IQ vs Common Sense

According to an article I recently read humanity is supposedly getting smarter as a species as opposed to a few generations ago.

Given the recent events of the mugging of SABC crew on live television as well as a multitude of other news that never really gets such great coverage I have to say I’m a bit skeptical about this report and its authenticity. Of course the report emphasizes that the change is most prominent in developed countries, so I guess I can see how our little corner of Africa could have slipped through the cracks a bit. Still in general with an overall average increase of 20 points in terms of global IQ scoring since 1950, there might be some ground to the theory. After all we managed to overcome much in the last 20 plus years [Africa that is].

But one has to ask, does an increased IQ have anything to do with basic common sense? Because I have to wonder if that wasn’t a factor measured alongside human intelligence. Looking at the developed countries that supposedly have the greater IQ’s I have to say that a general lack of common sense seems to be a growing problem as small problems snowball into greater issues simply because common sense was lacking. In fact common sense has become endangered of not being so common any more.

Right and wrong have become so twisted as it travels into the realm of ‘his’ right and ‘her’ wrong or even ‘their’ way or the highway. Things that have been simply black and white have turned into fifty shades of controversy that no one is willing to touch but are unable to look away from. All this and more while a majority of the youth worldwide become less educated by the second due to poor systems or simply poor living conditions.

So is humanity really smarter now as opposed to way back when, when things had to be thought about deeply before ‘he’ was right and ‘she’ was wrong and pondered on while ‘that’ way was studied and ‘our’ ways were adapted to survive?

It’s a curious thing to think, especially when one reads the news that threatens to challenge this study.