We won’t dare say that we have all become stupid. It would be the height of political incorrectness. We will then say that, in recent decades, the main vector of intelligence – critical thinking based on solid, open and anti-dogmatic knowledge – has become an increasingly rare commodity among the citizens of our industrialized societies, even among those who have obtained a degree .
The Italian philosopher and epistemologist Armando Massarenti in Fano he explored the topic in depth, starting from his latest book “How stupid we have become. An immodest proposal to become intelligent again.” And what if it was precisely the “political correctness”, with its annexes and connected, that had contributed to clouding our intelligence? Together with the Internet, it is among the main suspects. Since 2004 there has been a reversal in the trend, after a century of rise, of the famous “Flynn effect” which measures intelligence. What happened? While polarization, tribalism and moral exhibitionism are accentuated online, in American universities, with repercussions on our own, censors of the right and left are competing for ground. What pays the price is the most precious thing civilization has given us: political liberalism and the ability to develop autonomous thought. Giorgio Santelli interviewed him
