From the Introduction:
Never before in human history has so much cleverness been used to such stupid ends. The cleverness is in the creation and manipulation of markets, media and power; the stupid ends are in the destruction of community, responsibility, morality, art, religion and the natural world.
As a result, a kind of numbness has taken over. In the face of an uncertain and alarming future, which holds little inspiration for present living, people fight off gloom and stupefaction by withdrawing into trivia, sensation-seeking, or addictions to money, drugs, or power.
This is Dumbing Down, a phenomenon observable in almost all walks of life; politics, culture, civil administration, the media, science, education, even the law. It is so widespread that a new term has been coined; dumbocracy.
Dumbocracy is the rule of cleverness without wisdom. It looks always for the short-term gain, forgetting that we could be around on this planet for a long time - provided dumbocracy does not get out of hand.
Some insist that dumbing-down does not exist; it is an illusion created by an elite to shore up its own waning power. But elites are a necessity in the human affairs of any great civilization. We should try to get the best elites we can, for when one elite is got rid of, another - often worse - takes its place; those who promise to rid us of one elite are bent on replacing it with themselves. As Franz Kafka wrote, 'Revolutions come and go, leaving nothing behind them but the slime of a new bureaucracy.'
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