Darkwand's Alcove

Stupidity

It is my firm belief that 95% of the people on this planet are fucking stupid. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that most of my encounters with humanity are when I am in Atlanta traffic. It seems like there’s almost always some nimrod who decides that they are going to slam over 5 lanes to get off on the exit that is only 100 feet away by then, and almost cause multiple pileups as a result of the maneuver. You’ve got people who are driving 60mph in the fast lane and people roar up behind them very fast and then proceed to tailgate them and they don’t even notice. SUVs are everywhere and it seems like everyone is on a cell phone. Now, you may not have heard, but a couple years ago recall that this was the state where we had a 125 car pileup. Things are bad even on a normal day, but with all this insanity going on every now and then you get a truly spectacular accident. My personal favorite is the time that a tanker truck carrying something highly flammable decided to roll over on I-85, take out multiple cars and then slam into a bridge abutment, meanwhile spilling this aforementioned flammable fluid everywhere while it is doing all this, *which then decides to burst into flames*. I think they were fixing the highway for about a year and a half after that one. Trust me folks, you drive in this town long enough, you’ll see it all….

But that’s only the beginning. The other day I was in one of our local Borders stores buying one of the physics books that I mention in my quiz, a Brian Greene book actually. Now the cashier behind the counter was a pretty attractive young lady, and she asks me is the first one [of his books] any good, she had heard about him as an author and was thinking about picking up one of his books. She actually says to me, “Oh, yeah, I’m kind of interested in this stuff even tho I try not to let many of my friends know that I like to read”. Let me repeat that again in case any of you missed that: it isn’t that she doesn’t want to let any of her friends know that she likes to read physics, she doesn’t want to let any of her friends know that she *reads*. So, as a nation today that puts us where? Because I am quite certain that she is not an isolated case of what I will call the Cult of Stupidity. Understand that this Cult is the large and quite probably growing group of people who believe that it is fashionable to be stupid. This is where such epithets as “dork”, “nerd”, “geek” and so on come from. Basically, the sub-text on this message is: if you want to be cool, don’t think. That’s for dorks. Just crack open that six-pack and watch football. Now I imagine that young people who are attractive and popular get hit with this the worst (and it also likely that the more attractive you are, the better the chances that you will be popular) and I suspect that *girls* get hit with a double-helping of this. Not only that, but then you have the young people that are not popular, *but wish they were*, and so they are trying to *act like the people that are*, *lack of thought and all*. That’s why you don’t find girls generally who are interested in doing things like playing chess or studying physics; it isn’t that women are not as smart as men, it’s that they are *taught socially not to be interested in doing things that require deep thought*. If you think about it, this is pretty scary.

The rest of my encounters with society-at-large usually occur when I am having lunch, usually at the mall. Now, I’ll admit it, I am a people watcher, and sometimes I have a tendency to stare a little too long now and again, especially if the person I am watching is rather freakish. Man, there’s nothing like a large food court at a mall to reveal the incredibly varied melting pot of losers, freaks and mutants that is America. Every now and then I will see a normal person or a person who looks like they have got some good things going on, but most of the time it’s either the dumb-as-a-rock 400 lb. hillbilly housewife with the 3 screaming kids or the burnt-out construction worker that looks like he hasn’t bathed recently and is two-steps from freaking out and pulling a 9mm out of his lunchbox. The other day I was sitting at my table, trying to enjoy a Wendy’s hamburger (which I fear I tend to enjoy on too regular of a basis) when some fucko actually walks over and leans against a post that is right next to me and starts talking loudly on his cell phone. I mean, *right* next to me, this dude is less than 2 feet away from me and talking like this on his cell phone. It had to restrain myself with all my might not to say, “Umm, excuse me, but if you don’t get the hell away from my table I’m going to report you to security” (which was about 30 feet away by the way). So yeah, every now and then someone might catch me staring at them and they look at me with this look like, “What are you looking at, psycho??” and I almost always look away quickly, but every now and then if the person looks especially fucked up, I’ll give them the flat-glare that says, “I’m looking at *you* you fucking *retard*.” I’ve have not met the person yet that can continue to look me in the eye when I do that.

posted by Darkwand @ 4:32 PM