Sex in the...everything Part 2
Today boys and girls, we are going to learn a new word:
"Idiocracy"
Interestingly, there are two ways to best understand this word:
I don't need no stinkin bottle opener!
1. The definition:
"Idiocracy is democracy gone wrong through idiocy. It is the unfortunate situation where the vote of a person ignorant of even the most basic of facts surrounding an issue or candidate counts exactly as much as the vote of someone who is well-informed about the specific issue or candidate".
2. The movie (of course there has to be one):
The movie illustrates that unfortunately idiocracy does not only involve politics but extends to other spheres of life as well.
Take a moment to watch this little instructional video, which will provide you with essentially everything you really need to know about the future of the human race (sorry for the Hungarian subtitles, it's all I could find).
In a nutshell, the concept of the word "idiocracy" is that modern life no longer favors those who are faster and smarter - which has been key to ensuring that the human race isn't made up of complete nincompoops. In other words, "survival of the fittest".
This state of affairs is the result of a couple of things happening are the same time. One, modern medicine has lengthened the average life span of average people continuously. The "mentally challenged" people that would have pretty much perished instantly to some random dinosaur attack while hunting for food can now hunt at Taco Bell - with little or no risk.
Therefore, the DNA of awkward dinosaur hunters that previously would have been naturally eliminated from the gene pool of future generations, now is transmitted to ever growing hordes of bargain seeking Walmart shoppers.
And the result is this:
I hope she got a bargain on those jeans
Secondly, the internet (and probably MTV) have shortened are attention spans to microscopic levels. Our lives are now made up of a series of 30 second thoughts strung together somehow by iPhones and iPads. Our constant connectivity fools us into thinking that we're very smart, that now we "know" everything.
But if you spend your entire waking moment connecting, when do you actually think about it?
Believe it or not, I found out that that our hamster testicle sized attention spans even has an SMS shorthand - "tl;dr". Read the Wiki entry. It's interesting in and of itself, but even more so for the fact that there even IS an entry for it.
The impacts of this are understandably enormous. Just one example is the fact that American politicians have essentially become cartoon characters that spew sounds bites to their respective conservative or liberal audiences: "Kill the Immigrants" or "Support Mental Health or I'll Kill You" 
and on and on.
We're too fucking stupid anymore to understand how complex issues fit together in a way that would foster the creation of complex solutions to fix them. The new rule of thumb is that if the issue doesn't fit on the front of a T-Shirt it ain't worth talking about.
So - at this point - you're now perhaps asking yourself what the hell does all this have to do in a post whose title enticingly uses the word "sex" (while yawning and reaching for a taco). Well, a lot.
I'll save that for Part 3, but in the meantime I'll leave you with a quote from the movie "Idiocracy". As always please comment, but hopefully it won't be tl;dr.
2 Comments →
Reader Comments (2)
I didn't see the movie but the intro you posted... Well... It's striking how much of it is reality.
It's right that the more intelligent are now the ones that procreate less.
I find myself intelligent and I have to admit, that I'm probably more picky, when choosing partners, than - let's say - less intelligent guys. I'm a gay so kids are not the issue but the principle is the same.
I'm sometimes even envious of those morons who (I imagine) fuck like rabbits and are not disturbed by the idiocy of their partners (like I would be).
The second thing... the shorter the sentence is, the better...
I'm working in advertising where that is a rule. Long statements are not an option when you have at disposal not more than 2-3 seconds of the attention of your target (average person). I wouldn't say the advertising business is responsible for this trend (at most just partly). I would say it ... "THE SYSTEM"
By the system I mean the world we created to live in it. The world when you can buy everything you need in every kind of wrapping you like... or sell everything people want to buy... And there we have it... a world, that is like a giant supermarket with shelfs full to the last inch. Now when you want to put something new on the shelf it has to small enough to fit in the few remaining, little gaps.
@ retan
You should really get the movie or at least watch the best parts on You Tube. You'll be surprised (or maybe actually not, because you've already observed the way the world is heading) at how much of what is in this movie is actually becoming true.
The funny thing is that the movie got a 73% positive review on rottentomatoes.com by critics, but only 57% by audiences. I think that maybe the point of the movie hits a bit too close to home for some.
As far as brevity: I am all for brevity when it comes to selling....be it toilet paper or television sets. It's an art to be able to quickly communicate the high points of an item and interest them in buying it.
My problem is that when people base their entire lives on Facebook posts, which are by definition limited to X number of characters, then you create people who can't see that action A leads to response B. And without that kind of thinking, we'll not be able to seriously address any of the real problems that face us.
Maybe I've gotten WAY too serious on this topic, but it's something that worries me. Thanks for reading.