Excellence versus Idiocracy
How can we build high-performing, profound intelligence and care in the face of shallow, self-serving spectacle?
Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.— Attributed to Aristotle
Sh*t. I know sh*t’s bad right now, with all that starving bullsh*t, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.— President Comacho from the brilliant satire, Idiocracy
Idiocracy is not inevitable. It is a choice by either intention or default. So is excellence. In fact, the only antidote to deluded, comfort-seeking shallowness is excellence. There is, unfortunately, no vaccine or drug for self-reinforcing stupidity.
(Drum roll…. )Are we presently marching toward idiocracy? The obvious answer, from reams of evidence, is (rim shot) “yes.” Is thoughtless stupidity replacing thoughtful excellence as an adaptive response to complex challenges? Again, “yes”. But this trend is far from permanent. We still retain choice, and we can yet endure temporary insanity. It is the temptation toward permanent insanity and its ancillary habits (vanity, fearful retreat, comfort at all costs, etc.) that we must confront now.
This phenomenon is remarkably common throughout developmental history: Humans tend to get real stupid and juvenile in moments of significant change. This happens in the human development of a child as they temporarily regress while going from a toddler to a more independent child. At this stage, a regression of one-step-back-so-you-can-leap-three-steps-forward is often signaled by habits like thumb-sucking. In adolescence it takes the form of intense nostalgia (attention to stuffed animals or favorite Disney films), self-interested egotism, and lack of motivation to attend the “adult” world.
Vulnerability can look like stupidity or apathy
There is a certain refractory, vulnerable period that emerges as people are gathering energy to move into a big change. Yes, this tender moment can be precarious, and, yes, it can be taken advantage of as it is now, to direct people’s overwhelm and fear to fake, stupid, and manipulated “solutions” that actually make the problem worse.
This human tendency at least partially explains the irrationality of doubling down on clearly dangerous and failed policies like Covid lockdowns and “playing around” with nuclear war with Russia. It also illuminates childish fantasies on the part of adults to either take over the world, on one hand, or spend the rest of their lives at home not having to “deal” with people on the other. There IS a sizable push in the social sphere toward concentration of power and wealth among the few and a concomitant isolationist fantasy among the many in which all one’s food is delivered to one’s doorstep through Door Dash and where one gets paid to be a “work remotely from home.”
How can we recognize this immature precariousness, without being simply consumed by it? What do we have in our arsenals of maturity and virtue to confront the current emerging spate of vices and collective insanities?
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.— Aristotle
Courage is primary. As the Aristotelian quote affirms, without our ability to confront our own vulnerability, and our desire to run away from responsibility, we will only make things worse. First and foremost on the courage docket is the ability to admit error and to apologize. (What could be more adult, and yet so scarce?)
These magic little words: “I was wrong, and I apologize.” I believe many of the most egregious social and political problems could be remedied if we took this simple step and said these words more often. When we are individually and collectively courageous enough to recognize error and be truly and publicly sorry, that sends the message that we can learn, correct our errors, heal relationships, and move forward.
Without it, the world devolves into an exertion of power and a dishonoring of those affected by the poor decisions of others. The opposite of this courage is the cowardice involved in doubling down and putting one’s desire to be unassailably “right” (i.e. power-backed wrong) above everything else. Though understandable, the desire to escape any correction, blame, or shame by any means necessary is an abominable and inherently corrupted motivation. This can only cause more carnage and pain.
You saw this with the Biden Administration’s initial (sincere?) doubt of vaccines created under a Trump administration.
“There has to be total transparency, so scientists outside the government know what is being approved,” Biden said. “I’m saying, trust the scientist.”
However, as soon as Biden and crew got into office, vaccines were uncritically okayed WITHOUT outside scientific transparency. In the Summer of 2021 amid the Delta variant, massive “vaccine failure” (CDC’s own term) was proven in an official paper regarding a vaccinated outbreak in Barnstable, Massachusetts. It was precisely when the Biden administration KNEW Covid vaccines were proven NOT to prevent infection or transmission, that Biden 1) MANDATED vaccines, and 2) scapegoated unvaccinated citizens as the cause of all the country’s problems.
Biden should have said, “We were wrong. I am sorry. I apologize. We have to figure out a new plan.” (Maybe this new plan would even involve recognizing natural immunity as scientifically good or better than vaccinated immunity… one can dream!)
Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.— Aristotle
The ways of cowardice and corruption are instructive. For courage is truly an education and exercise of the heart, not only in care and empathy for those without power (who suffer the lion’s share of consequence for exploitative decision-making), but for those with SOME power to speak out against the blind, callous, and arrogant exercise of power. You see this in the small but stalwart group of scientists and activists speaking out across ideological lines against top-down mandates and for free and informed “bottom-up” medical consent.
Many of these people have lost their jobs, their institutional affiliations, their health, their friends and family, standing up for truth. In an age with rewards idiocracy and profiteering at the expense of nearly everything, it’s not an easy time to be alive. Moral and scientific corruption has really snowballed. Just as Europe was BANNING mRNA vaccines for young people due to studies proving harm, Biden-appointed FDA and CDC committees were approving vaccines for children. There is no cowardice quite as bad as that which uses our own children as sacrificial lambs to political, scientific, and moral dishonesty.
But the tide is turning. Truth has a way of vindicating courage, even if the individuals who exercise courage in small and big ways “on the street” are rarely recognized. Public shame, as well, seems to eventually attend cowardice and error. One hopes that as Democrats almost certainly lose majority control in Congress in the upcoming mid-term elections, that real investigations will occur that go to some length to stop the bleeding and bring accountability. I am not confident this will follow all the way into investigations of corporations that have committed tens of billions of dollars of fraud and injury, but my hope is that we renew an adoration of the real and the truthful and shake ourselves from isolation, preference-peddling, and fearful reaction.
I am hopeful that we see a re-emergence of excellence, and a renewal of respect for those who are actually right and really good at what they do. I have aspiration for the kind of society that embraces intellect and moral integrity, that work on behalf of the “unwashed masses,” marrying mind with craft knowledge and gut instincts to create communities and societies that are inspired by, rather than suspicious of, true excellence, ones measured in making things better for everyone.
We’ll said. The overwhelm of information streaming into our brains has made us intellectually exhausted, reaching for low hanging fruit. A media cleanse is in order, followed by adding back intelligent discourse on a selective basis. Thank you for sharing this perspective (and a nod to Idiocracy - brilliant!)
Nice article Zeus. Yes I doubt corporations will be investigated if Republicans win.
Or the merry go round of FDA commissioners to serving as a consultant to Pfizer or Merck.