Stupid is as Stupid does.
“4 out of 5 people will believe anything you say as long as you preface it with a statistic.” — Yours Truly
I get the utterly impossible image of someone perusing my writings in 100 years and quoting someone named Yours Truly with the above quotation. It’s sad, really, that I have such a low opinion of my fellow (and future fellow) human being. What’s sadder is the image I have of someone 100 years from now not even being able to read and/or understand my writings.
I watched Idiocracy this weekend based on the suggestion of a couple of people. It’s a comedy, starring Luke Wilson, about an average modern guy that takes part in a military hibernation experiment that goes dreadfully wrong. Instead of waking up in a year from hibernation, he wakes up in 500 years. Evolution has gone awry, and the stupidest people have managed to out-reproduce the intelligent people. As a result, Luke Wilson’s character is the smartest human being alive and is quickly promoted up the ranks of government to the presidency. This average Joe has to fix the problems caused by 500 years of consumerism, de-humanization, and neglect.
The movie is supposed to be a comedy, but I have to tell ya, I wasn’t laughing. I see this as a very possible future and even a commentary on today’s society. Already there are signs that we honor the block-head over the brainiac. Based on my own dating experience, I can tell you, women say they want a sensitive, thoughtful guy, but they’ll take a set of six-pack abs and a big bank account over those qualities any day of the week. Don’t believe me? Log on to Match.com and take a look at the qualities that women are looking for in the “About My Date” section. They want income levels over $75K, and they want “athletic and toned” body types. I don’t see a check box for “empathetic” or “good listener” or even “book reader.”
And women have the nerve to complain when their dumb lunk of a man isn’t all they’d like him to be. They either turn out to be cheaters, workaholics, or just overall dumb-asses. I just don’t have it in me to feel sorry for them.
There are a ton of other elements of today’s society that I think serve as markers for the inevitable dumbing down of our society: multi-million-dollar athletes who can’t even say an intelligible sentence, the continued decline in the use of multi-syllabic words, the popularity of gangsta rap, and the ever-popular need to have government create laws where good common sense should reign. For instance, there are states and countries where people actually need to be told to not multi-task when they’re driving. In places where no law is in place, you can be sure to see some bimbo doing her makeup, some white-shirt executive texting his secretary, another moron who thinks reading while driving negates any stupidity associated with reading and driving at the same time, and, of course, the ultimate Texas cliché, some fake-blond soccer mom talking on her mobile while doing her make up and digging through her purse for the DVD she can load into the portable DVD player she uses to distract the brat yelling and jumping about in the back seat … phew … all at 60 MPH.
Is there any wonder why I think we should have IQ tests as a prerequisite for having kids and driving machinery?
Okay, I know. Keep a positive mental attitude. “As a man thinketh” and such. It doesn’t help that it’s cloudy today and has been cloudy and raining here in Austin for the past few days. It feels like weeks, wrapped in a dull white and grey gauze, feeling as lifeless as a mummy. Yes, I’m a bit depressed.
April will forever been etched in my memory as the month I lost my mother, just like September and October will be the months I lost my father. On April 18th, two years ago, my mom breathed her last breath. And while her last couple of hours of life seemed peaceful and she died with a serene expression on her face, I’m forever haunted by the weeks and months of suffering that preceded that hour. Occasionally an image of her groaning in her unconscious state for hours on end as her body was racked with fever and pain will pop into my head. That frame will last a millisecond in my mind, and yet, I’ll have to sit down to recover for a few minutes. Those episodes occur less frequently as time goes on, but the impact is no less devastating. At 35, I should still have a few good years or even decades with both of my parents left. But now I have neither.
So, while my parents died of what should’ve been easily treatable diseases, our scientists are focused on creating seedless fruit and drugs that decrease baldness and increase penis and breast sizes without serious side effects. Do I think there’s hope for humanity? Sadly, it would take a catastrophe of monumental proportions to spur us into action and jar us onto the right path. Humanity needs death to keep us humble … in my humble, but accurate, opinion.
