Idiocracy and our Volunteered Enslavement through the Surrender of our Minds

by Christopher Barr

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” 
 - Gustave Flaubert

Idiocracy is an underrated 2006 Mike Judge comedy that tells the story of a man, named Joe that is transported 500 years into the future.  What he finds when he gets there is a society collapsing and far too stupid to do anything about it.  The language has been all but lost with grunts and groans filling in most expressions.  Corporations have taken societies over and suffocated the natural world in the process to insure high profitability.  Most notably, replacing water with an energy drink called Brawndo because 'it's got electrolytes', as a result all crops are lost because the morons used the green energy drink to water them and not surprisingly, killed them all.

TV and movies in this future are dumb downed to the point that it’s just a farting ass or an unfortunate fellow that constantly gets kicked in his balls.  While garbage piles high as Everest these people remain helpless due to a society that over did itself, over consumed itself.  A society that allowed progress to entrap them rather then set them free.  This future is one without ideas, a future without hope and a future so dumb, that it wouldn’t know what to do if a thought crossed its devolved mind.  

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/stupidity_quotes.html#kxktbjfMD0CWhoG1.99

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/stupidity_quotes.html#kxktbjfMD0CWhoG1.99

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/stupidity_quotes.html#kxktbjfMD0CWhoG1.9

 
Today in our time stupidity is taking us down that path of destruction so corporations can squeeze as much money as possible out of the capitulating people.  Governments can maintain power over a population that only wishes to be entertained by stupidity itself.  We live in a time that in most circles, being book smart is threatening to most, having ideas and thinking for yourself is considered straying from the group and becoming different, and in their eyes, becoming a threat.

Loki was right in The Avengers when he ordered the crowd to kneel down.  He yells at them; “KNEEL!  Is not this simpler?  Is this not your natural state?  It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation.  The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power.  For identity.  You were made to be ruled.  In the end, you will always kneel.”  Certainly fear is the main reason for this, people are afraid of the world outside their heads and demand rules and regulations to predict probable outcomes, and knowing what is going to happen next.  But what really terrifies people even more is what’s possible inside their own minds.  Because free will is an illusion up there with objectivity, people fear themselves and require routines to avoid their real self at every chance.  This fear of themselves, is so powerful that they are willing to take enslavement over it.

People today are not the authors of their lives in the way they think they are.  People are ruled over by corporations and governments that provide them with a false sense of freedom.  But because the culture has been so dumb down, they are too stupid to realize it, so they go buy their shoes and eat their burgers under the illusion that they made the choice to buy the shoes and eat the burgers.  What they don’t realize and likely will never is the choice was already made for them; they just fulfilled the expectation by behaving like they were supposed to.

“We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them.” 

 - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

For the most part we are safe in society, we get our thrills in life through simulations, not reality.  We go to movie theatres and watch cars explode and aliens invade, we watch TV to see relationships develop and criminals caught.  We don't get this in our lives, what we get in our lives are routines and deadlines and we feel misunderstood as we misunderstand others.  We are afraid of life so we maintain our ignorance to avoid having to understand that we are afraid of it, we defend our ignorance through the stupidity of core beliefs, avoiding evidence that contradicts those beliefs, so we rationalize our reality through cognitive dissonance to avoid feeling uncomfortable.  We under-think to avoid reality because it would force us to act in a world, more often than not, filled with inaction.

The paradox of stupidity; is one is too dumb to know they are stupid.  In all likelihood they would assume that everyone else is stupid and don’t get them.  Stupidity mutes reason, it is self-assured assertiveness without a desire to prove itself.  Marx said that society functions on three principles, economy, violence and stupidity.  Governments, corporations and the biggest business of them all; religion, not only count on the overly tranquilized people, they nurture them, because the fallacy of stupid people is they’ll believe in the most outlandish things.

In order for big business to maintain a constant flow of profits, congress is shooting down environmental efforts to help save this planet.  This is stupidity on a grand scale because it’s the kind we’d hope they’d know better.  Even President Reagan told congress back in the 80’s not to bother with the environment because, in his words, “I don’t know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns.”  

Language limits our access to reality and stupid people fall into the trap of thinking that it is a clear representation of reality, they assume what they think on their challenging scale is fundamentally true in the world.  They believe the nonsense their priests tell them as true accounts of the world and the creator they believe gave life to the planet.

The Vatican is opposed to condom use and are thus responsible for genocidal stupidity while millions die per year in Africa as a result of the spread of AIDS.  This is reprehensible for them to think that God’s divinity supersedes, the problem, reaction, solution paradigm that would be obvious to any free thinking person; give them condoms to offset the spread of AIDS.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/stupidity_quotes.html#kxktbjfMD0CWhoG1.99

There needs to be a standard of intellectual honesty that is required in order to dig us out of this impending calamity, we are a species is facing.  We need to call out all the priests and odious zealots for what they are, charlatans.  We have to do this in the same way we would if someone claimed to have the cure for cancer, he received by an alien species at his last abduction.  In order for humanity to move forward productively we have to let the campfire stories go.  We have to take ignorant people to task over their superstitious claims about the mythical realm of religiosity.

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

- Bertrand Russell