Are We Witnessing the Decline of America?

Are we witnessing the decline of America?

This is a very serious question that seems to beg itself when people like Charlie Sheen take the spotlight and bask in idiocy. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the lowbrow entertainment of Two and a Half Men. The problem here isn’t Sheen. The problem is us. We enable people like him to flood our lives with rants and mindless entertainment.

We, as a society, place this sort of mass entertainment on a pedestal. Somehow, actors and professional sports players have become glorified to epic proportions. They are idolized and paid exorbitant amounts of money. Meanwhile, a large portion of the country shows indifference towards areas like education.

Currently, Fox News is on a warpath of demonizing public school teachers. It’s no secret that the right-wing loves to bust up unions every chance they get. In my opinion, teachers should get paid much, much more. The stipulation being that their performance needs to be held to a higher standard. Why don’t we want the best and brightest teaching our kids? Not simply those who are willing to work the cheapest. But I won’t lecture on supply and demand and I’m beginning to digress.

The mass entertainment industry is corrosive to our society. Americans have been slowly moving towards a state of stagnant activity. It is no secret that obesity rates are high and participation in activities beyond watching television is low. TV is America’s favorite pastime, whether it’s sports, movies, reality shows, or cheesy sitcoms.

This isn’t the first time in history where mass entertainment has dumbed down the masses either. Mass entertainment during the Roman Empire eventually led to its decline. Rome was once a great nation with a peculiar work ethic. In the early days of Rome, each person had a civic duty to defend and expand the empire. Originally, leisure and entertainment were viewed as utilitarian and didn’t serve much of a purpose beyond recuperating. In other words, relaxation wasn’t an end in itself, it served a purpose: rest up and expand the empire.

As time went on, politicians running for Rome’s senate became fiercely competitive. They had an incentive to become senators because they would have access to Rome’s vast wealth. To gain favor with voters, the politicians began staging “games.” Gladiators were created to appease voters and subsequent arenas were constructed as viewing spectacles. Eventually, the famous Coliseum was built and the grandeur of the games skyrocketed.

Historians also argue that the Roman politicians created the games to keep the masses occupied during a time of mass unemployment and underemployment. They were afraid of an uprising due to the huge socio-economic gap between the elite politicians and everybody else. Therefore, mass leisure and mindless entertainment were used to divert attention away from the poor conditions.

Either way, the games in Rome became an integral part of society. Generation after generation remained reliant and fixated on this mindless mass entertainment. As time progressed, the games also had to become more and more extravagant to keep the attention of viewers (sound familiar?). It worked, the masses stayed preoccupied.

Eventually, Roman citizens became overly lazy and didn’t have the ability to handle the excessive leisure lifestyle. They shifted from a proactive society with minimal recreation to a spectator society of couch potatoes. Towards the end of the empire, they became so lazy that most of their army was outsourced to mercenaries. This set the stage for the ultimate decline of Rome.

In the end, Rome should have been more like Greece. The Greeks took a much different approach to recreation. To the Greeks, leisure was an end in itself and had no other purpose. They created the Olympics and philosophy in the name of recreation (that’s right, philosophy was a pastime, not a burden). Intelligence was revered and the body was a temple. They valued intellectual pursuits and physical fitness greatly. The Greeks were artisans, poets, mathematicians and scientists, but also warriors. They were well rounded and their contributions to humanity and culture live on today.

(It is fair to note that the origins of Rome were in fact influenced greatly by Greek culture. However, they obviously lost their way.)

Now let me put Rome’s fall into perspective by explaining a little conventional economic wisdom. In the field of macroeconomics, we have various growth models that attempt to explain the rate at which an economy grows. Factors such as labor, capital supply, inputs, etc are generally considered. In a famous model, the Romer Model of Growth, another concept is added: ideas.

The concept of ideas is based on the age old adage of “working smarter, not harder.” However, ideas do not stop simply with production efficiency. Creative minds spur innovation in all areas. As a result, the Romer growth model illustrates that ideas grow an economy faster than just simply brute labor.

This is where Rome went wrong. They stopped valuing ideas and grew lethargic. They were the first great society of couch potatoes hooked on mindless mass entertainment. The rest is history.

The concept of ideas can then be transferred to present day America. We live during a time when America primarily manufactures big ticket items (e.g. space equipment, aircraft, defense technology, etc) and is overly reliant on services that are becoming outsourced at alarming speeds. In other words, we need all the ideas we can get to stay competitive.

However, that is not to say all ideas are good. The idea of busting up teachers unions is bad. These are the people who are laying the fertile ground from which the seeds of creativity are to sprout. In what world is it a good idea to demonize these people? In the aggregate, if education was more highly valued, this would not even be a topic.

With the comparison of the Greek and Roman empires put into perspective, it is not hard to identify the direction America is heading. Like Rome, America too has become a spectator society. We watch television, we watch sports, we watch movies, etc etc etc. Americans collectively do not value intellectual pursuits as a form of entertainment. As such, our ideas are becoming less dynamic and less involved. This has set the stage for the Republican party to launch a full fledged attack on the bargaining rights of teachers. Why is marginalizing education acceptable in this day and age? Why does this topic even compete for news coverage with Charlie Sheen? American life as we know it is not sustainable with this sort of mentality.

Here are some fun facts to part with:

• According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. (For even more frightening stats visit: http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html)

• 18.93 %, or 785,682, Wisconsin adults, age 16 and older are not enrolled in school and do not have a high school diploma. (http://www.wisconsinliteracy.org/literacy_facts.php) (And this is ground zero for the demonizing of public school teachers!!!!!)

• 42% of adults between the ages of 25 and 67 have, at most, a high school education (U.S. Census 2000).

• The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) estimates that 30 million adults in the U.S. –14% of the country’s adult population – have only the most minimal ability to read and write in English. (That’s almost the entire population of Canada)

• 63.1% of adults in the U.S. were either overweight or obese in 2009. (http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20100210/percentage-of-overweight-obese-americans-swells) (That’s roughly196 million Americans)

• 111 million people watched the 2011 Super Bowl. (The Nielsen Co) (That’s about as many people in all of Mexico!!!)

• In 2009, the United States ranked 30th in Math, 23rd in Science, and 17th in Reading out of 65 of the world’s most industrialized nations (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf)

The decline in America is here and it is certainly quantifiable. Ironically, the expression “ending like a Greek tragedy” would apply here, but in bad taste. Because, we should take the Greek approach and treat intellectual pursuits and physical fitness as a form of recreation. The phrase “fall like Rome” seems more fitting of the state of America. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall (I’m just full of clichés today)!

What do you do in your free time?