we’re all idiots.
sorry, I’ve effectively just insulted you. I’m sure you’re a good, nice person so you didn’t deserve that.
If it helps, I’m an idiot too - I just insulted all my readers, for example. That’s pretty stupid.
What makes me say we’re all idiots?
well we’ve made this human world. And you may have noticed some flaws - like:
- we’re all working so much even though we don’t need to
- we’re all exploiting others so much, even though we don’t need to
- we’re creating a lot of waste, some of it quite toxic, even though we don’t need to
- we’re pumping a lot of CO₂ into the air, unnecessarily
- we make a lot of highly destructive weapons, do we really need to?
ok, so we’re pretty stupid - or are we?
saying everyone is stupid is like saying everyone is really short - do we expect anyone to be five metres tall?
which is another way of saying - why should we expect ourselves to be more clever when we’re just animals really?
Are we like the proverbial lemmings, mindlessly driving ourselves off a cliff?
Which brings me to a definition of ’the human condition’ - we’re just about clever enough to realise there could be a better way - but not clever enough to do anything about it.
but hang on, you say - aren’t all of these things down to politics and ideologies?
well maybe they are. But those are things done by humans - there’s no deus ex machina - no ghost in the machine.
but, some humans (eg politicians) use violence (usually called something like a police force - the clue is in the name) to make people who complain shut up.
but no one is forcing anyone to join the police or politics. Except that they need a home and food and clothes, but could they get those another way?
Anyway, if we all collectively stood up and said lets stop this nonsense then it would end immediately, partly because everyone includes, well, everyone.
So why don’t we? Because we’re stupid.
We also tell ourselves stories about who we are and why we need to do things like exploit others and waste resources - sometimes these wild stories are called things like ’economics’.
Which is a pretty stupid thing to do
the human experiment
So this is the human experiment. It will probably take another few millennia to run its course. If Lindy’s law is anything to go by.
It will get quite messy at points, it already has.
Can we make ourselves cleverer?
We already do - by mass collaboration - this helps disguise how stupid we are -
We can make flying machines, we almost eradicated small pox and the bubonic plague, we have machines to communicate across vast distances, machines that explore outer space, we can accurately predict the movements of the planets and stars, we have devices to take photos of cats and share them with complete strangers, we etch incredibly fine patterns onto baked sand, plate them with metal and connect them to other etched sand which emits light to display pictures of cats and fungi. These devices can also record or compute sound and we make other ones called speakers to play it back.
They were all made by many people working together across time and places, each contributing a small part.
But don’t let that fool you. We’re all idiots.
possibilities
Could we use this superpower that we have - to get together and stop doing stupid crap? Maybe?
epilogue
When I insulted you at the top, I wasn’t trying to be hurtful. I care. I hope you feel happy and loved, or will do soon.
anyway, here’s some men talking about stuff:
podcast
(please note: 1. ironically, that contains adverts so you’ll have to skip those 2. other systems of organising are available 3. other genders are available)