Simple minds and they harm they cause
So.
The world has ended.
We are beyond the pale now, and about to embark upon a furious and masturbatory dismantling of all sense, kindness, law, candor, and justice.
Ravenous jackals have descended upon this once hallowed place to desecrate and destroy any and all notions of America's status as a "shining city on a hill."
The victory was a complete rout, and while the how and why will be datamined and diagramed endlessly from now until the heat death of the universe i have to wonder one thing.
Was i wrong to be gentle towards stupid people?
I am, by all measure, an objectively smart person. There are a myriad of metrics by which to measure this marvel (alliteration is one of them) and i chart well by all metrics. I have a mensa level iq. I have 2 degrees. I am widely regarded by people i know or have known in my life to be a very intelligent person, a bellweather of valuable information and insight. I have known i was different from a VERY young age, but i didn't always know what that meant. For a while in my teen years, when i realized just how much smarter i was than those around me i amused myself with people, using my words to confound them, expose them, humiliate them, essentially bully them for no reason other than i found them incredibly stupid. I thought them beneath me. A rare few were elevated to positions of respect but most to me then, and sometimes still now, seem like drooling mewling children unable to understand anything of value with any degree of depth.
sometime in my late teens early 20's i studied Zen, bushido, and other religious and meditative disciplines. I came to the conclusion then, "You can't fault a dog, for being a dog." In a manner of speaking to say, i cannot judge those that are stupid too harshly, because of the limitations they were born with. I used this idea to try to find a way to be more forgiving and kind to those around me i considered ignorant, hateful, or just so simple minded that explaining to them why there are wrong would be a fruitless endeavor. As John Cleese said:
"If your very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you are very stupid? You have to be relatively intelligent to understand just how stupid you are."
So it's the Dunning–Kruger effect then.
I of course labored under the misapprehension for a while that i COULD convince a person of supreme stupidity or hatefulness of the error of their ways with well crafted and thoughtful words about the topic at hand or the matter of the day but i realized quickly that was a fools errand. There are many aphorisms for a reason you see, such as:
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."
I could lead you to a conclusion where logically, you could not in any rational way refute the position i led you to AND STILL, irrationally refuse to accept the objective reality as truth.
I want to be kind to people, honestly i do. I know that i did not STUDY a great deal to be this smart, i was born autistic, with a hyper mind for words, a larger brain with more connections than a normal human. I did not EARN my intelligence, at least, not at first, it was GIFTED to me. So what kind of self righteous asshole would i have to be to deny that just as my brains were given to me at random, other's LACK of said brains wasn't also just a matter of random chance? How could i blame them for being BORN stupid when i was BORN smart?
Because we learn.
Or, rather we have the capacity to learn. While it's true as of at 2022 study, 21% of adults in America cannot read, and 54% of them read at a 6th grade level or lower, that does not suggest they CANNOT learn. Perhaps the circumstances surrounding them were not favorable, perhaps they were poor and grew up on welfare (like i did) perhaps their childhoods were profoundly traumatizing (like mine was) perhaps due to some mental disability they are truly rendered unable to learn (below 80 iq is the technical threshold for the beginning of mental handicap) but how many are out there truly INCAPABLE of learning?
I suppose we can't really know that. I choose to believe that most people, CAN learn, but there are many reasons why they may choose not to. Some of those are nurture, in that they may have not been raised to be inquisitive, to be curious, to be encouraged to ask questions and seek true answers in a rigorous manner. In the absence of that motivation you may be left with people who "learn" by choosing to believe emotional lies that line up with the things they WANT to be true, otherwise known as confirmation bias. Wherein we simply SEEK OUT ideas that tend to confirm or reinforce our desired worldview, regardless of if those ideas are facts, or entirely fictitious spun from the minds of manipulative sources.
Some of those reasons may be nature. That is to say, we are unable to engage our rational thoughtful minds before succumbing to emotional cues that would lead us astray. Our heart wants what is easy, what is pleasurable, what our ancient DNA tells it to want. To lust after a person with our eyes is a genetic imperative, but our higher thought steps in to tell us to act rational, to be true to our partner and not our lust, that pursuit of that office crush might end in job loss and financial and professional disgrace.
From neurological research, the sensory input always goes through the emotional centers of the brain before it reaches the frontal cortex — the place for our rational thought. With that understanding, one must realize it is actually physically impossible for thought to come before emotions. Some people struggle with this issue more than others. It has been suggested that those with lower iq's are more prone to this handicap, being lead around by how a thing FEELS, versus how things really are in objective reality. Remember we are all motivated by the same very basic things:
Seek pleasure and plenty
Avoid pain
and do you know what thinking does? It causes pain. Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person's behavior and beliefs do not complement each other or when they hold two contradictory beliefs. It causes a feeling of discomfort. People may do this via defense mechanisms, such as avoidance. When you BELIEVE something because it feels right, it feels like the truth, it sounds like what you want to be true, and then you run into facts in the real world that disprove what you believe in with cold scientific facts, you get a headache. It HURTS to think that this thing you feel so strongly, could be wrong, and your mind jumps into action to protect you from pain, reassuring you:
"It's not possible for that other idea to be true. How you feel is correct, how you feel is true, what you feel is all that matters."
Do you see the problem we have now? We have those that see the world as it is, and those that only see the world as they want it to be. Two parallel mindsets, seemingly incapable of reconciling.
There is of course another factor. What about the environment in which we all live?
Unfortunately that is yet another black mark for the simple minded. Those with lower iq's are more suggestible then others, meaning they can be easily manipulated. Untold amounts of money have flowed into politics as a result of Citizens united. Of the top 12 megadonors in 2024, only 2 supported democrats. 10 out of 12 billionaires supported republican candidates. Naturally the rich are going to support the party that promises them more money, lower taxes, less regulation, more power. They then spend tiny fractions of that money to finance endless ad campaigns to convince the most gullible among us to vote for the billionaires chosen avatar. By hook or by crook, cheating, lying, distorting the truth and all the while leaving you feeling more frightened and less certain of ANY objective truth or reality while doing so. You see, if you are scared, they can more easily influence your limbic system, hijacking your emotional response to fear and assuring you, scared, lost, confused, lonely little you, that only THEY can protect you from the strawman other, the bad man.
WHY are they bad? Because they are not us, that's why! Don't think about it, just FEEL. It feels good to vote for us right? WE'LL SHOW THEM!
They feed you this message. On Tv. On the internet. On Facebook, and twitter, and truth social, on message boards and discord chats, on billboards and bumper stickers, on podcasts and youtube videos, all assuring you "BAD MAN IS COMING FOR YOUR *insert cause relevant to you here* and he is BAD AND EVIL and we believe in the things YOU believe in citizen!"
All the while they have made you forget, that this is all a feeling. and feelings can lie.
They made you forget that they are millionaires and billionaires and you are struggling to pay off your mortgage and your car insurance and your health care bills. They are pointing, furiously gesticulating fingers at people who are different from you just slightly, and encouraging your righteous anger and DISGUST at these OTHER people who are scumbags and scam artists and thieves and dastardly villains all the while they steal from your future. They plot to control your rights. They take away your freedom to read any books they deem unfit, to demonstrate peacefully, to have enough money to live a life like they do, and to think.
What they have left you is the right to feel, because so long as you do not think, rich and evil people will have control over you until their outstanding greed, avarice and over reach DOOMS THE WORLD.
And all of this was avoidable. You won't get a pass from me anymore.
Science suggests that we CAN learn. Even people with disabilities, even people under duress. Those with brain damage who have lost the ability to speak words have in multiple cases RELEARNED how to speak with guidance and practice utilizing different pathways available in the brain, stimulated by music.
In spite of the fact that it is no doubt harder for some than others to learn new ideas, to embrace new concepts, to work towards empathy and compassion, i do not believe we should accept excuses any longer.
If you can learn, and simply choose not too, then no, "you can't fault a dog for being a dog." no longer applies. Even an old dog, can learn.
You. The human race. You have chosen not to learn.
You have CHOSEN hate, cruelty, racism, misogyny. You have chosen to worship false idols in place of your gods, to make billionaires who would eat your children, steal your land and poison your air your new kings.
While you all burn in the raging conflagration you chose to feed, i hope you understand i cared for you, so much, for so long. I wanted to be kind just as much as i wanted you to be kind to me in return.
That pact is broken. That bridge is burned. Your stupidity is a shield no longer. You choose violence over kindness, and i will delight in watching you stare slack jawed at the falling sky that you prayed for.
Fuck you.
Good night.