And true, at least in part, because as "enlightened" societies, we have allowed our compassion and concern, for those less fortunate, to subvert nature's rule of survival of the fittest. In the US, it's all the hand out programs. In some third world countries, it's the care packages and foreign aid. The dumbing down effect has been at work for decades now, and is pervasive.
Just one small example. I have a grandson who is just brilliant - way smarter than I was as a kid (yeah, grandfathers always say that), but see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipSe9_vGih4
Anyway, in the public school Aidan goes to, they pair the brightest kid with the dumbest, then the next brightest with the next dumbest, etc. The teams work together, take tests together and share the same grades. This pulls the class average and thus the school's ratings up, and qualifies them for more money I suppose. It disincentivizes the brighter kids, and tends to drag them down as well while it masks the inabilities of the slower kids.
A side note to the Aidan video, we had no idea he knew that. His mom caught him on his bunk with 4 books open trying to read them all. He does speed read, and his comprehension and retention is boggling - - nerdy? Yup, but if he's not misdirected, should be an achiever. During one of the dinosaur things I stopped him, saying, "No, Aidan, they found out that last one was bogus". He said, something like, "No grandpa, Dr. XXXX and professor XXXX found the fossils along the Ubangee River in lower Slobolia in 1973." So what sounds like a rote memory exercise in the video, really isn't. He has an underlying in depth knowledge of it all! Poor kid.
