What a year this last one was. I expected the Queen’s Christmas speech to wrap it up by sombrely declaring 2016 another ‘‘annus horribilus’’, and calling the whole damn decade a ‘‘decennium atrocius’’.
But she disappointed. Instead she said something forgettable which I’ve forgotten.Back in 1992, when the Queen first admitted to an annus horribilus, the worried populace scurried to the libraries for the Latin dictionary. Did she mean one of her Corgi pups had bowel problems? (The Corgi is as challenged by toilet training as I was with third form Latin).
But as we now realise, the Queen was informing her bemused Commonwealth she’d had a bad 12 months. Her children’s marriages hit the rocks, and then her house burned down. (Charles, Anne, Windsor Castle).
Last year’s big political events were the Trump and Brexit upsets. The Economist informs us that 81% of Trumpers believe times got worse during the past 50 years, and 61% of Brexitians think their children’s lives are going down the Thomas Crapper.
We could develop many plausible theories to explain these figures — that’s why statistics were invented. My own thought is the stats show we’re plagued by too many "glass is half empty" voters whose intellects get overcome by their pessimism.
Gloom is a popular state of mind. Humans prefer to dwell on misery and problems. We in the media feel much the same way, and avoid too many chirpy front pages like: "Dunedin Has Several Excellent Power Poles."
Rosier spectacles are needed. We must see more of the facts from a "glass is half full" perspective. For example — the expensive houses we beef about. The G-H-F thinker will point out that actually they’re double the size of our grandparents’ abodes, and come with indoor toilets.
We can go on. Bees kill slightly more people than terrorists; most of society’s lost jobs demanded miserable drudgery; in 2017 the rich, try as they might, still can’t buy a better Coke than the poor.
While I’m wearing my "Be Happy" cap, let’s consider one uplifting fact that truly astonishes. Our tribe may be getting fatter, but our brains are growing brighter.
I can best explain this by extrapolating from (that is, only slightly mangling) a theory called The Flynn Effect. Professor James R. Flynn, the doyen of the science of comparative intelligence, says if you’d sat an average 1910 punter down for an IQ test, their score by today’s norms would be a lowly 70. A post-war test, would have ticked the boxes around 100.
But similar testing today, says Prof Flynn, would reveal a mean IQ of between 130 and 150. (And this includes Blues supporters).
Our genetics can’t have changed all that much. Today, as in 1910, the newborn doesn’t pop out knowing its times tables. Intellectually, its mind is a canvas waiting to be painted by the environment it has to think in. The more challenging and complex the times, the more the brain broadens its game.
A 1910 brain learned the tricks of its trade in a less complex world, where home held a handful of books, and music came from the family piano. The most bizarre visual imagery the 1910 brain needed to puzzle over was a black and white photograph. With less complicated challenges, a 1910 brain didn’t weave itself a mental tapestry that could let it appreciate the brushstrokes of a Ralph Hotere, or a sliding Eric Clapton riff — let alone the unfathomable iPhone games being nutted out by kids with their caps on backwards.
So The Flynn Effect involves far more than modern people getting better at arithmetic — we grow more capable of lateral thought, perceive symbolism better, and are more likely to understand and therefore tolerate differences. (In 1964, the year of The Beatles’ first hit, the bold freethinkers of the American Civil Liberties Union still thought it unreasonable for homosexuals to expect public sector employment).
The glass-half-full thinker will understand that technology helps us advance our brains into more enjoyable spaces. So "half full" will know hi-fi headphones are part of our deepened experience of a Beethoven symphony.
"Half empty", on the other hand, has read the internet piece that claims headphones cause 600 times more ear bacteria.
However, we can be sure the pessimist will ask: "If people are so much smarter, then how come they elected the Donald? HUH?"
It’s a fair question, and I hope someone asks Prof Flynn. That shouldn’t be difficult — he’s a Dunedin man and keeps an office down the street.
- John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
