Fandango’s Provocative Question #167

We always wondered what made America strong. It never until recently occurred to me that our stupidity has made us a superpower.

Why do you think so many people are so confident in beliefs that can’t be proven?

As a start, allow me to refer you to Tom Curley’s post “The Stupid Is Strong In This Country.”

If you live in a country where, without any effort you can convince a huge number of people of anything, there’s nothing you can’t achieve. You may not have the majority of the country behind you, but the majority of people don’t do much. They aren’t stupid and probably don’t believe the world being flat, but you also don’t see massive protests in favor of intelligent behavior. Oh, sure, now and again we rise up about one or another issue, but we don’t persist. Not the way stupid people persist. And we are rarely as enraged about anything as they seem to be about everything.

We’d all like to find how come they are like that. I doubt we ever will find out anything. My son thinks we should stop killing these murderers who decide they hate their family and then go out and kill young children. He feels we need to keep asking them “WHY??” I think he is harboring a dream that these wackos have a reason for what they do. I think they have damaged brains. They do what they do without any reason. Or maybe they forgot what the reason was. Personally, my theory is they never thought about anything but the fun of slaughter. I’m pretty sure they think killing children is just a happy afternoon with their favorite assault rifle.

They aren’t stupid in the sense of having an IQ that is “below normal,” although I’m pretty sure that “normal” is a much lower than I thought. But. They are willfully ignorant. They hate people who have studied chemistry, physics, medicine, ecology, meteorology or any other “ology.” They think schools and education in general is for “liberal elitists” one of whom I am proud to be. Being liberal — by which I mean believing in democracy really — doesn’t mean I believe everything from every liberal source. Research is a normal part of understanding.

I was not raised to accept information or ideology without proof. Did that have something to do with my mother’s atheism? Possibly for me as an individual, but Garry is even more fact-based than I am. He was brought up in a home of believing Christians who also believe in science, history, and facts.

Religious faith does not preclude intelligence.

You can be a very smart and thoroughly scientific Jew, Christian, or Moslem. Pure faith is specific to religion. It does not need to be extended to absolutely everything.

There’s a time for faith, and a time for truth, facts, science, honesty, and history. We seem, as a nation, to have lost any differentiation between fact and fancy. Many people feel whatever they think is as good as what anyone else spent years studying.

It’s not.

On the up side, if you can see an “up” side to stupidity, it’s that you can rally mobs in the country for anything. All you need is to be good at rallying mobs, be utterly immoral, and willing to spew crap to “your followers.”

Categories: #FPQ, Anecdote, Provocative Questions, Science, stupidity

Tags: facts, faith, humor, Marilyn Armstrong, science, stupidity, superpowers