The Lack of Common Sense Factor

I believe the human race is getting dumber.

Back in 2006, a little known and little regarded movie called "Idiocracy" came out. It's the story of a regular, average guy who awakens 500 years in the future and finds humanity is so stupid, he's the most intelligent man on the planet. By and large the reason for this is because intelligent people put off having children (or opted not to have them) while the "salt of the earth" kind (you know - rednecks) kept spewing out babies like the goose's golden eggs. Successively, these kinds kept breeding while the more intelligent people didn't. End result: Really stupid people who thought because the ads for a Gatorade-like drink said it had what's good for you in it, used that stuff instead of water to irrigate their crops (with predictably disastrous results).

Now, the idea has a certain amount of merit (assuming all rednecks are stupid, which obviously isn't true) but doesn't take into account several other factors that play into a human's desire (or lack of it) to use their noodles. Evolution doesn't stupefy a species in a single generation, yet that is what I see happening all around me.

Notice that it has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with one's desire to USE it. Anyone who is intelligent, but doesn't use it is, in my book, dumb. Hence the rationale for this post and the opening line.

People are not using the sense they were born with. They don't use the talents, they don't use the abilities, they don't use the skills. This trend is ever-growing, and seems unlikely to stop anytime soon. What used to be common sense is no longer common. People have, for whatever reason, eschewed the concept of looking any deeper than the sound-bite they hear and accept as gospel everything their "trusted" source says.

For the sake of clarity (Because the gods know that there is precious little of that anymore) I define common sense as a reflexive distrust of the immediate situation. Taking the classic situation of looking both ways before crossing the street as an example, we will see how this reflexive distrust of the immediate situation saves your life and how ignoring it will let you become a hood ornament and the title star at a coming funeral near you.

You come to a street that you want to cross. The person with common sense distrusts the immediate situation. You know that pedestrians have the right of way (a common misconception in the middle of a street block, but let's assume it's even true) which means cars have to stop if you decide to cross. Cars are moving at car-speed. Cars are driven by (allegedly) alert drivers who can react instantly to your desires.

That is the immediate situation.

There is a lot to distrust.

First of all, if you walk out into moving traffic you are assuming:
1. The drivers see you.
2. They will stop.
3. They have TIME to stop.
4. They CAN stop.

Without a reflexive distrust of the situation, you believe all of that which you assume.

If all of the above are true, you live to endanger your life another day. If any one of them are not true, you die and enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame as an Internet headline and a minor footnote in the obits page, thus proving your unsuitability to contributing to the gene pool.

A person with a reflexive distrust of the situation will simply wait until one can cross the road safely without making any cars veer, slow-down or even have to see you to avoid you. You get no fifteen minutes of notoriety being the subject of ignorant online abuse, nor do you get to have your family gather beside what's left of your shattered corpse to cry and wail about how your life was tragically cut short. You do, however, get to pass on your genes to the next generation - if that's your thing.

Personally, I see it as survival of the fittest, and you were the stronger link by distrusting an inherently deadly situation and suffering to have to breathe for a few more instants of time in an infinite universe, but that's just me. Those who get that fame (or infamy, depending on one's point of view) have the luxury of getting to lay around decomposing much sooner than the rest of us. But they're labeled as dumb. Only a dumbass would get hit by a car (and having been hit by a car once, I can attest to my dumbassness at the time - I didn't see it, and should have)

But I digress.

The person with the inherent distrust of the immediate situation (or common sense) will live all of the time they face situations where common sense is needed for survival. The person without common sense, who trusts the current situation (that the safety of the "right of way" will protect them) will far more often have their bodies rearranged in exciting and frequently tragically deadly ways. If that kind of body modification is what turns you on, please have the courtesy to jump off of a building based on the following table since sidewalks tend not to be driven by drivers whose lives may be impacted when they intersect your lacking of common sense body with their vehicle.

1 Story: 17 MPH
2 Stories: 24 MPH
3 Stories: 30 MPH
4 Stories: 35 MPH
5 Stories: 38 MPH
6 stories: 42 MPH
7 Stories: 46 MPH

You won't survive beyond about 5 stories, but it's your funeral you want others to attend, after all.

The point of all if this is that people are ignoring their reflexive distrust of situations. For some reason, they're believing things that have no actual impact on a situation or, worse, in things that will adversely impact their situation that they think will improve it. They have lost their distrust of things. Trusting people may be very intelligent, but they're dumb to automatically trust. Either that or we have a really skewed method for determining intelligence.

From politics to religion to sex (After all, is there anything else to life? Don't answer that!) common sense is becoming harder to find than hen's teeth and is rapidly heading toward the same fate as the Dodo bird. People have stopped trying to decipher the truth of a situation, have stopped using critical thinking and/or logic (assuming they ever had used it in the first place) and instead are believing pundits, "experts" and people whose lives are vested in making people believe them.

My question to those who blindly believe these folks is, why did you check your brain at their door? Assuming you have one to begin with, you should be fact checking, digging into sources, making sure that that you're being told is at least somewhat accurate if not entirely factual. Yes, it can be tedious and laborious and not a lot of fun, but you can learn things (like something resembling the truth) and you can be satisfied that you are not among the baa'ing sheeple who faithfully follow their Judas Goat to the slaughterhouse to be sacrificed upon the altar of expedience.

That scenario of fleeced flocks is becoming the norm rather than the exception over the last twenty years or so. People are letting others do their thinking for them, forgetting their distrust of "trusted sources" and allowing these sources to fill their heads with any inane drivel those sources can think of. It doesn't necessarily mean that the drivel is incorrect or inaccurate, but it may easily be that the drivel is a point of view lacking adequate perspective. One side of the story, as it were, without hearing all sides and making a decision. People are allowing themselves to be manipulated, molded, redirected and distracted from the important things that a person reflexively distrustful of the current situation would otherwise investigate to keep the important things in mind and in perspective.

The result of all of this lack of common sense is a rise in extremism. Extremism is simple, easy, and lazy. You don't have to think. You don't have to investigate. You just have to agree to a set of inflexible positions and you're done. No muss. No fuss. No bother. No brains. And don't mistake extremism with politics. Religions, politics, sex (am I forgetting anything?) more and more people are adopting extremist viewpoints as if the world ceases to change around us and as if we never need to acknowledge that change.

The change I see is a dumbing down of people in general, and there is a vast difference between acknowledging a change and accepting one. I acknowledge that it appears to be happening, but I will never accept that this change is one that needs to happen or even should happen. But it is happening none the less.

Now, here's the rub: If you just believe me without investigating for yourself, you are as guilty of being 'dumb' as anyone else who doesn't reflexively distrust the current situation. Check out the facts. See if they fit. See if what I said is right, true and/or accurate. If you're already opening a new browser tab to check, congratulations, you're among the rapidly dwindling minority of people who can call themselves intelligent. Good luck in your investigation. If you're not, cultivate some cynicism. The world can use a lot more of it.