So in light of the writer’s strike and the lack of new programming, I rented a movie called Idiocracy. And it got me thinking along with some conversations with friends, that maybe we as a society should be more advanced than we are now. Don’t want to give it all away but the premise of the movie is, Luke Wilson, an average military guy, and Maya Rudolph, a prostitute (and the only type of woman the scientist could find with the same level of intelligence as the average man…) who , in a military experiment, get frozen and are mistakenly thawed out 500 years in the future instead of the one year they were sent in for. But this future is no Total Recall or Jetsons. In this future everyone is dumb as all hell. Most people (in the US that is) talk one of three ways- hillbilly, valley girl/surfer dude, or ebonics. The fact that Luke's character can speak proper English puts him in the retard and gay categories. It’s a comedy (and actually kinda funny) but it’s also a bit disturbing. The point of the movie is that people in today’s society don’t value intelligence like they used to (Albert Einstein was well known but who the heck knows genius’ now? We focus on Brittany Spears instead. Further, the movie suggest that those with low IQ s are having more and more kids while those who are highly intelligent aren’t having as many or aren’t having kids at all. Finally the movie states that the smart people focused more on finding cures for aesthetic things like hair loss over other more society moving concepts.So , I wonder, are we headed towards idiocracy? I believe we are smarter than generations past but I am concerned that enough of us aren’t acting on our intelligence. At the same time
I also have a hard time believing our society would end up becoming stunted and not push for intelligence and societal advancement, but hey we voted Bush, right?
4 comments:
Yeah, we really should start thinking more, move towards intelligence. But... as you said, we did voted Bush. zzz...
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I don't know. People elected Bush for stupid reasons, but we've always elected leaders for stupid reasons. Democracy is just flawed that way.
We've also always worshiped babes. I don't really see the danger in that. Plenty of my very bright and educated friends indulge in cosmo and are not the worse for it.
We know one genius-- Steven Hawking. But he hasn't been doing that much. Einstein led the last scientific revolution. Hawking has been just been struggling to solve the issues that Einstein couldn't.
Also, why is Einstein so damn famous? Because he played a large part in winning World War 2. The atom bomb. Which wouldn't have been used in the first place if another very smart person, Hitler, hadn't seized control of Germany.
...I don't understand why everyone's in such a gd hurry for progress anyway. It will come, whether we want it to or not.
You know, English used to be the language of the hillbillies. The Canterbury Tales, you know the super brilliant poem by Chaucer, was written in hillbilly-speak.
People are stupid. Good luck changing the world.
I saw this movie. Thought it was pretty funny. But it also got me thinking. Currently, I do wonder what people consider "entertainment" these days. The coming of a third season of "Flavor of Love", prime example of so-called entertainment. How many brain cells do we lose watching this crap? Maybe we are getting a bit dumber. Or just too complacent and lazy. People don't want to think and be creative, they want to be consistently entertained with the most asinine topics. Maybe it's escapism. It's easy to get lost in idiocy than to deal with the ever so many problems that have such a hold on this generation.
As far as people being smarter than past generations, I'm not sure if I agree. We still seem to make many of the dumb mistakes of the past and hope for different results. I think people are more formally educated than past generations. Unfortunately, formal education does not necessarily equal smarts. Formal education teaches addition and subtraction, reading and writing, facts and figures. It doesn't always give you the intelligence to apply them. Maybe that's more under common sense.
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