I’ve long maintained, simply by virtue of daily observation, that the vast, vast majority of people are idiots. Not just gullible, unquestioning, media-programmed bigots with tabloid vocabularies — rather, actually of very low intelligence. […] So, aside from what science says, why does this state of affairs exist (as it undoubtedly does)?
Background: This all started with Erik, continued with Jamie, and was then picked up by Matt, where I stumbled into the fray. My personal ‘sometimes more serious than others, depending on how many momos I had to deal with today’ opinion is that, quite simply, we (i.e., the human race) are breeding ourselves into oblivion by breeding for stupidity.
DISCLAIMER: This is me approaching my most cynical. I make several broad over-generalizations and assumption in the following rant. Some or all of what follows may very well be offensive. I don’t necessarily believe that all of the following is true, nor am I normally this pessimistic (or this much of an ass), but hey, I have my moments. Take the following as mad ranting, or a thought experiment, but whatever you do, please take it with several grains of salt. That said…continue on, if you wish!
Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, Darwin’s theory of natural selection, in many ways, no longer applies to the human race at large. Nearly any disease, physical infirmity, or handicap that in bygone days would remove someone from the gene pool can now be cured, repaired, or compensated for. Survival of the fittest has given way to survival of everyone (or possibly survival of the wealthy, if you’re feeling particularly cynical). Due in part to this curtailing of the natural death rate, along with many other factors, the planet’s population continues to grow nearly unchecked.
Meanwhile, the world continues to be a somewhat scary place. While many people in the privileged classes live well, those not fortunate enough to have been born into middle-class or better environments find themselves fighting just to stay where they are, and not slide lower down on the economic scale. The U.S., not even able to feed and house all of its citizens, spends billions of dollars bombing already less-fortunate countries further into oblivion.
Intelligent people — those with more than two brain cells to rub together — look around at the world and realize that it has a tendency to be a pretty iffy bargain, and either resolve not to have children, or to limit themselves to one or two children.
Less intelligent thoughtful people, though, seem to be popping babies out like there’s no tomorrow. Whether it’s through lack of birth control or because they get more of a welfare stipend from the government for each child (or both), lower-class families seem far more likely to have multitudes of rugrats running around than upper-class families do.
End result — the average IQ of the world drops incrementally with each new child, as the few children born by people determined to have no more children than they can support are far outnumbered by the teeming masses content to sit on the couch, obsess over American Idol or Jerry Springer, and have more children that they can’t take care of.
And so, we breed ourselves into extinction.
