Myths of The American Mind: Smartness

all right ladies and Gentlemen let's get rolling first let me thank you for a for for hearing about it we didn't we didn't get the ad in the newspaper on time and so I don't know how you guys all found out about I think the radio station probably helped and we got a little little community calendar we got the community calendar small a small little one so so this is good this is this is the education that it does matter advertising works but thank than for coming actually this is really a a myth though it is a myth yeah that'll be that'll be one of the ones coming up actually this is a this is a lovely lovely sized crowd actually I like this this is this is nice a little less cramped um so the uh so this series for this year um I've I've titled it myths of the modern American mind and the first leure will be on smartness but what I wanted to do was um take the techniques that we tend to apply to evaluating cultures 200 300 2,000 years ago where we say oh my goodness look at these silly things these people what how could they believe this right those foolish foolish people uh which tends to be how we do these things and try and apply them to ourselves in our contemporary world viiew uh specifically I want to focus on ideas that are peculiarly American now it's not that we're crazier than other people uh it's just that cultures vary um and their myths and belief systems vary so I really want to take a look at some of the things that make americ unique some of the things that we believe that most people don't or that we have a particular emphasis on that other ones deemphasize or we have you know just a strange take on it um and to do that then I want to structure these roughly to to demonstrate you know that we believe it whatever the subject is um that it that there is a peculiar American take on it that this really is more or less either unique to America or our our view on it is is roughly unique um that it is a myth that there's there's either limited reason or no reason to believe it in ...