Thread: If I only had a brain...

The older I get, the more obvious it becomes my brain is dimmer and dimmer. I always thought I was pretty intelligent (the only thing that could possibly back up this assumption is a pretty reasonable school, graduate and post-graduate academic history) but I'm now seriously reconsidering even this assumption. I know I'm weird, but as time goes by I am getting more and more interested in documentary type shows, movies etc. In terms of events that actually happened during my mid-late teens, the striking thing is there are so many things I either had totally misinterpreted at the time, ignored completely or even remembered totally differently.

Now I know fully well that all documentaries will be biased to some extent (either deliberately or subconsciously or both), but I was just amazed at the difference in my recollection of the events at the 1972 Munich Olympics and a show I only just finished watching called "One Day in September". It's almost as if they were talking about something else.

I do NOT want to start a political slanging match, or a flame war, and I realise there may well be some heightened sensitivities to this issue with current events in the Middle East. It is only that this documentary so starkly highlighted the gulf between from my previous "understanding" and what is likely to be "some sort of reality".

Over recent months, others of a similar vintage that have had some surprises for me have been the Watergate/Nixon/Deep-throat affair and Robert Kennedy's assassination (I was a bit too young to remember much of the JFK one).

But then again, maybe I'm just showing early signs of Alzheimer's.

Cheers
Phillip

Olympics . . . . That's something other than Football (soccer), right?

Actually I watch everything in the media with a HEAVY dose of skepticism. As a person who did more historiography than's good for a person, you know that every primary and secondary source, no matter how accurate and dispassionate it attempts to be is colored by a certain bias, which jumps out when you read it/see it/listen to it. The basic rule of historiography, which I've learned too late in my academic career is that everyone has an angle even if they don't know it. That's why a saltshaker is always useful when dealing with history lol.

I think that you are seeing things in new ways is evidence that you are not less sharp than you once were, but more so. I too had a youthful exhuberance for finding the simplest answers and being done with the questions. I know now that this was folly. To further arm yourself against the fool in the mirror, I recommend you click the Critical Thinking link in my signature. Come to think of it ... I think I'll review that stuff myself.

X

<---conspiracy theorist

Originally Posted by omniphile

I know I'm weird

My wife likes to call it eccentric .

I have to admit the older I get the more I seem to be watching the ABC with programs like 4 Corners & Late Line (think I'm turning into my Dad). You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to see some of the things that are going on in recent times, its just so blatantly obvious. Western citizens as a collective are with out a doubt... well short sighted and just plain dumb. Current government here in Australia have proved this again and again, Children overboard, AWB, raids just before the new terrorist laws were passed (what ever happened to them???), being re-elected on the promise of lower interest rates. I guarantee that they'll be re-elected!!

You don't need 30+ years inbetween events for people to forget... just give it a couple of months