"Nothing In The World Is More Dangerous Than Sincere Ignorance And Conscientious Stupidity"
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure
(quotes credit: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dan Quayle)
‘Stupidity,” Jean Cocteau remarked, “is always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”
We live in a golden age of stupidity. It is everywhere…. The refusal of tens of millions of people to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus will be analyzed as a textbook case of stupidity en masse. Stupid is as stupid does, or, in the case of vaccination, as it doesn’t do. Stupidity and irresponsibility are evil twins.
The slow-motion zombies’ assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a fittingly stupid finale to the Trump years, which offered dueling stupidities: Buy one, get one free….
Stupidity is one of life’s big mysteries, like evil, like love, an ineffable thing. You cannot exactly define it, but you know it when you see it, as Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography. It takes many forms. Stupidity is entitled to no moral standing whatever, and yet it sits in a place of honor at the tables of the mighty; it blows in their ears and whispers promises.
It’s been said that the only universally guaranteed things in life are death and taxes. I don’t know how stupidity got let off that list, but I’m going to make an executive decision and turn the brace into a triad- death, taxes, AND stupidity.
Of course, we can argue that one person’s smart is another’s stupid. However, that argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. When you look at empirical evidence- things that can be proven using the scientific method- smart and stupid are not, in fact, morally equivalent. Faith and personal belief are not the same as science and empirical data.
Things happen for a reason- A, therefore B- and it’s not a mere random chance. Sometimes there are physical laws behind it. Or a cause-and-effect relationship. Or a thousand and one other easily explainable and perfectly logical reasons. Thus we know how the world works. We’ve seen situation A before, and we know the outcome will be result B.
Or you could place your faith in an unseen Supreme Being, who, depending on the mood He/She/It happens to be in on a given day, might hug/smite/kill one or more of their followers because they can. There’s no explanation, no reason, no logic. It just is, and Mankind is expected to accept it at face value. Why? Because a holy book and a self-styled prophet say so, that’s why. Such is the nature of faith.
The Wall Street Journal’s Lance Morrow spends a decent part of his otherwise thought-provoking essay taking cheap shots at Liberals (WSJ does trend Conservative, after all). Still, he does make some points worth considering, though they do lean a wee bit too much on a Mayberry RFD-level simplistic worldview.
I’ve been working on a Unified Field Theory of Stupidity. My hypothesis: Stupidity dominates in our time because of the convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements that—mixed together at one moment, in one cultural beaker—have produced a fatal explosion of brainlessness. What are those ingredients? You will have your own list, of course.
My nominees will seem eccentric at first. The subversion of manners and authority (two great casualties of the 1960s) prepared the way for the death of privacy, which would eventually be ensured by the stupendously intrusive capabilities of Big Tech in the 21st century. Manners (and in a different way, authority) depend on respect for the privacy of others, as well as one’s own. Manners depend on reticence, even mystery. When those ingrained regulations, those protections of the individual mind, are gone, then you may open the floodgates to (among many other things) pornography, which is a massively lucrative assault on individual dignity and collective decorum—an assault on the manners of a society and, if you will forgive my saying so, on the divinity of the individual.
The death of manners and privacy, I argue, are profoundly political facts that, combined with other facts, lead, eventually, to an entire civilization of stupidity. It’s a short ride from stupidity to madness. Soon people aren’t quite people anymore; they are cartoons and categories. And “identities.” The media grow feral. Genitals became weirdly public issues; the sexes subdivide into 100 genders. Ideologues extract sunbeams from cucumbers. They engage in what amounts to an Oedipal rebellion against reality itself.
Morrow’s bemoaning of “the subversion of manners and authority” had made life difficult for the prevailing White power structure and those whose view of the world depends on that power structure.
Buried in Morrow’s hierarchy of stupidity is a fundamental truth. The White power structure is losing the demographic battle and will soon no longer even be a majority. The only way for it to maintain power is to educate (nay, manipulate) young White people into believing that White Makes Right.
Stupid, therefore, has become a moral imperative. Without it, the White majority cannot hope to hold onto economic, cultural, and political power. Continued White dominance depends on obedience and reaction, not on critical thinking and sober reflection.
The evolving changes in how society views things like sex roles, gender identity, and sexuality ultimately threaten White hegemony. They encourage individuals to examine and ultimately honor their individuality over working to preserve the collective- White economic, political, and cultural dominance.
This is why Fox News Channel and other Far-Right media outlets are so successful. They feed the fear that Whites are threatened with losing their relevance and, with it, their primacy.
It’s also why you have 72 million Americans who enthusiastically voted for Donald Trump in 2020. And why most of those folks STILL don’t believe that Trump lost the election. The Far-Right media echo chamber has created its own reality, one in which truth and reality aren’t objective but are malleable depending upon the needs of the moment.
It’s why we have hospitals from coast to coast currently packed with COVID-19 patients, upwards of 95% of whom refused a safe, readily accessible, and FREE vaccine. Their fear, prejudice, and, yes, stupidity have led them to a place where some would rather die and “own the Libs” than admit they were wrong.
We can, like Lance Morrow, wade through a canal filled with flowery language on the topic of human stupidity, but this subject need not be complicated. Human beings have brains. Brains have the ability to think critically. Sure, not everyone will split the atom or cure cancer, but we can think logically, do basic math, and discern truth and reality from bullshit and propaganda. It’s not Ph. D.- level stuff.
Sadly, though, not everyone chooses to use their brain for its intended purpose. Far too many would rather be told what to think than actually to do their own thinking. They’d rather react emotionally than soberly consider facts and evidence.
Because of this, they make stupid decisions for stupid reasons…and they struggle to understand the consequences of their own stupidity.
It’s why we’re actually facing TWO pandemics: One is COVID-19, which science has developed three vaccines and proven protocols to help combat. The second is stupidity, in which millions of Americans refuse to get vaccinated, thus fueling yet another surge of COVID-19 cases from coast to coast.
Tragically, no vaccine can inoculate one against stupidity.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, eh??
If we could defeat the stupidity pandemic, I suspect that defeating COVID-19 would prove to be the easy part.
As much as I hate to think in these terms, perhaps this is all really just an exercise in natural selection. Perhaps this is just nature’s way of weeding out, if not the weak, then the stupid? If everyone is provided with the same opportunity to save themselves and some are too stupid to avail themselves of that metaphorical life preserver, how is that the fault of anyone but the person making the decision?
If you’re going to crow about “MY RIGHTS!!,” then you need to be willing to accept the consequences of your chest-thumping. You can’t bleat volubly about the primacy of your rights and freedom…and then expect someone to save your ass when you discover that your stupid decision is going to result in your death.
If you can’t trust science enough to get vaccinated, then how can you trust it enough to save your life when you’ve contracted COVID-19?
THAT takes a whole lot of arrogance and ignorance, Kimosabe….
I don’t wish harm on anyone. I don’t want to see anyone suffer and/or die. That said, many are refusing to do the right thing for themselves and those around them. It’s only a couple of shots. No one’s asking for a testicle or their right arm; just two shots a month apart- that might save their life down the road.
I can live with you endangering yourself- though I wish you weren’t- but it’s endangering those around you I find repulsive. If you can’t see your way clear to caring for or about others…well, that’s pretty insensitive and obtuse.
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