We were all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
–Benjamin Franklin, statesman, founding father
In my previous post, I inferred that we live in an insanely dumb timeline. In fact, that proposition is now a highly popular internet idiom.
Earlier this week, I watched this spoof from The Onion and couldn’t help but wonder how close we are to realising that dreadful possibility. Yes, we can laugh… for now.
Fortunately, more and more people are realising that a very thin line separates us from becoming the characters portrayed in films like Idiocracy, WALL-E, Don’t Look Up, and Prometheus.
It doesn’t help that the so-called leader of the free world is overwhelmingly regarded as unfit to serve, while some of the more disparaging insults refer to him as a buffoon, a clown, a tangerine toddler, a pumpkin-spiced Stalin, an orange goblin, and a bag of toxic sludge.
The list of insults is long and keeps growing every time he opens his mouth.
Donald Trump, however, does not lead the world alone. Practically every leader (I use the term loosely) around the world either mimics his incompetence, succumbs to his bullying grudgingly, or worse, rolls over and acts like a lapdog.
Meanwhile, it’s widely believed that our mainstream media is fundamentally corrupt. We also have evidence that both mainstream media and leadership figures are influenced by, and beholden to, big business, wealthy individuals, and tech billionaires.
Then there are sociopathic individuals like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Pete Hegseth, and Palmer Luckey who want to shape the world in very demented ways. Distressingly, they all have doe-eyed disciples; hordes of them.
While it’s convenient to lay all the blame on our leaders, we tend to ignore our own complicity. Leaders don’t fall from heaven. We install them in those positions, unless we all live in autocratic theocracies or North Korea, which we don’t. We are the only part of the problem we can tweak to get a different outcome, but we abrogate that responsibility to others.
One of our biggest problems is confirmation bias. We all believe stupid things, and instead of challenging our beliefs, we seek confirmation. We are hell-bent on doing everything possible to hang on for dear life to cherished beliefs.
Coupled with confirmation bias is credulity bias. This is the tendency to accept new information as true first, and then, only with a lot of conscious effort, to evaluate and doubt it.
Will we keep outsourcing our thinking to others, or will we wrest back control?
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