Hey Idiot #1

This feature castigates stupidity by those who should know better.

Draft 1.0

[Now, I illustrate why I write so many drafts.]

The college educated are a product of an institutional environment. The college educated often possess a will to idiocy. Their egos cannot acknowledge everything education reduces. Minds are narrowed by focus. Specialization creates deficiencies. Broad knowledge suffers by intense concentration on minutia. As a result, the mind becomes stunted as its faculties atrophy from disuse. Such people embody degeneration. Confusing facts with knowledge, they become incapable of thinking. They are lost. Most idiots will never find their way. Thus providing easy targets, their flaws are easy to expose and/or exploit for maximum advantage in all things. Although gentler than other societal institutions such as the military and the criminal justice system, the college educated are molded by their environment. Often the most rigid character is the result. The college educated chose their path therefore they are most accepting. They can quit. The soldier or criminal may prefer to remain detached, as a means to compensate for their inability to just walk away, but the successful student rarely does. Mostly, only the failures leave. Steady absorption is more encompassing. The educated elite are less likely to become repelled by their environment. The exceptions are often the most notable. These types know their place and refuse to accept the dominant mindset. Their ability is to take what is needed while leaving the rest behind. Most educated people are unable to discern systemic flaws and find strength from weakness. It provides. Most are too weak to bite the hand which feeds.

College educated people are often the most inept at basic survival skills. Mostly being a means unto themselves, institutions do not generally teach survival skills beyond their scope. Academic pursuits are not well suited to external conflicts. Intensive study is easily disrupted. The wider world becomes peripheral. An inherent intellectual danger is a tendency to project one’s beliefs on reality by the construction of elaborate verbal world. However, the manner of projection varies according to academic pursuits and specialties. None study the whole. Although impossible to entirely comprehend due to the vastness of the world, the interpretation of reality constructed by specialists will be incomplete in that entire parts will be missing or ignored. A physicist is necessarily concerned with different matters than a sociologist. Specialties are adequate for the task. Broad knowledge is more suitable. However, even at the peril of intellectual stagnation, the academic system will not promote breadth. Unless forced at the price of losing integrity, institutions usually only adapt glacially. The current trend is even greater narrowing of focus. Only technical matters can be effectively tackled through specialization. Societal problems will not be solved by professors. They might point toward solutions by exposing flaws remedied by mediocre solutions. They do not know when to quit. Their ego demands otherwise. Those who are separate from reality cannot recognize their place.

In my experience, the well-meaning are usually incompetent.

Death to the Stupid!

2003