It’s Complicated

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

The Flynn effect, the observation that IQs have been steadily rising, enough that the tests must be regularly recalibrated, likely stems from the fact that life’s more complicated now:

In England 40 years ago, my father was paid, in cash, every Thursday, and was broke by the following Wednesday. He had a quarterly gas bill and a quarterly electricity bill. He paid weekly rent on a property owned by the town. Since he did not believe in life insurance, own a bank account or invest in the stock market, that was the entire extent of his financial concerns.

He read one newspaper, Cecil King’s Daily Mirror. He had two TV channels available to him, both of course black and white. He owned one suit, and I think no more than three sets of underwear. My wife, growing up in mainland China in the 1960s, had an even more spare existence. She had just one toy, which of course she adored.

Now look at us. I have just spent three days doing my income taxes. My financial affairs — the affairs of a modest working family — occupy an entire drawer in a set of filing cabinets. (Filing cabinets! In my house!) Never mind a generation: just in the past eight years I have gone from having one telephone bill to having five: one for a wireless service and two for fixed lines — each of which, for reasons I cannot be bothered to understand, is served by both Verizon and AT&T.

With the help of the Internet I read, or at least skim through, about twenty newspapers or news-websites every morning, ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Taipei Times. My house contains four working computers. My kids’ bedrooms are silted up with toys, to which they pay little attention. When we take them to McDonald’s, their place-mats are decked out with puzzles, mazes and word games. A stimulating environment? You could say so.

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