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?
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.
I've had to actively try and make mine like Macho Man, I default to a heavy Appalachian accent and I'm from Appalachia...
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.
This one's more short and quippy than a perfect refutation
A child's success in education correlates with the parents' income, not their IQ
I'd say it's more like
A child’s success in education correlates with the parents’ income, not their genes
IQ is basically just a function of education anyway. Plus it's complete bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century
Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present
so first of all, the premise literally has no scientific basis. The measurement known as IQ keeps keeps going up. So they essentially just made a movie to punch down.
Secondly, as you might be able to guess from the fact that IQ is going up, IQ doesn't actually measure intelligence, it just measures some capabilities that we have labeled intelligence and what's actually going on is we're educating & caring for people better so they're better at useless brain tests. You can see this with physical athletes too. Look up any olympic sport all times records for something like the 10k meters and you'll see that the oldest record in the top 25 is from 1996, even though the event was added in 1912.
Modern humans are just better.
Secondly, the fucking classism in the movie. The characters behave like stereotypical trailor trash and enjoy everything you would associate with that trope. Being uneducated, messy, belching, toilet humor, drinking beer etc = tropes of the poor.
The movie even takes it a step further with the paternalism by having the outcome be the smart person lead the poor for their own good. In the movie this is played for laughs, but this is literally a real argument that racists made for why they needed to subjugate black people into slavery or sterilize disabled people. For their own good and especially for "society's" own good.
So they paint this as a farce but this is actually what racists think about people of color unironically and it supports the idea that 'dumb' people will outbreed the good people and we should step in to save them from their fate.
Many of the jokes punch down, and some don’t go beyond basically “AAVE isn’t grammatically correct, lol.” It’s just kinda lazy!
The movie's still hilarious overall imo, but yeah it basically promotes eugenics unfortunately.
Problematic favs, etc., etc.
moralizing art is a losing battle with no reward for victory. the premises of the movie are wrong and the conclusions terrible, but also it's a funny comedy. Ow My Balls should be a real show.
ow my balls should be a real show
Go to YouTube and watch some 90's America's Funniest Home Videos starring Bob Saget
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.
There is no strong evidence that intelegence is herritable.
Further, intelgence has both a survival and reproduction advantage. So if ot were strongly herritable over the long run it woudl be favored.
The situation postulated where a pwrson is "to dumb to read the instructions on a condom" is real. However on an evolutionary timescale if intelligence was herritable that lack of foresight would lead to misadventures removing them from the gene pool at higher rate. So that would be a little dip in an otherwise increaseing line.
However for as far back as we have evidence people's general intelligence appears to remain constant. Education is generally improving though. But ancient riddles are just as complex as modern ones for example.
also being able to read has to do with being taught to read or not. How could that be genetic
Idiocracy didn't happen, the whole world started staring at their phones all day and now everything feels like a simulation as a result.
One of the bigger things that bothers me about the movie is that it ignores the nature of class. For instance, it suggests that people have a lot of kids because they're stupid instead of the reality of being on the receiving end of legislation and systems that keep them immersed in propaganda and kept from accessing health care, childcare, nutrition, or education.
If the movie changed slightly and reflected capitalism left unchecked for centuries, the movie could still make sense. Instead of some eugenics explanation, it could be lead in pipes/air, lack of education, and exploitation by a tiny upper class that keeps the rest satiated with the meaningless things.
But at that point, it would be Brave New World with extra steps.
You know I never thought of Brave New World as cyberpunk, but it really is.
:thinkin-lenin:
Honestly I think it's flawed just because it posits the idea that people who disagree with you are big dumb stupid heads and that's the only reason they disagree with you. They couldn't be smart but disagree (for topics less about morals) or smart but just immoral (for topics about morals). Nope any disagreement is just because they're stupid.
It also kind of just gets a lot of fundamental bit of knowledge wrong anyway. Even if you could consider someone objectively stupid, that doesn't mean they are entirely incapable of everything. Things like not being able to read are often the case of a failed education system considering that there are countries with near 100% literacy rates, rather than some innate trait that they just can't learn. And there are plenty of people who can hyper specialize in a certain field but not really do much outside of it.
Heck that's a problem in the aviation industry of rich doctors who think they know everything buying a new plane and then crashing.
I strongly think that a large portion of climate change skeptics know that greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and they just don’t give a shit.
This is certainly true at least for the oil companies. They're not stupid about it just taking a gamble they die before.
