Has The World Lost Its Mind?

Has the human race gone insane? Maybe. There do seem to be a lot of nuts out there. And people are definitely dumber than they used to be too, right? Probably. Well, actually, probably not. Let’s discuss this.

I don’t know about you, but I hear a lot of very, very, very stupid things these days. There are whole supposedly-professional blogs that are nothing but fountains of idiocy – HotAir, Huffington Post and (increasingly) the Daily Caller. We’ve got politicians who couldn’t count to ten if they were barefoot. Talk radio is pure fantasy. And the news is full of people who are too dumb to live. And oh good grief the conspiracy theories! What isn’t a conspiracy anymore? Morons.

So I guess something has gone wrong, right?

Well, that’s tough to say. See, the thing is that we are assuming that people were smarter in the past. . . but they weren’t. And no, I don’t mean that their science info was lacking, I mean that they were just as retarded, just as gullible, just as superstition, just as paranoid, and just as looney toons as today. Consider this.

At one point, people believed in sea monsters and witchcraft. Ha ha ha, can you believe that? Those Dark Ages fools! Yeah, only it’s not them I’m talking about. In the 1960/70s, there was a widespread belief in spontaneous human combustion, levitation, the Loch Ness Monster, alien abductions, and exorcism. People expected Atlantis to surface. There was a human face on Mars and people could spy on the other side of the world just using their mind and a comfy chair. Idiots. Scientologists followed a conman who invented a cult about dead aliens poisoning our souls. I mean, how stupid do you need to be to buy into that crap? At least no one believes in witches anymore though, right? Not since Salem. Well, yeah, except Sarah Palin got caught on camera receiving a blessing to protect her from witchcraft... not a happy moment for Republicans with brains.

These idiots were conspiratorial too. In the 1960s, fluoride made you sterile. The moon landing didn’t happen. Kennedy was shot by a vast conspiracy of people who all kept quiet... no doubt intimidated by the moon non-landers. Fed conspiracy theorists got their start in 1913. Jews have controlled the world since the 1880s at least. Well, Jews and the Masons. Oy vey.

But at least people had taste, right? I mean, they may have gone full-retard when it comes to superstition and paranoia, but dammit... they loved classics! There were no sitcoms or surfing the net for porn for them! No sirree. Well, actually, sitcoms were invented during the age of conservative Valhalla known as the 1950s... so was the Playboy club. And it didn’t start there. At almost every Roman archeological site they’ve found tons of porn. The Victorians had porn too... I’ve seen it and it’s not this “oh, she showed an ankle” stuff people like to believe. No, this is illustrated Hustler. Hollywood needed a conduct code in the 1930s because it was becoming a porno factory. And about those classics Ricky “I really really swear I’m not gay” Santorum loves so much... did you know that The Maltese Falcon is crawling with gay references? Do you know how many Hollywood stars were gay or drug addicts? Heck, they used to put cocaine in soda, never mind that Ricky “Really, I’m not Gay” Santorum’s forbearers in the prohibition movement spawned the mob because the nation wasn’t going to give up their vices.

And what about Shakespeare? Do you realize that some of his comedies are essentially written-versions of “Three’s Company”? Seriously. He just used prettier words. “Hark Janet, Me thinks Mr. Furley cometh. Hideth the hookers.” Even his dramas include lots of gore to draw in the standing-room only crowd called the groundlings. They reveled in the blood and gore and fart jokes. Sound familiar?

The point is this. As tempting as it is to think the world has gone insane, the truth is that the world is the same as it always has been. It only seems more insane today than in the past, and there are three reasons for this:

● First, we remember the past through rose-colored glasses because (1) that helps us deal with pain on a personal level by forgetting about it, so we remember things as better than they were, and (2) society only keeps the good stuff. Indeed, for every Mr. Smith Goes To Washington there were ten Mr. Smith Goes To Des Moines, but those have been forgotten. So when we look at the past, we see a much higher percentage of good things than bad and we remember everything better than it really was. Since we can’t do the same with the present, the present seems less pleasant to us.

● Secondly, the modern age of communication has given the idiots a much bigger platform to reach us. In the past, there were all these gatekeepers to keep the real lunatics from being heard by the public. Today, any fool can start a blog or get a talk radio show. Thus, while there aren’t more fools as a percentage of the population, the fools we have are much more noticeable. That’s why we seem to be awash in them.

Moreover, there’s a vicious circle problem right now too because the idiots tend to be the most vocal, the most intense, and the most active because they tend to be obsessed. That makes them the audience of choice because they are the most loyal listeners, viewers, voters. So, slowly but surely, everything from politics to films to news starts catering to the idiot fringe.

● Finally, related to the second, we just hear about these people more often. In the past, you had no way to know about the nut job who tortured his neighbor in London or the cannibal in Tokyo or the gang slayings in Detroit. Today, they are all over the net and all over news all the time. The news has become a sensationalizer of the obscure. And that makes it seem common.

So, it may seem like the world has gone insane, but it really hasn’t. It’s only that the insane now get noticed a lot more. Everybody else is just out there doing their thing helping the world run smoothly.

Thoughts?