View from the North 40: Art, art, blew me all apart

Me on Wednesday: I should never, ever, ever listen to myself when I have an idea. Ever. I know this, and yet, I fall for it over and over, again. Repeatedly.

Fair enough, I really do know better than to listen to myself. Or I should know that. After all the injuries — physical, mental and emotional. All the wrong roads followed, both actual and metaphorical. All the pride swallowed, the dignity lost, the ego trammeled. After all these years, I still get pulled in by myself saying, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea.”

Maybe I’m a sucker, but it’s as if every misadventure ended in a memory-erasing concussion like the one that really did end in a memory-erasing concussion, and I tell myself, “Y’know, I think you have a point there. Let’s do it.”

Or maybe I’m stupid.

Of course, I researched. Quite a few articles are available saying humans are getting dumber, and I’m human so it would follow that, given that news, I am dumber as well. But don’t get hung up on that notion.

The articles aren’t saying that we just know less. No. Scientists, actual research scientists — not those quacky-pants say whatever is going to get social media to go viral with the crackpots — have been studying the data, and the numbers say that humans understand less and this is because we have lesser intellects. Actual less capability to know things.

I know, some of you are thinking: “Young people these days, they’re blah blah blah, et cetera and so on and so forth, and skewing the stats.” But slow your roll on the finger pointing because: No.

No. This has been happening, all over the world for a while now.

Human intelligence was increasing at a steady pace, said Stanford University researcher Gerald Crabtree in the journal Trends in Genetics clear back in 2012. This rise in intellect, called the Flynn Effect, was coming on even stronger in the last 100 years before, boom, a millennia of that upwardly mobile intelligence just ended one year and now we’re trending dumber. Measurably dumber. Remarkably measurably dumber, in fact, like double digits in percentages based on the IQ test.

Maybe it was a genetic mutation of one or more of the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that determine intellect, Crabtree said. But it’s not looking good.

And in 2018 researchers Bernt Bratsberg (that’s a real name) and Ole Rogeberg said that downward trend started in 1975. These two researchers are, admittedly, Norwegian but their research was peer-reviewed outside of Norway and published in the journal Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, so it tracks.

These two looked at family data, specifically siblings raised in the same family and the data showed that 1975 was the year human intellect in several countries reversed course.

So all you 40-somethings — starting with the ones staring at 50 like a deer in the headlights — on down to the wee newborns, yuh gettin’ dumber. Sorry.

I sympathize. I mean, I was born on the rising tide of smarts, up there near the peak, but, well, let’s be honest, despite all that opportunity, I possess a shockingly average intellect. Believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you but we all have our struggles.

Lately, my struggles center around my decision to listen to myself spouting bright ideas to launch into two artistic endeavors, one for myself and one on a commercial basis. As I writhe internally with angst I keep repeating the phrase, “Why? Why art? Why do you do this to yourself?”

Art is something I can do — in own my fashion. It’s something I enjoy, but it’s not something I pursue all the time. I get out of practice on how to tune into the artist-brain thinking, so it’s a struggle on an intellectual level and it’s a slug fest on the feels.

I have been a wreck, I tell you.

Much of the data about the benefits of creating art center around how it helps our emotional and mental well-being as well as our intellect.

Mmmm, I don’t know. It does something to your brain all right.

I will say this: It’s been 48 hours since I wrote the first sentence of this column to when I’m writing this sentence, and I feel pretty OK right now.

I mean, the verdict is still out on whether or not I should’ve listened to myself about an artsy adventure being a great idea, but I feel weirdly awake in the brain.

Maybe what Dahlia W. Zaidel called “pivotal brain changes,” as a positive result of art, is a real thing.

Maybe German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche stole from an artist the idea of that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Maybe art is an inoculation or a booster shot to protect us from stupidity. You feel worse for a while, but then you become stronger, brain-wise.

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There’s an art show in town this weekend. I’m NOT in it. I’m smarter not braver at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .