> In recent years I've seen what feels like a dumbing down of e.g. the Proms - indeed, of the whole BBC I can't argue whether this is the case or not, because

> In recent years I've seen what feels like a dumbing down of e.g. the Proms - indeed, of the whole BBC I can't argue whether this is the case or not, because I rarely watch TV. I've heard that BBC4 is quite cerebral, but I've also heard no-one watches it, yet I'm pretty sure this means that no-one would watch its contents even if they were the sole thing on the television. It seems that most people don't find cerebral activities fun. I went to your typical rough, inner-city, London comprehensive, and saw precisely the 'bottom 55%' being debated here on a daily basis. It certainly seemed to me that these people would never have been interested in cerebral activities even if they would have been offered. Whenever a cerebral activity (e.g., reading Lord of the Flies) presented itself, they diverted across to violence, or gossip, or some other form of utter rejection of the cerebral activity on offer. I have no reason to believe that it'd be possible -- or indeed positive -- to force these people to play up to the interests of their social 'betters'. I'd rather we accept who they are than demand they play the role of poseur. Like with everything else in life, I'm sure that the place to intercept this problem -- the issue of people wasting their life on entertainment -- is in childhood. One clear consistency among the lower classes I grew up with was that their parents either didn't give a damn about their kids (sadly the case for a huge number of them), or were too busy with the demands of being a single parent to dedicate time to raising them. If we want a civilization which is more interested in learning and self-improvement than X-Factor, then we'll have to start with making sure that our civilization's parents are willing and able to emphasize learning and self-improvement over X-Factor.