JR'S Free Thought Pages
No Gods ~ No Masters
~ No Bullshit
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JR'S Free Thought Pages |
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Thoughts on Human Stupidity By JR, April 2025
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt – Bertrand Russell, from “The Triumph of Stupidity”, Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935, written during the Nazi/Fascist takeover of a former enlightened Germany Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man – Bertrand Russell The only thing that, at bottom, is worth being lived – in this life that must constantly be critiqued in order for it to be, in fact, worth living – is the struggle against stupidity –Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020), French philosopher and author of numerous excellent books [1] It is very likely that the pervasive nature of stupidity defined by cognitive psychologists as detachment from reality, truth and rationality will never diminish. In fact some studies claim that we are getting dumber, that IQs are in steep decline and that common sense is becoming less common; in short we are locked into a golden age of idiocy – and gross obesity. Has anyone else noticed that in addition to imbecility, many people these days exhibit incredibly bad behavior and lack of self control, don’t provide guidance and discipline for their children and are depicted as morons and dolts especially on profoundly unethical and nauseating television marketing . The latest capitalist financial scam and out of control fetish of irrationality, ridiculousness and colossal waste of time and money is online gambling on your cell phone. The obvious question is: why the widespread stupidity? Collectively we have the potential to know more than we ever have but are living in a distracted postmodern world of willed ignorance, techno-idiocy, corporate corruption, obsession with social media gossip platforms, addictions to cell phones and other superfluous techno-devices that have not improved literacy, mathematical understanding, logic, rationality or enlightenment. The science fiction zombie movies of the 1970s and 1980s have now become a reality. And of course there are those who prefer to live in the Medieval Dark Ages of superstition, delusions and fantasies of religion that entail worship of vile tyrannical deities. Stupidity encompasses a wilful disregard for logic, reasoning skills, critical thinking and refusal to learn from experience. Dozens of illogical biases such as cognitive dissonance [2], confirmation bias, groupthink and a huge list of other logical fallacies contribute to the perpetuation of foolish and irrational beliefs, idiotic mind numbing activities such as the current madness of gambling online and indoctrinated lifelong superstitious anti-scientific childish beliefs such as religion. The prevalence of stupidity in our so-called “enlightened” greed ridden capitalist societies is greatly influenced by widespread indoctrination, propaganda, bullshit, social media gibberish, corporate media, fear, authoritarianism, endless inane capitalist history whitewash, mind destroying marketing and mind control - what Noam Chomsky called “manufactured consent”. We are true believers who consistently deceive ourselves with countless built in biases and logical fallacies. Rather than scepticism and pessimism, we count on delusionary hope and optimism – and even worse listen to and believe economists, stock market gurus and other shamans, crystal ball gazers, preachers and medieval scholastics. As the late great George Carlin rightly observed, “Bullshit is everywhere”. The Dunning-Kruger Effect as a cognitive disorder in which those with the most self confidence, self-esteem, narcissistic, faith, overestimation of their capabilities and sense of certainty are the dumbest whereas those with the most intelligence and high IQ are cautious and uncertain. As Monty Python icon and friend of psychologist David Dunning, John Cleese remarked, “these are people who are too stupid to know they are stupid.” It seems a truism that intellectual and physical sloth, complacency, indifference, narcissism, stupidity, willed ignorance, sociopathic behaviour and being an insufferable manipulative know nothing asshole seem to be coterminous – much like the obnoxious pin head neighbour from hell that lives across the street. Clint Eastwood may have been right when he said in one of his movies “too many assholes, not enough bullets”. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who before it was too late tried to assassinate Adolph Hitler and was executed for his efforts but his writings left us with the notion that stupidity is a greater threat to humanity than evils such as fascism and other variants of authoritarianism such as capitalism. It doesn’t seem reasonable since surely the genocide that’s been going on in Gaza, dictators, war criminals, serial sex offenders and psychopathic asshole billionaires such as fascist Donald Trump (now bull shitter and asshole in chief of the USA for a second round of gross stupidity) and neo-Nazi Elon Musk are far greater problems. Bonhoeffer claimed that against stupidity we are defenceless since logic, cogent argument, protests and even force cannot stop it. Reason and evidence have no effect. Facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved; indeed the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied. In fact, they can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make them irritating intimidating aggressive sense of entitlement assholes. For that reason, great caution is called for when dealing with a classic asshole like the sociopathic jerk across the street from my wife and I. Never again will I try to persuade the stupid moronic asshole who was likely a bully when a kid with reasons, for it is senseless and perhaps dangerous. Assholes are on the increase, along with stupidity which is a characteristic of most certified assholes as well. The late educational philosopher Neil Postman referred to the widespread unthinking semi-literate self inflicted ignoramuses as Amusing Ourselves to Death – the title of one of his many excellent books. Once depicted in bizarre science fiction, many homo saps have become the walking dead, docile solipsistic zombies oblivious to the external world and what’s left of Mother Nature who has been gang raped for centuries. Kamikaze capitalism, ecosystem collapse, species extinction, the creation of a giant heat dome over the planet as immorality, lack of self control and self discipline, stupidity, ignorance and solipsism are becoming the norms for the semi-intelligent apes called humans. As Albert Einstein once remarked, “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits” and “the three forces that rule the world are stupidity, fear and greed.” AI algorithms are now being employed for not only inane marketing strategies and surveillance and intimidating dissidents, but are the source of most trades on the grossly manipulated insider trading bloated global stock exchanges and have even been implemented for medical diagnoses. Then there is the aforementioned social media whereby everyone, even the most ignorant cretin, has an opinion. It’s axiomatic that in an alleged free world that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Too many don’t seem to understand this distinction or the notion that reality exists independent of our beliefs about what is real and true. Sorry but ghosts, goblins and gods are fictions – as are angels, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Loch Ness Monster, Sasquatch and the invisible flying pink unicorn (IFPU). Start thinking – and get over the supernatural bullshit like your personal Sky Daddy or other imaginary friend. Anyone with the curiosity of an earthworm need only look at the morass of useless information shared each day in churches and throughout the corporate capitalist controlled TV, internet and other mind numbing media. Some rare claims may be deemed knowledge such as the obvious unmentioned spectacle of 150 lbs of blubber on your bloated stomach that for many start at their necks and all the way down to their gonads – but there is currently an injection or pill for treating grotesque obesity endlessly peddled on TV called Ozempic and dozens of copycats with nasty side effects: but of what use? Have these people not discovered the big secret to staying slim and trim: eat less and exercise more? These ads are competing with sickening fast food promotions whereby people attempt to devour a greasy burger that is 18 inches thick oozing with inedible slimy gravy, mayonnaise and other sloppy gunk. And what passes for sport these days? Boxing is child’s play compared to what passes for sport with the steady stream of barbaric World Wrestling Federation and UFC on TV (two people in a bloody cage trying to kill one another with seemingly no rules) not unlike the brain destroying toxic material marketed on television such as money wasting casinos, lotteries and gambling on sports. When the late satirist and comedian Don Rickles said “I went to the fights last night and a hockey game broke out” he never could have imagined what passes for “sport” today and especially the rampant decadence and gross stupidity of placing bets. But there’s profit and today anything goes for the capitalist class parasites. Audit an introductory course in probability theory and you would never engage in such idiocy as lotteries and online betting. Alleged humans are portrayed on television and other media as undisciplined morons who are too discombobulated to even provide guidance and discipline for their out of control children and their slobbering dogs that sleep in their owners beds licking their private parts while languishing during the day on their $3000 leather couch. My cleanliness obsessed mother would not even permit a dog in the house and if we behaved like many children on TV, there would be dire “consequences”. Most of contemporary human behaviour displays immense stupidity, lack of civility, asshole syndrome and precious little self control. They are all a pitiful portrayal of the barnacle brain human species called homo sap. One can only hope that no intelligent aliens are dutifully recording it. Our access to massive streams of mind numbing distracting data and entertainment, some of it information but most of which constitutes useless knowledge lacking in wisdom that has quite clearly not made us more intelligent or wise. Hopefully there’s intelligent life somewhere in the infinite cosmos because there’s precious little on this pathetic garbage dump planet. As far back as written records exist, some of the greatest minds of their age believed an age of idiocy to be the case - as it is now. At the time perhaps they were right as in the prophetic 1951science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still that was made during the propaganda laced bullshit of the Cold War and anti-communist hysteria. Nonetheless, the novelty of our own era is that it would take only one unhinged idiot with a red button to eradicate all stupidity, and the whole world with it such as a sense entitlement doltish Elon Musk bone head twit with too much money who are only too willing to choose the means of their own his own and the rest of the world’s annihilation. So are we locked into a tinfoil age of idiocy? Think of Leon Skum’s buddy, the racist, serial liar bloviating huckster and narcissistic doltish psychopathic asshole and Big Mac devouring Donald Trump and the imbecilic wrecking crew he has surrounded himself with - unelected fascist creeps such as the aforementioned dick head Leon Skum and his hideous EV Tesla, financed by billions of dollars by the US government. And we’re into Round II with the moral degenerate and semi-literate Trump who will likely use a wrecking ball like his first debacle during 2016-2020. Yes, it’s still hard to wrap your head around that horrific fact isn’t it? But Americans elected the dimwitted George W Bush twice so there’s no surprise here. Americans clearly have a preference for choosing incredibly dumb and immoral obscenely wealthy conservative presidents who don’t give a rat’s ass about them; conservatives and most hypocrite limousine liberals never have. Stupidity is increased by the barrage of momentary sensations and satisfactions channelled through the cluttered spaces of our computer screens and so-called “smart” phones – attention-demanding words and images keeping the over-stimulated bungled brain avid and unsatisfied. New uses of our modern modes of interconnection are needed to silence twittering trivialities with more connected and continuous thinking. Once people have popped enough brightly-coloured sweets into their mouths, one might hope that a craving for a nutritious meal might eventually arise. And understanding the mechanisms of advertising and marketing is our best protection against their debilitating effects. We might then become conscious of the mindless anaesthetizing stupidity into which we are sinking and with a sharp snap of attention, wake the fuck up. The other great characteristic of our age is that, even if we admit that stupidity has not yet reached its nadir with a know nothing racist lying bastard like Trump, we know that it has never before been so visible, so unabashed, so outspoken, and so peremptory. It’s enough to make you despair of your average homo sapiens, 25% of who still believe the earth is the centre of the universe and even more who believe that universe was created in six days by some omnipotent invisible big jerk in the sky. But who created this asleep at the wheel incurable dictatorial psychopath? Was it an invisible bigger big jerk in the sky – a super duper god? Infinite regress anyone? One final point on these brief off the cuff reflections: Fools, idiots and assholes are not restricted to the male of the species. Neither sex has a monopoly on complacency, stupidity, ADHD narcissism and the preponderance of assholes, all four of which are becoming global epidemics more toxic than covid-19.We’ve all made fools of ourselves at least a few times during our lives and hopefully these episodes diminish with age, as we achieve some semblance of a reliable moral compass combined with intelligence, real knowledge and wisdom. So for idiots of every stripe, morons of all kinds including blowhards and bitches, genial dumb asses and silly twats and twits; dirty bastards and nasty ball breakers, dunderheads and pathetic ninnies and evil louts, dunces and dimwits, oafs and space cadets, lazy slobs and dizzy dames, dunderheads and air heads, dim bulbs, scatterbrains and dingbats, lummoxes and nitwits, imbeciles, boobs, numbskulls, dolts, wastes of space and human skin, blockheads, zeros, clowns, dummies, raging assholes, shit for brains and empty-headed rubes, dickheads, dolts, pipsqueaks (like Conservative leader and certified asshole and Stephen Harper protégé Pierre (Flu Truck Klan) Poilievre), jerks, lowlifes, cretins, daydreamers, pains in the ass, motor mouths and bloviating blowhards - this is the chance to avoid any of these labels for the rest of your life. Apparently 20% of people have consulted a pseudoscientific charlatan called a “psychic” which is about as useful as a life coach, self-help and self-esteem guru, happiness shrink, homeopath, New Age power of positive thinking kook, economist shaman or stock market ecclesiastic and crystal ball reader who never informs you to sell anything. These credulous fantasyland jerks are about as useful as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and every sky daddy invented since the beginning of human history. This diatribe on declining intellects and bad behavior is a sequel to a piece I wrote five years ago. Our collective global predicament of externally imposed and self-inflicted stupidity has steadily declined since then: https://www.skeptic.ca/Capitalist_Techno-Stupidity_v_Freedom_and_the_Intellect.htm Dumb Ass Inc. I end this diatribe with some incredibly stupid utterances from a few famous and not so famous celebrities from the past: "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." -- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." - George W Bush "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" - George W Bush "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." – George W Bush
"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law." "I was a pilot flying an airplane and it just so happened that where I was flying made what I was doing spying." -- Francis Gary Power, U-2 reconnaissance pilot held by the Soviets for spying, in an interview after he was returned to the US. "I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes." -- President Richard Nixon "Are you any relation to your brother Marv?" -- Leon Wood, New Jersey Nets guard, to Steve Albert, Nets TV commentator.
"The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history... this century's
history.... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago. - Former US Vice President Dan Quayle "The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe." -- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia. -- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia. "I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted." -- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries. "The doctors X-rayed my head and found nothing." -- Dizzy Dean explaining how he felt after being hit on the head by a ball in the 1934 World Series. "The police are not here to create disorder. They're here to preserve disorder." - Former Chicago mayor Daley during the infamous 1968 Democratic Party convention Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas. -Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees. - Jason Kidd, upon his drafting to the Dallas Mavericks Half this game is ninety percent mental. - Philadelphia Phillies manager Danny Ozark It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago. - Former US Vice President Dan Quayle I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people. - Former US Vice President Dan Quayle It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. - Former US Vice President Dan Quayle That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I'm just the one to do it. - A congressional candidate in Texas Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind -General William Westmoreland, during the war in Vietnam Notes: [1] If we are willing and able to wage a campaign against widespread stupidity effectively we will need to conceptualize and understand the nature of stupidity, its source, cause and how to abolish its malevolent power. In his 2015 book States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century Stiegler attempts to answer these questions. Certainly the resistance by both the Christian Churches and the Chambers of Commerce that promote TINA capitalism have been the primary obstacles in preventing logic and critical thinking being taught in our public schools. I know this reactionary resistance all too well as a Mathematics teacher involved in a program to implement the amazing critical thinking programs into the British Columbia school district in which I taught for thirty years. The idiotic resistance of the “faith is all you need” Christian churches is understandable but it would appear that capitalism, like the Bible Bangers simply want not critical thinkers, but rather obedient, compliant, docile and unthinking drones in their pulpits and workplaces. [2] Even most people of average intelligence (IQ of 100 is not too smart folks) tend to strive for consistency in their beliefs at the expense of open mindedness (but not to the extent that your brains fall out) and hopefully, the truth. Cognitive dissonance occurs most commonly when someone holds conflicting beliefs or has made a considerable generally long term emotional investment in a belief or world view. This irrational behavior and form of human stupidity, not unlike other logical fallacies is particularly pervasive with those who have deeply held religious beliefs. But to not change or modify a belief in the face of conflicting or contradictory evidence is a clear sign of irrationality – and stupidity. People who have made huge sacrifices in time, effort and money in pursuing an activity or belief tend to go on doing it or believing it even when they realize they stand to lose more than they gain by continuing. It is common, not only with stupid religious and political beliefs, dissonance (a form of stupidity) happens in the stock market, irrational money losing gambling such as lotteries and the latest capitalist scam of online betting on sports - and even in most wars such as the anti-communist abomination in Vietnam in which the Americans slaughtered about five million people. This is not only big time hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance but deeply immoral. Moreover, the refusal to abandon an irrational, costly and useless project in which large sums of money, emotion and time has been invested is a variant of cognitive dissonance called the “sunk cost fallacy.” People will continue with the activity or belief rather than admit to error and cut their losses. Critical thinking expert professor Robert Todd Carroll in The online Skeptics Dictionary provides a clear concise explanation of the phenomenon at http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html Ask yourself an obvious question about every whitewashed war in history: cui bono? It’s certainly not the gullible working class young people who fight, are mutilated and die in them. The death toll for the opponents in US imperialist wars since 1945 has now amounted to about 25 million; yeah, let’s do the MAGA (Make Assholes Great Again) thing and enrich the weapons manufacturers and the latest annual US military budget of one trillion dollars. But hey, about one in five Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows and did not know which animal hamburger comes from so these cretins will believe anything. Do carrots and weeds scream when they are uprooted? Of course not! But what about industrial livestock farming; is this not an ongoing form of global idiocy and ethical and environmental catastrophes? One shocking fact among many is that it takes several thousand liters of water to produce a kilo of hamburger.
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