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If the powers that be really wanted to, they could figure out ways to move western cultural beliefs toward seeing intelligence as "sexy."
It's already true that in many circles, woman and men look for a mate that they like, and are attracted to, but also that will help them have healthy, intelligent and successful children. On some level, this is a natural part of our instincts.
So I'm more sanguine than many about this. Stupidity at some point becomes very unattractive.
Who knows. Maybe as automation and robots become a bigger part of our economy, maybe the best jobs and the most appealing pursuits for humans will be ones that involve higher learning or arts. And these will be a little more accessible than they are now. There's no law of nature that says that things have to have towards an "idiocracy." It seems like many of the constraints are economic.
A lot will depend on what the powerful and our what our leaders decide is the kind of society we want. Maybe somehow us regular folks can have a say in that too.
I hear urban racoons tend to be smarter and smarter each generations. Soon they'll live in houses while the have nots dumpster dive at night.
Also add:
- exposure to mercury, fluoride and other neurotoxins in your tap water and pesticides used on your food.
- watching too many TV shows and advertisement calibrated for intellectual dwarves with short attention spans.
- public education now a machine to create idiots.
- large population of uneducated immigrants
- knowledge generally replaced by googling.
I didn't know that they gave IQ tests in the 19th century. Is that why they show that honkies are smarter?
I hear urban racoons tend to be smarter and smarter each generations. Soon they'll live in houses while the have nots dumpster dive at night.
I hear the raccoon lawmakers have plans to ease the financing requirements, so even the have-not raccoons will be able to obtain credit for their overpriced housing. Of course, with the easy credit, and with the raccoon investors swooping in, prices are going through the roof!
The have nots will be easy to sort from the haves based on their tendency to drool on themselves.
This is such a dissonant experience. I frequently take the bus and train to work as a means to avoid sitting in traffic, and it happens the best route (i.e., highest frequency of buses and trains) takes me down and over through the deepest, darkest ghetto. I could take over and down, instead, through the nice parts of town, but that bus and train run almost never (draw your own conclusions on that one).
I see the *pauvres gens* riding, and getting on and off, and I feel for them. But I know most are where they are for a reason. Not all; but most.
"Oh, hurney, Burrrhell iz'out and he comin' home. You juss welcome him with open arms--"
"--hellerho? you thurh?--Yes, hunn, he comin' home."
"Ooh, derlin', just have open awrms. He said he cane do it a'nmore. No moar."
"Ooowah, yeah. Smoked it; innervenous. Cane do it a'nmore. Just dohhn judge 'im."
"Oooohw yey-uss, craggck, cogkaine--mostly cragk--"
This kind of thing is too much. I have no issue being of and with the people, but their plights are not my plights. I have no idea what to do about it.
I just know that, sadly, when I see what is really out there, most people really are not equipped to handle the cruel reality, weighing too heavy upon our tiny heads.
Biologically speaking, success is measured in offspring. Poor dumb hood rat people are therefore much more successful in our society. This is mostly because of social programs and the fact that food is plentiful. The poorest in the USA tend to also be the fattest, which is a condition unseen in the world ... EVER! So we've created a new evolution, where the weakest minds are the "fittest," and they, unburdened by compunction to give back to society, be productive, or achieve anything, find it far easier than their hard working counterparts to pump out the kids.
Our socialist society selects for stupidity.
How wierd.
Idiotcracy is the future of America unless things change. Hint: it won't anytime soon short of an asteroid crashing into the earth.
Making a kid is about the only power we give our underclass.
So much else is denied, economically speaking.
Of course, Great Society programs actually rewarded this behavior, and we still isolate much of the economic hit of having kids from poor people (free maternity care, free food for the kid(s), Section 8 housing, free education . . . I don't think it costs a whole lot having a kid if you're already poor and don't have a job anyway)
Let me ask a question: what is more important? Prestige or procreation?
Evolutionary speaking, how can you compete with procreation?
There's a reason that conservatives get so upset about welfare. It enables an unfair competitive advantage to the unqualified and uncompetitive. It defies Darwin's Law of Survival of the Fittest, and gives the advantage to the least fit.
That's why the GOP gains such success with demonizing welfare recipients. The competitive nature of reproductive survival is written into our genetic code.
It enables an unfair competitive advantage to the unqualified and uncompetitive. It defies Darwin's Law of Survival of the Fittest, and gives the advantage to the least fit.
I appreciate the logic there, but I don't know that "libeals" totally dissagree.
It get's more complicated thinking about what's "fair."
The question is how do you help people who already are poor ? It's not about encouraging the poor to reproduce, but granted it does seem like it works out that way sometimes.
While the gap between the haves and the have nots continues to grow, it also becomes harder and harder for a person with the "right stuff" who is poor at birth to live and grow up in an environment that will foster or even allow them to fulfill their potential.
Meanwhile, being born into a wealthy family gives one an advantage that isn't necessarily attributable to the competitive quality of the persons DNA.
I'd like to take (local) transportation, housing, (lifelong) education, and healthcare costs out of personal budgets entirely, just like fire and police services are entirely socialized.
We'd all have access to a baseline that was of sufficient high quality so as to not be crappy at all.
Subtract these from our monthly budgets and we'd all have to work a lot less. More leisure is more service sector work, more money circulating in the paycheck economy.
Our economy is mis-structured at a very fundamental level. Liberals are putting bandaids on bullet holes, injuries often created and celebrated by conservatives -- free trade, high housing prices, pro-corporate ALEC bullshit, protecting the fossil fuel economy, etc.
The main dynamic is that we of course ration that which is in short supply by price.
But there's no economic reason quality education, health care, or housing has to be in scarcity. These don't consume all that many resources. It's just policy keeping them high-rent sectors.
I think we're afraid of a populace that doesn't have to work all that hard, like what we have now. Much better for everyone that the working class has to work, and hard.
Leave leisure to the entitled.
The problem is this:
1) we make life hard for smart, productive people
2) we make life easy for dumb, unproductive people
The result is predictable: smart productive people have fewer or no kids, and dumb unproductive people have tons of kids.
End result: lots of dumb unproductive people
How does this serve society? By reducing education progress? By increasing crime? By increasing the load of welfare cases?
This is why the GOP wins. Because it appeals to the very fabric of our competitive DNA when it criticizes welfare and the perpetuation of useless people. We don't need more Trayvon Martins or Ferguson denizens. They just add to society burden.
1) we make life hard for smart, productive people
This has been the practice in schools for decades, beginning in the late 60's, early 70's when everything else was being turned topsy turvy. 55 years ago there was one special education class in most schools and the students in those classes were so obviously intellectually behind the rest of the school that you could simply recognize them on sight. By the late 60's, you could hardly tell special ed students from regular students--a couple of them worked as assistants in my mother's library. Today, special ed students are mainstreamed into the regular classrooms ostensibly to get a better education but really because there are so many now that it would not be feasible to put them in one class. The schools get special funding for these students and it wouldn't surprise me if one out of every five students is now labelled "special needs" in some way. They always get, or are supposed to get, extra attention from the teachers, more time on tests or different tests, and some of the emotionally disturbed ones can be a distraction in the classroom. This of course subtracts from the experience of normal or gifted students. In other words, the bulk of funding and attention are directed not to the gifted students or those with the most potential, but to those with less potential whether it be through their fault or not.
I think we're afraid of a populace that doesn't have to work all that hard, like what we have now. Much better for everyone that the working class has to work, and hard.
Leave leisure to the entitled.
I agree with you. ALthough I would add that before we can have that decent baseline existence for all, we all need to learn to live in a way where we live smaller that is with respect to our consumption/pollution footprint. Because a world with that decent baseline existence is one in which population growth would probably be higher.
The problem is this:
1) we make life hard for smart, productive people
2) we make life easy for dumb, unproductive people
I think life is hard in different ways for both. Again, the tough issue is (or becomes) who gets to reproduce? But even contemplating such a lack of freedom is something we would never dare contemplate until we are totally forced to. This is unfortunate. We don't really believe in or know how to function collectively for the benefit of the community. At least not well enough to pull this off.
I'd like to take (local) transportation, housing, (lifelong) education, and healthcare costs out of personal budgets entirely, just like fire and police services are entirely socialized.
We'd all have access to a baseline that was of sufficient high quality so as to not be crappy at all.
Then again, some places have close to this now. So we don't really know what it would be like to do it here. I think we're also afraid of those non white people taking over the country.
Today, special ed students are mainstreamed into the regular classrooms ostensibly to get a better education but really because there are so many now that it would not be feasible to put them in one class.
This is only the case sometimes. In decent sized districts there is still a degree of separation, and a fair amount of "tracking" occurs. When kids are mainstreamed, it's often with teacher aides that help these kids.
There's a reason that conservatives get so upset about welfare. It enables an unfair competitive advantage to the unqualified and uncompetitive. It defies Darwin's Law of Survival of the Fittest, and gives the advantage to the least fit.
And yet they are opposed to government programs that support family planning and birth control for these very same people. Talk about weird !!
where the weakest minds are the "fittest," and they, unburdened by compunction to give back to society, be productive, or achieve anything, find it far easier than their hard working counterparts to pump out the kids.
Our socialist society selects for stupidity.
How wierd.
First off fattest and fittest are not the same thing. Secondly, I don't think what these people have is exactly the good life. You're right though. Welfare culture has been a failure in some ways. But who knows how many people and families lived that existence only temporarily and rose into a productive middle class life ?
How does this serve society?
Society is made of people.
A happy people is a happy society.
Nothing should "serve society" !
People who see a future for themselves don't pump out as many kids (since kids are not all that compatible to getting a career going, while people who can't find personal fulfillment naturally look to finding fulfillment making a new person to raise); making babies is a natural reaction to our entrenched economy as it excludes & shits on so much of our population.
We can bemoan our $80B/yr foodstamp bill, but we've got a military-industrial complex sucking on a federal teat that's 10X as large.
That's our welfare problem, right there.
There's a reason that conservatives get so upset about welfare. It enables an unfair competitive advantage to the unqualified and uncompetitive. It defies Darwin's Law of Survival of the Fittest, and gives the advantage to the least fit.
That's why the GOP gains such success with demonizing welfare recipients. The competitive nature of reproductive survival is written into our genetic code.
Yet they are fighting tooth and nail to outlaw abortion and access to birth control. Hypocrisy much?
The problem is this:
1) we make life hard for smart, productive people
2) we make life easy for dumb, unproductive people
The result is predictable: smart productive people have fewer or no kids, and dumb unproductive people have tons of kids.
End result: lots of dumb unproductive people
How does this serve society? By reducing education progress? By increasing crime? By increasing the load of welfare cases?
This is why the GOP wins. Because it appeals to the very fabric of our competitive DNA when it criticizes welfare and the perpetuation of useless people. We don't need more Trayvon Martins or Ferguson denizens. They just add to society burden.
The irony is they want to outlaw abortion and make birth control difficult as he'll to access.
People who see a future for themselves don't pump out as many kids (since kids are not all that compatible to getting a career going, while people who can't find personal fulfillment naturally look to finding fulfillment making a new person to raise); making babies is a natural reaction to our entrenched economy as it excludes & shits on so much of our population.
I think you're right. And there is an education issue at the low socioeconomic end that needs to be addressed. But if everyone has a good baseline existence, and without segregated communities where all the least productive and most dysfunctional people have to have their kids go to school together, the problem would very likely solve itself.
It would take a leap of faith and a relatively enlightened population for us to try it in earnest, but I believe you are right.
At present it would not seem that we (the U.S.) are going to be blazing the trail and setting the example of how this can work. In fact, we are moving in the other direction.
The problem is this:
1) we make life hard for smart, productive people
2) we make life easy for dumb, unproductive people
The result is predictable: smart productive people have fewer or no kids, and dumb unproductive people have tons of kids.
End result: lots of dumb unproductive people
How does this serve society? By reducing education progress? By increasing crime? By increasing the load of welfare cases?
This is why the GOP wins. Because it appeals to the very fabric of our competitive DNA when it criticizes welfare and the perpetuation of useless people. We don't need more Trayvon Martins or Ferguson denizens. They just add to society burden.
The irony is they want to outlaw abortion and make birth control difficult as he'll to access.
No, that's consistent! The GOP voters only consider themselves for the abortion issues. It's about keeping their daughters from getting abortions, not keeping Shaniqua and Juanita from killing their babies. At some level, we recognize that reproduction is the ultimate win, and make policy decisions based on that.
No, that's consistent! The GOP voters only consider themselves for the abortion issues. It's about keeping their daughters from getting abortions, not keeping Shaniqua and Juanita from killing their babies. At some level, we recognize that reproduction is the ultimate win, and make policy decisions based on that.
Fail. Good try though.
It's about keeping their daughters from getting abortions
Rich girls will always get their abortions. Those study trips to Mexico in the 1940s weren't for education.
Abortion bans are for those people. You know: those sluts over there.
Both black and white opponents of abortion are voting to ban abortions for other people.
The irony is they want to outlaw abortion and make birth control difficult as he'll to access.
Maybe that's a selected trait to avoid being weeded out.
But there's no economic reason quality education, health care, or housing has to be in scarcity. These don't consume all that many resources. It's just policy keeping them high-rent sectors.
I think we're afraid of a populace that doesn't have to work all that hard, like what we have now. Much better for everyone that the working class has to work, and hard.
The "policy" is to keep people as serfs. Or call them slaves. Same difference.
If you understand this "policy", then it makes complete sense that the masses are not given basic necessities such as housing, medical care and education that is beyond the basics. They are freely given just enough education for the person to grow up and do the work that is needed. And the rest of the education is brainwashing.
The thinking goes a little like: Why should the serfs/slaves live in luxury? Why should they have leisure time? And if they do have too much free time, they might figure out that they are slaves and rise up. We need them to spend the few measly dollars that we give them on our products so they we are enriched and we can live a life of leisure.
The irony is they want to outlaw abortion and make birth control difficult as he'll to access.
They don't want other people to have sex. This is the only possible explanation.
They want to use the power of the government to prevent people from having sex.
The Dumbest thing the Liberals ever did was convincing the stupid voting public to vote.
But he still has two years left to sit in his own shit.
On some level he even knows this. Sadly, that actually turns him on. It's some kind of weird ego/sadomasochistic thing.
. It's about keeping their daughters from getting abortions
And having their unmarried daughters dragging a kid (or a pack of kids) around is somehow preferable? Does that somehow improve her prospects of marrying a social better?
Unlikely.
At least if she has a hush hush abortion she might still delude the wedding guests to believe she's entitled to wear a white dress.
If a person is too dumb to want something, then does it matter if they don't have it?
Media spends billions every year to make sure we get dumber and dumber and convinces us of stupid government bullshit. I blame the media.
http://thedailyresistance.com/are-we-becoming-more-stupid-iq-scores-are-decreasing/
According to newly published research by an Amsterdam group, Westerners are 14 I.Q. points dimmer than our counterparts from the late 19th century. Assuming the data is correct, what caused this? Keep in mind, this is an average.
I tend to agree that it's an effect of the dimmest bulbs breeding the most. Currently, in the USA, only 31% of all children are being born to middle class households or higher ($35,000+ household income). The rest are being born to poor people, who tend to be dumber. Run that forward a few generations and we are going to have a real dichotomous population. The have nots will be easy to sort from the haves based on their tendency to drool on themselves.