Jean Dubrayet*:
Minerva bindt de Domheid vast met een touw
[Minerva ties the Stupidity with a rope] (c. 1627)
Titelpagina voor een boek met tekenvoorbeelden.
[Title page for a book with drawing examples]

*"Jean Dubrayet was a print maker who is known for works such as Minerva ties the Stupidity with a rope and Portrait of Ajax." (Google AI experiment) I could find no other biographical information on this artist.

" … the trinkets with which our future was purchased."

It might be that history has always been a slave to the Stupidities. When I was still very young, I remember my more ancient elders wondering how their world would get along with the quality of young people coming up to eventually replace them. The young have always known nothing, and to those who knew everything in their time, they unavoidably seem relatively stupid. Youth tend to master stuff that seems meaningless to their elders. Our own Grand Other was showing off her gaming computer, a gift she and her dad built together as a Christmas present. She was proudly displaying the high-quality graphics, which I could barely see. I was thinking that the old text-based Adventure® game I used to play back on that 360 clone in the 70s had far better graphics, and it was text-based. I lasted a few seconds before I excused myself and went to wait for The Muse in the car. It disturbed me deeply that our Grand Other would somehow tumble to such stupidity! (She belongs to an after-school sports team at her high school. Her sport is, and I kid you not, competitive gaming!)

I'm ordering handbaskets.

The Stupidities have consistently bedeviled me, even when—maybe especially when—I was the one engaging in them. Had it not been for my own brands of Stupidities, my life could not have possibly been as entertaining as it was. I took almost everything too seriously and, simultaneously, far too cavalierly. I didn't know better, but even if I had known better, I might have chosen mainly based on emotion, rejecting mere knowing as too one-dimensional to be helpful. I might insist upon being damned whatever I pick. I admit that I carry deep prejudices. I favor minorities over favorites. I've almost always refused to engage in the more popular delusions as if mere popularity amounted to a grave disqualification. Whatever "everyone's" engaging in, I avoid.

As soon as I learned what the then newly-founded Fox Network was created to produce, I ceased watching anything they broadcast, except for the occasional World Series game. I stopped watching their popular series' like House because it was distributed by the louts who intended to undermine our society. Now that they're well on their way to accomplishing that end, the one they intended to induce from day one, I can praise my own personal prescience and wail about my inability to prevent their success. It took more than reprogramming my remote so I couldn't switch to that channel. I do not know what it might have taken to counter such focused Stupidities. The scope and breadth of their use of absolute inanity might have been unprecedented in human history. It continues unabated and, perhaps, even amplified.

People seem to be way too easily influenced. Our current President-elect was elected based on a raft of deliberately false premises. I'm at odds trying to identify a single truth he broadcast during his four-year campaign. If he has a talent, it might be for understanding what stupid people want to hear, then, chameleon-like, repeating precisely that. My ear cannot hear his message. It seems like Klingon with a Queens accent, but the stupidest among us hear mellifluous music when the man farts.

Lest I sink into just another meaningless rant, I might at least propose five Stupidities as presently practiced.

Five Stupidities (in no particular order)

1- Certainty, especially in things that nobody in human history has ever proved capable of knowing for sure.

2- Vanity: The idea that what you prefer matters to anybody and should.

3- Inanity: Babble. The Musac® muddling up what might have been the silences in our lives. This prominently includes the social media you’re probably accessing as you read this story.

4- Grudge: This is always self-destructive. Practiced en-mass, it can destroy anything, everything.

5- Statis: The persistent illusion that anybody's necessarily better than anybody else.

I realize I cannot rise far above the base the stupidest among us insist we maintain. Prosperity remains eternally beyond the reach of any society, firmly believing their government should balance their budget in the same way that nobody gets to own their own home without agreeing to borrow more money than they believe they could ever realistically repay. The notion that we should maintain a cash-based economy in a world where leverage exists seems destined to keep us barefoot and stupid. Tyranny employs our Stupidities against even the best of us. If the majority rules, the strategy to undermine society should properly promote mass events. A candidate should act as if they're certain and play to the vanities, reinforcing the idea that there's such a thing as common sense and only their followers can recognize it. The noise must be continual and constant. Prominently display the chip on their shoulder. Invite followers into an exclusive club. These are the trinkets with which our future was purchased. Our history continues being the slave to our Stupidities.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz