all away...because I've rather gone off topice, but, suffice to say, my main point is that is how our society may one day become.

A mindless whole entity that never asks, only does.[/color]

[PiroMunkie]

[color=indigo]In a somewhat ironic kind of sense, there was an episode of [i]Boy Meets World[/i] that had a similar kind of message of what you speak of, lol. It featured some of the main characters going on a gameshow, which was kind of like a "Knowledge Bowl", where they would ask scholarly questions. Two of the three characters were not really all that intelligent (when it comes to textbooks anyway). Despite their ignorance for the game, their spunky and "hip" attitudes heightened the ratings of the game. So the producers changed the overall appearance and point of the game. They put themed dancers on, bright and colorful lights, and questions that dealt with such things as the "X-Men". All of the "nerdy" (no offense Nerdsy, or anyone else who may take effense to such) teams they put them up against could not compete because they were all book smart. After a while, their teacher/mentor person made them see that they had destroyed what that gameshow was originally for. Feeling guilty, the people decided to duck out of the show, but the producers did not want that, because they had to keep the show "fresh" to get bigger sponsors to support them. So the producers brought in another trio of "hip" people, and when it came down to the final tie-breaker question, they asked one of the three main characters "Who invented the printing press?" Which, "coincidentally" happened to be what they were learning in school at the time, but the refused to pay attention since they thought that since they were doing well on the show, they were already smart enough to 'make it' in the world. So they did not know the answer to the question, and faced that embarassment. They next day they arrived early for class. When the teacher came in, the one that missed the question raised his hand, and stated that it was Johann Gutenburg who invented the printing press. The teacher acknowledged that saying that he believed he taught you that. One of the other two raised his hand, and asked "Will you teach us something else?".

So in short [size=1](too late, lol)[/size], being up on the latest hype will not get you much of anywhere. It is real knowledge that counts.

I do agree with the others in the fact that wisdom and common sense are different than knowledge.


If you would like a less society-related explanation about how society and media not something to base your intelligence on, I could put an excerpt from this excerpt from [i]Self-Reliance[/i] by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We read it recently in my English/American Literature class. It just speaks about how you would be better off trusting yourself, rather than listening to what the masses have to say. It is pretty thought provoking. You have to love those Transcendentalists. ^_^ [size=1](ohh, how much I love that word...)[/size][/color]

[Kent]

Ok, I just wrote an amazing essay and lost it because I was kicked off-line. Im gonna keep this one short.

Basically I love this topic, its the most stimulating thread in a long time.

I wanted to talk about the intelligence, learning from your mistakes and knowledge aspects spoken of above.

I believe if have a way of distinguishing the three seperatly while not defining each.

Learning from your mistakes is always of a personal matter. Life in the family, romance, taking on responsabilities.

Knowledge is in the books, history, recent history and even current events that have been finished. Language abilities, foriegn or native(although speech itself can be included in the intelligence discussed below). Even cooking. Anything that calls off of previously learned facts, such as how to preform the hymlic. (even though you have probably never had to do it, you have learned it.)

Intelligence is the big one. It involves all sorts of stuff, more specifically, mathmatics problem solving, decision making under pressure, and even quick witted remarks or antics.This even includes things like a persons ability to understand theories, or geometic shapes with out needing extensive lecturing.

Intelligence in mathmatics is interesting because it is applying previously learned standardized process to any number of unknown variables. Problem solving is also like this, but it can be even more difficult because of a lack of a previously established procedure to approach the problem.

Of course "witts" and antics, these are almost the most obvious in there indication of possible intelligence, but are often not the sure fire way to judge. A funny person is not necessarily smart, they might just be appealing to other aspects of human nature. (immaturity, spitfulness or even just crude expression.)

Most importantly, intelligence can easily include the ability to retain any information including knowledge and learning from your mistakes as mention above, as well as any problem sovling or decesion making abilities inherant to a person.

[Juu]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by PiroMunkie [/i]
[B][color=indigo]You have to love those Transcendentalists.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE]

[color=deeppink] [size=1]Transce-wha... *flips through dictionary, then adds word to tounge-twister list*

I personally don't think it makes to much ova difference, depending on what kind of shows you watch, what websites you go to, etc. Some T.V. shows actually helped me alot with past school experiences, and overcoming them, and ever since I started RP'ing, and reading other peoples' posts here on OB, my Language Arts grades have been shooting up, along with my social studies and Computer classes. Alot of discussions here help me alot with school, since alot of the topics here are based on real-life topics that deal with the things happening now.

Our math teacher showed our class a small chart of hours spent watching T.V., surfing the internet..etc, and the average GPA of students that spend that much time doing something else. I was pretty surprised to see my last GPA was exactly about what the sheet said. My GPA last trimester was a 3.4, and it said, '7 hours' above it. And actually... that was true. Then, this trimester, I got a 3.8, and it said '4 hours', when I actually spent alot more than that...

I guess it just depends on the person, their way of learning, and which way is more comfortable to them. Everyone's different, so watching T.V., etc... might not affect them at all, or change their grades/intellegance..etc completely.[/color] [/size]