Note to self…
It is illegal to stab people for being stupid.
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Given some comments I’ve been receiving I guess I better explain why I find this button so funny.
I can assure that the humor I see in it is not born of arrogance. I, more than anybody, am more than aware of my intellectual limitations.
The reason I find it so apt and funny is merely because I see the 100 year project of dumbing down the population via the Government schools to have been eminently successful. I have had school teachers, with a straight face, tell me that “I don’t teach morality in public schools because I can’t force my morality on somebody else,” completely oblivious to the fact that by teaching teen age sex education classes they are at that point forcing somebody else’s morality on those children. I’ve had professional business personal unable to follow the simplest of syllogism crafted to instruct them how to increase productivity. I’ve spoken to Congressman about the pro-life issues hearing them insist that they who reside in the place where life is incubated is “not life.” I’ve read statistics regarding how few people actually finish a book during their lifetime. Then, there is the reality of how we’ve adjusted the standardized tests downward in order that people can score higher though, in fact, being more stupid. If a person of such completely average intelligence as myself can see all this stupidity then we have become a stupid people.
I wish it weren’t true. I wish it didn’t need to be said. But it is what it is. We are (and I include myself) a stupid people — and like any other addiction, I suppose the first step to curing the addiction is to admit the problem.
That’s a good thing – otherwise, we’d have been dead a long time ago.
I would have been born dead.
Anna, gave me a button with that message on it and I thought it funny.
Part of this is because we live in a technological society. See Jacque Ellul’s Technological Society and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.
One of my favorite illustrations from Postman is his advertisement for “Freshmint.” It aptly illustrates the application of technique to a moral/intellectual problem short circuiting virtue.
Paul,
You’re absolutely correct. I’ve read Postman and large sections of Ellul on that subject and everything is indeed reduced to technology and so everyone becomes merely a technician. A technician is not expected to think about something, he is merely expected to fix the problem the way a plumber fixes a broken toilet.
Then there is the whole aspect, that I didn’t mention, of how it is we are stupid because we live in a culture and society that compartmentalizes everything. As such there are very few people who have the ability to see wholes and how a decision or action in one realm ripples across and impacts a host of other areas.
Still, we don’t have to remain this way.
The second paragraph in your response comment may be summed up in one word: pragmatism. After all, pragmatism is America’s one major contribution to philosophy. The shame of it all.