I have a friend who is a good person overall but really buys into the “real life is becoming Idiocracy” bit. I was frustrated, because I’m not the best real-time arguer so I don’t think I did a good job of expressing why the movie is disgusting trash.
I attempted to talk about how it blames people instead of systems, and how it’s an awful eugenics narrative. But we quickly got into a rabbit hole about whether intelligence can be passed on genetically or not and if that matters, and other dumb topics that went nowhere.
What’s a concise and offline-compatible way of explaining why Idiocracy is bad & decent people should find it gross?
The problem is that you can’t agree on Idiocracy if you both start from different premises, which seems to be the case. That’s why you got onto different topics. Your big hurdle is trying to get enough common premises to start from so that you can both move on to the movie itself. There simply is no way to just say the movie has a bad message and your friend agree if they think some people are just naturally more stupid than others and think that the stupid people are the problem in the world. Ironically, that’s a dumb person opinion. Not to be ablelist, but it’s a very common idea with little critical thought or rigor.
A lot of people live with nothing but common sense. They’re not curious people. They don’t spend their spare time learning or reading things or trying to be critical of their own ideas. But through the general cultural filter they develop these ideas about the world and just hold onto them until they die. The idea that everyone around you is stupid and you’re one of the few smart ones is exactly that kind of thinking. Idiocracy is a movie for that kind of person.
Plus it came out during a time of supreme liberal smugness about intelligence because Bush was a big dumb dumb poo poo head and they lost their shit over how someone so stupid could be president. All the hyperventilating about Trump’s personality isn’t anything new, they did it under Bush too. That was such a powerful cultural motivator for lib writers in the 00s.
You make a really good point about initial premise. I think you’re right - that’s the real disagreement, and I think it would be very difficult to convince someone that they’re not fundamentally “the last smart or sane one” in a sea of dangerous idiots. It starts from empathy, and I don’t know how to teach empathy. If teaching is even the right word.
Regarding your second paragraph, I agree, but I would add that it’s very much a product of their environment. When you’re surrounded by a a vast wasteland of inane garbage that encourages uncritical consumption, that’s a natural result. I believe very strongly that people CAN be better, when afforded the opportunity. Including in areas like critical thinking.
In particular I think stand-up comedians makes this worse, which feature heavily in this person’s life. Lines like “think about how dumb the average person is - then realize half of em are dumber than that” are funny, but also IMO make it easier to slip into this kind of framing.
a capitaslist system relies on the ignorance of people and comparing real life to a 1 hour film is itself idiotic. This system in America is mostly self sufficient meaning you gotta work for yourself and work to provide for yourself and your family, the act of community is abscent from the economy since the goal of capitalism isn’t for maintaining emotional stability nor does it recognize any emotion which is a massive flaw. Communism and socialism are different since they put the worker first giving people a sense of purpose and a more relaxed way of life. America has always relied on its nationalism and even american liberals still have a nationalist thought process since they still believe that america and the american system works and anything else is moronic. That is why a lot of anti chinese propaganda makes the news because people lap that shit up. It is a nation that exploits emotions, exploits its own people, but provides its people with the idea that they are living in the greatest place on earth which is far from the truth. In the later stages of capitalism is when you see the more “idiotic” narratives that you see more frequently on the news, such as right wingers eating horse paste and other stupid shit you wouldn’t believe would happen but does because we literally live in a two party system that acts as a front for this idea of democracy and freedom, giving people an illusion of choice when the elites are literally running everything. Libs are unimformed, the right is severely unimformed, they both think the other is stupid but so long as we got democracy and are freedom people won’t blame the system but each other.
Can you expand on “Communism and socialism are different since they put the worker first giving people a sense of purpose”?
What purpose is that and how does it differ from what we have today? What would that look like?
Communism provides everyone with the essentials of living so they don’t have to worry about bills and other stupid shit that you worry about on the daily under this current system. Communism puts people first and economy second, they also believe that the worker is key to the success of the country so it gives people more sense of purpose because if you know your hard work is benefiting not just yourself but everyone else then I think this is a better way of giving people the idea that their life matters a lot. My life doesn’t matter in capitalism because in america the public services are always in crisis and severely underfunded, they are trying their best to push privatized everything since there is more profit to be made for the few, we are literally just numbers in this system nothing else. Think about the lack of respect people have for workers, the product is literally more valuable than the worker in every sense, you are more disposable since you can be easily replaced at any moment.
1 - Human evolution doesn’t happen on a timescale that humans give a damn about.
2 - Stupid people don’t outcompete smart people. You’re just conflating poor people with stupidity so you can mock them for something you feel justified in, rather than have to think about why people are poor and/or admit your classism.
That second bit is good ammo - “you really just want to laugh at poor people.” 👍
Ask them to do a “dumb person” voice then ask them to stop and think about what that voice they did was. It’s almost always a “black” or “Appalachian” accent that people do.
Then get them to start exploring why it is they think that an entire group of people are “dumb” and think about the types of media that tend to portray those groups that way (hint: they tend to have “normal” accents and live in California).
Then point out that Idiocracy is best watched as a refutation and satire of the deeply ingrained classism of Hollywood and the media class in general. The world of Idiocracy isn’t real, it’s a parody of the absolutely psychotic levels of elitism saturating all of our media.
Many of the jokes punch down, and some don’t go beyond basically “AAVE isn’t grammatically correct, lol.” It’s just kinda lazy!
You could try to explain the inherently undemocratic premise; if this minority of Big Brains doesn’t rule, the peons will ruin everything.
then deck em with ‘intelligence is socially defined’ :screm-cool:
