Saturday, June 2, 2012

Stupidity: The Next Evolution





Let's face it, we are nearing the end of what humans are capable of. This isn't a lament it is just a recognition that in order to move forward as a species we must be willing to leave more and more of what we consider "us" behind. Past generations created machines to do the heavy lifting and made vehicles to transport us to places that we could not travel to with our own two feet.  Eventually we concocted computers to do our deep thinking and more recently our short term memory has been replaced by a google app on our smart phones. Scientists have also made exponential leaps in recent years toward the eradication of potent diseases and have explored the benefits of cloning vital organs to increase our chances of survival.




Sadly though in spite of our inventive spirit we are struggling to reach a new frontier because of the limitations of our human bodies. Our eyes have a specific resolution capacity and spectrum of colors. Our brains do not process that quickly. Our tissue (the breathing, eating, shitting parts) are so haphazard and unreliable it is a wonder we can get anything done in a day besides keeping them running. They don't hold up when it's too cold or too hot. They are neither strong or durable and tend to operate very poorly without oxygen  or when placed under extreme gravitational pressure.




An Asimovian future imagines us blending with machines, having them assist us first as peripherals and then as androids before their eventual take over and destruction of the earth ala The Matrix. I disagree with this imagined end. I think (potentially) it would be much more gradual and much less violent. 




At some point it will become clear to humans that all of our action to enhance and further human life have been in vain.The human form is antiquated and has no place in the harsh comet colliding future. The computers that we have created will eventually surpass us both logically and artistically and our relevance will no longer exist. Certainly a few proud, ignorant fools may cling to their egos but the rest of us, the forward thinkers will eventually seek to bolster the superior race that we created. We will begin to feel silly and inadequate, our numbers will dwindle until we finally will ourselves out of existence.




So what then is the purpose and prevalence of stupidity in this day and age? Stupidity is a subconscious human defense mechanism whose purpose is to inhibit the annihilation of the species. What other possible reason could there be in a world where we know what the right answer is but continually choose the opposite?. Instead of living as civil citizens we desire to dream up absurd and logically unfounded reasons to go to war. We elevate idiots to the height of royalty and shower them with money and praise. We've accepted "nerd cool" as look so that ugly people can get laid and forget about their textbooks. We pass all of our life observations through a Larry the Cable Guy prism in order to achieve cheap meaningless laughs. we scoff at politics and philosophy and adamantly deny their application in our current lives. The word "thinking" has become synonymous with the word "boring." 




I won't deny that a small dedicated collective of forward thinkers exist who are trying to massage the world into a more intelligent era. However, the rise of intelligence seems to have bred a louder crop of apathetic idiots. The purpose of these idiots is to defeat intelligent thought or at least muddy and encumber its forward progress to extend the life of the human race. It is an evolution posing as a de-evolution that your grandchildren and your grandchildren's children will live to appreciate.



4 comments:

  1. Great post, D. If you haven't seen them, you need to check out _Transcendent Man_ (documentary) and _Idiocracy_ (movie), both of which address many of the points you brought up in a serious (for the former) / humorous (for the latter) ways.

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  2. Wow Drone you are hilarious, and your blog design is amazing. Great job :)

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  3. Bah, we are terribly flawed creatures. Why did I try so hard in school when idiocy is so glorified? Damn, I hope I have better luck next time. Also, I second Ryan's mention of Idiocracy. It's a silly movie, but it actually has a fairly terrifying message. Great post!

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  4. You have a very good choice of words...interesting..keep posting..=)

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