Reflections On The Current State of Stupidity In Today’s World

PREFACE: I have an ongoing debate with my daughter (who is a writer like her dad) about the nature of judgementalism. She thinks I'm overly judgmental about, well, just about everything. Sadly, I can't disagree. So, please understand that when I refer to stupid people in this post it is not, I repeat, not a broad sweeping generalization of any kind. It really just applies to the stupid and most likely not to any of you.

Any intelligent person who looks around today can easily see that the world level of stupidity is at an all time high.

This is increasingly clear as a direct result of the number of ways we can actually see stupidity in action. i.e. More media=more stupidity.

Back in the day, this stupidity never really bothered me all that much. Mainly because I was able to sidestep and or ignore a lot of it.

But now, with all the cruising around I do both on and off line, I’m starting to see more and more of it, and it’s really hard to avoid the feeling that it’s kind of taking over in a way.

The Causes Of Today’s Stupidity

I don’t think people in this era were always this stupid. I think it is something that they have been indoctrinated into and conditioned to accept fairly recently.

TV

The first root cause of modern day stupidity is television. I watch a lot of TV, because I find it relaxing. But being reasonably intelligent, I find there’s relatively little to actually choose from in this billion channel universe.

A lot of TV is designed for stupid people. It doesn’t just make them stupid but it also keeps them there, because it's addicting. There is a whole culture of stupidity that has been successfully cultivated out there by people like Jerry Springer and Maury Pauvich, who invite stupid people to fight it out over stupid stuff in front of audiences composed of people just like them.

There is a lot of comedy programming out there that is also designed to attract and nurture stupidity in people. These are shows that are basically about losers or completely dysfunctional groups. The stupid people who watch these shows imprint on them, as opposed to seeing them for what they are, and so they do a pretty good job of keeping them stupid as well. (Two Broke Girls, The Middle, Raising Hope etc).

Reality TV shows are designed, in great part, to be voyeuristic. Because there is nothing that stupid people like more than seeing other stupid people getting to be a star for 15 minutes. It gives them hope that maybe one day they can achieve that level of notoriety. The reasons don’t matter, because these people are stupid and don’t really need all that much motivation. (Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, The Bachelor, Jersey Shore, Big Brother, Survivor etc.).

Movies & Video Games

Two more root causes of stupidity are movies and video games which are steadily conditioning people to the acceptance of murder and war. This also tends to re-shape their values and make them more supportive of right wing war mongering.

Social Media

Yet another root cause is social media. Here, stupid people are allowed to vent as much political & racial hatred, sexism, misogyny and ignorance as they like. They can rant and argue and spew all kinds of negative shit with the protection of anonymity. This, of course, has the advantage of giving them a bully pulpit for their stupidity, which in turn, incentivizes them to keep on going.

The Far Right

But the right wing news media are really the worst offenders. The people who run these organizations are not stupid, but understand that a great many of their viewers are. So instead of objectively reporting the news, over the past few years especially, they have started injecting opinion into it.

This is most obvious in the US this year, which is an election year. Networks like, most prominently, Fox News, run by ultra conservative billionaires, realize that shaping opinion is a piece of cake when most of their viewers are stupid and malleable.

The New World Order

There is a lot of speculation about this concept, and the more I read about it and the more I think about it, the more I believe that a lot of what is happening in the media these days is designed to subtly brainwash stupid people into believing, well pretty much whatever the powers that be want them to believe.

If you include the cold war, the United States has pretty much been at war or in the business of influencing outcomes of other wars since World War 2.

In order to keep the masses from becoming fed up with how little of their tax money is being spent on improving life for its citizens as opposed to financing the huge military industrial complex, it’s critically important that every idea possible be deployed in the effort to keep people stupid.

Stupid people are satisfied with less. And these days they are being given more and more of less and less.

Stupid people can be easily conned into supporting extremist views. A good example, of course, is Donald Trump. To an intelligent person, he is spewing vile, hateful innuendo 100% of the time the time.

But because his audience is composed in good part of the stupid, they scream and cheer for him like he is the new Messiah. And when they watch the news, Trump and the other right wing extremists running for the Republican nomination are treated as though they are not the hateful monsters that they actually are.

Donald Trump is the perfect foil for the New World Order. Rich, shallow, egocentric, sociopathic, sexist, racist and extremely popular with the stupid.

A lot of people will tell you that Trump is only saying what they are really thinking. But I think that’s bullshit. I think Trump is telling them what to think and because they are stupid, they imprint that.

It’s a win win for Trump and the New World Order, many millions more softened-up souls.

Terrorists

Terrorists groups, as we hear every day, are very effective at recruiting and radicalizing, because most of the people they target are either stupid or psychotic. I mean you really have to be either or both in order to let someone take you to the point where you are willing to actually strap on a vest and blow yourself and a lot of other people out of existence.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

Although it may sound like I hate stupid people, I really don’t. I don’t have any feelings toward them at all. They are simply sheep being led to the slaughter. And of course, I wish to hell they weren’t stupid. But what can you do?

In fact, this whole article is not an indictment of stupid people. It is a statement about power. Anybody who is exploiting stupid people, and there are a lot of them from TV preachers to assholes from Nigeria with 8 million dollars in a bank account with your name on it, is exploiting stupidity for power or personal gain or both.

But it’s a slippery slope. Because even stupid people have their limits and if you keep taking from them without giving anything in return, sooner or later you will end up pissing them off. And they will turn on you like angry mongooses.

Then the real prisoners in society will be the well-to-do. And won’t that make for an interesting paradox?

I know that some of you will think I am being elitist and others will think I’m oversimplifying something that is a lot more complex than I make it out to be here.

I can’t really do anything about that except to say that I’m not an elitist. I’m just a regular guy. And this is what I am seeing these days.

And I don’t think I am oversimplifying anything. There’s nothing really complex about brainwashing. And that’s what’s been happening to people all throughout history.

I’m just writing about a little hunk of it, called right now.

jim out

Jim lives in St Catharines Ontario (AKA The Quiet Side Of The Lake) and is currently a partner at Bullet Proof Consulting. www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

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