The Culture of Stupidity

There is a pervasive attitude I find infuriating about American culture: We herald stupidity.

More than any other country I've been to, America holds up stupidity in the highest regard. There are aspects I admire as well, such as the culture of heralding creativity more than any other culture I've been to as well, but I just can't get over how Americans seem to hold up stupidity as the golden standard.

It has nothing to do with actual intelligence. I have known plenty of smart, interesting people that just have no interest in being intellectual at all. It is completely the attitude that the country engenders. It transcends race, but it can sometimes be enhanced by it, as well. I've heard way too many stories of a black child who is intelligent being told his whole life that he isn't "black" and is acting "white" by being intelligent and getting good grades for me to think that this issue is immune to race, but white trash areas, hispanic, Italian, etc etc still ostracize children for being smarter than they are. So what happens is that smart people start acting stupid to fit in with their peers. They learn to appreciate stupid things, and revel in stupidity.

It goes back to British humour and why hardly any Americans understand it. British people seem to value intelligence. I think that's why Americans find them pompous. In addition to the "properness" of the British, but I think that is just outward appearance and the underlying attitude is that of a culture that values intelligence and critical thought. They aren't the only ones, but we grew out of Britain originally, so they incur our collective teenage angst backlash.

If you put the concept of absurdist British humour inside the frame of a culture that values intelligence and people who look for meaning in things, who think critically about what things mean, who actively participate in the thought of what is going on around them; all of a sudden, British humour starts to make sense, because if you take that culture and insert something that sort of makes sense a little bit, and throw in 10 things that make absolutely no sense at all, the psychology of British humor and its absurdity starts to become clear.

America will never get it though, because they are too busy paying football players to go to college and not go to class rather than pay for an inner city genius to get his degree and become the next Leonardo Da Vinci.

We'll just continue to sit on our couches until we are too stupid to remember how to grow food and start pouring Gatorade on the fields instead of water because they market it well and otherwise we would have to think logically. But hey, at least we are still the best in the world at throwing a ball.