Is it just me, or does it seem like there are far more idiots in the world than there used to be? Seriously, right? Look at the warning stickers required to be placed on a new bicycle these days. “Don’t fall off bicycle while in motion, could be dangerous to health.” Good to know . . . I guess . . . pretty sure I’d have figured that one out myself. But it's there because somebody COULDN'T figure that out, got hurt, sued, and WON!!!
The signs of a growing idiocracy are emerging day-by-day, to the point where the completely idiotic now fails to surprise us at all. After all, there's a television show called “Jackass” where idiots film and get paid to perform the most moronic stunts imaginable . . . while we watch. This earns money--wait for it--OUR money!
Nowhere is this growing trend more visible, I think, than on the internet. You can watch people doing stupid things on purpose to achieve their fifteen seconds of fame. You can watch people in their natural habitat filmed by others while doing stupid things. Occasionally you can even watch someone filming themselves doing something so stupid that it’s actually illegal, and are subsequently arrested, their own Facebook or Snapchat footage used as evidence against them. Now we’ve even heard of an individual’s Echo device “testifying” against them after doing something . . . you guessed it . . . really stupid. What’s wrong with people these days?
There are more people in the world than ever before, and far more ways for “stupid human tricks” to be broadcast around the world than ever before. This is a recipe for daily tripping across one asinine tale after another, making me wonder, at times, how these idiots reached maturity--though perhaps only mathematical maturity--with what can only be described as the IQ of a rock and the common sense of the average twig lying on the ground. But does this really mean there are more stupid people, or are we just able to see more of the activities of everyone in the world, including the idiots? Let’s be honest, judging us only by our internet activity, an alien race could be forgiven for deducing that human beings are 1) stupid, 2) mostly naked, and 3) somehow enslaved by the feline species.
I’m not sure if people are really getting dumber, or if we now just have access to a greater number of these idiotic episodes so it only seems that way. Either way, the constant bombardment of the most ridiculous acts of our fellow human beings has the effect of making us distrust one another even more than we might already. This distrust is often the basis for further stupidity . . . and we spiral into ever greater idiocy.
People are stupid. That seems to be the underlying premise, and yet that premise is hard to reconcile with the incredible achievements of mankind. We’ve been to the moon, for goodness sake, so clearly some humans are doing something right, yes? Still, it’s becoming more and more difficult to believe both groups hail from the same genetic pool. Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right after all. Maybe we never really landed on the moon. Maybe the vapor trails in the sky are making us dumber. Maybe it’s the vaccinations . . . maybe the hormones in the food . . . maybe the fluoride in the water . . . maybe the constant electromagnetic waves emanating from our cell phones . . . who knows?
More likely, though, the smarter folks amongst us have made life so safe, so easy to survive, that stupidity, which in the old days used to get people killed, no longer can. Grog: “Hey Mongo, dare you to hug that T-Rex!” Mongo: “You double-dare me?” No more Mongo. Perhaps we’re victims of our own success. Maybe we’ve mitigated against natural selection to such a degree that the idiots are no longer culled from our species. If true, the long-term effects of that can be difficult to predict, but you can bet the results won’t be good for any of us.
Until a cure for idiocy is found, we’re stuck with these folks. I guess all we can really do is work to ensure their stupidity doesn’t affect us or our loved ones. That, unfortunately, means being constantly on the lookout for morons of any and all description. Though this does spark an idea . . . maybe we could establish a National Registry of Morons . . . hmmm. Yeah, you’re right, would probably break the internet.
M. G. Haynes