Are We Getting Stupider?

For nineteenth-century writers similar Gustave Flaubert, the conception of stupidity came to encompass the lazy drivel of cliché and received opinion; 1 of Flaubert’s characters says that, successful wide society, “the germs of stupidity . . . dispersed from idiosyncratic to person,” and we extremity up becoming lemming-like followers of leaders, trends, and fads. (This “modern stupidity,” Jeffries explains, “is hastened by urbanization: the much dense a colonisation is successful 1 sense, the much dense it is successful another.”) And the twentieth and twenty-first centuries person seen further innovations. We’re present conscious of the kinds of stupidity that mightiness uncover themselves done quality tests oregon bone-headed bureaucracies; we cognize astir “bullshit jobs” and “the banality of evil” and integer inundation. Jeffries considers a airy fixture successful his bedroom; it has a recessed plan that’s hard to fig out, truthful helium goes to YouTube successful hunt of videos that mightiness amusement him however to alteration the bulb. Modern, high-tech beingness is complicated. And so, yes, successful a wide sense, we whitethorn precise good beryllium getting stupider—not needfully due to the fact that we’re dumber but due to the fact that the ways successful which we tin beryllium anserine support multiplying.

“A Short History of Stupidity” doesn’t ever prosecute with the question of whether the multiplication of stupidities is substantive oregon rhetorical. When Flaubert writes that radical contiguous are drowning successful cliché and received opinion, is helium right? Is it really existent that, earlier newspapers, individuals held much divers and archetypal views? That seems unlikely. The wide trend, implicit the past fewer 100 years, has been toward much acquisition for much people. Flaubert whitethorn precise good person been exposed to much anserine thoughts, but this could person reflected the information that much thoughts were being shared.

Arguably, by railing against the stupidity of cliché, Flaubert was really practicing a signifier of self-humiliation—that is, helium was asking himself whether helium agreed with the clichés, and truthful goading himself, and us, into being non-stupid. In his satirical “Dictionary of Received Ideas,” written successful the eighteen-seventies, Flaubert offered up a scope of definitions embodying the anserine notions that silly radical excessively readily accept. (Jeffries likes “Art”: “Leads to poorhouse. What usage is it, since machines tin bash things amended and quicker?” My woman and I ever laughter astir “Bird”: “Wish you were one, saying with a sigh: ‘Oh, for a brace of wings!’ This shows you person a poetic soul.”) It’s earthy for specified thoughts to hap to us—“Stupidity is the merchandise of the groups and societies successful which we are raised,” Jeffries explains, referencing the philosopher Sacha Golob. By mocking these thoughts, we propulsion ourselves past them. From this perspective, our consciousness that we’re getting stupider whitethorn simply bespeak our determination to beryllium smart.

And yet, it seems undeniable that thing is retired of associated successful our corporate intelligence life. The existent governmental concern makes this “a bully clip to constitute astir stupidity,” Jeffries writes. When helium notes that a cardinal trait of stupidity is that it “can beryllium relied upon to bash the 1 happening expressly designed not to execute the desired result”—or “to laughably mismatch means and ends”—he makes “stupid” look similar the cleanable mode to qualify our era, successful which galore radical deliberation that the cardinal to making America steadfast again is ending vaccination. Meanwhile, successful a caller contented of New York magazine—“The Stupid Issue”—the writer Andrew Rice describes troubling and wide declines successful the abilities of high-school students to execute basal tasks, specified arsenic calculating a extremity connected a edifice check. These declines are happening adjacent successful well-funded schoolhouse districts, and they’re portion of a larger world pattern, successful which literacy is fading and standards are slipping.

Maybe we are getting stupider. Still, 1 of the problems with the sermon of stupidity is that it tin consciousness reductive, aggressive, adjacent abusive. Self-humiliation is inactive humiliating; erstwhile we telephone 1 different stupid, we dispersed humiliation around, whether our accusation is conscionable oregon unjust. In a caller station connected Substack, the philosopher Joseph Heath suggested that populism mightiness beryllium champion understood arsenic a revolt against “the cognitive elite”—that is, against the radical who request that we cheque our intuitions and deliberation much deliberately astir beauteous overmuch everything. According to this theory, the satellite constructed by the cognitive élite is 1 successful which you person to perceive to experts, and support up with technology, and click done six pages of online forms to bargain a movie ticket; it sometimes “requires the emblematic person, portion speaking, to actively suppress the acquainted connection that is primed (e.g. ‘homeless’), and to substitute done explicit cognition the recently-minted connection that is present favoured (e.g. ‘unhoused’).” The cognitive élites are close to accidental that radical who deliberation astir things intuitively are often wrong; connected issues including transgression and immigration, the information is counterintuitive. (Legal procedures are amended than unsmooth justice; immigrants summation some the proviso and the request for labor.) But the effect of this has been that unreasonable radical person hooked up to signifier an absorption party. What’s the mode retired of this decease spiral? No 1 knows.

In 1970, a dormant sperm whale washed up connected the formation successful Florence, Oregon. It was huge, and nary 1 knew however to dispose of it. Eventually, the state’s Highway Division, which was successful complaint of the operation, deed upon the thought of blowing the carcass up with dynamite. They planted fractional a ton of explosives—that’s a lot!—on the leeward broadside of the whale, figuring that what wasn’t blown retired to oversea would disintegrate into bits tiny capable to beryllium consumed by crabs and seagulls. Onlookers gathered to ticker the explosion. It failed to destruct the whale, and alternatively created a unsafe hailstorm of putrid whale fragments. “I realized blubber was hitting astir us,” Paul Linnman, a newsman connected the scene, told Popular Mechanics magazine. “Blubber is truthful dense, a portion the size of your fingertip tin spell done your head. As we started to tally down [the] trail, we heard a 2nd detonation successful our direction, and we saw blubber the size of a java array flatten a car.” (The video of the incident—which was archetypal popularized by Dave Barry, aft helium wrote astir it successful 1990—is a treasure of the internet, and benefits from Linnman’s deadpan TV-news narration.)

There tin beryllium joyousness and wit successful stupidity—think neglect videos, world television, and “Dumb and Dumber.” It doesn’t person to beryllium mean-spirited, either. The municipality of Florence present boasts an outdoor abstraction called Exploding Whale Memorial Park; past year, aft a weeklong solemnisation starring up to Exploding Whale Day, radical gathered determination successful costume. Watching the archetypal video, I find myself empathizing with the technologist who conceived the dynamite plan. I’ve been there. To err is human. Intelligent radical sometimes bash anserine things. We each stroke up a whale from clip to time; the important constituent is not to bash it again.

And yet stupidity, sadly, isn’t ever truthful straightforward. It’s a conception that demands nuance. In bid to beryllium smart, we request to beryllium alert of our ain stupidness—to beryllium reminded that we person overmuch to learn. At the aforesaid time, we don’t privation to consciousness truthful anserine that we springiness up, oregon turn cynical, oregon go disillusioned astir what counts arsenic “smart.” Similarly, navigating the satellite efficaciously requires discerning stupidity successful others—but surviving unneurotic involves knowing that stupidity is inevitable and context-dependent. There’s immoderate perfect grade of stupidity-consciousness—some measured magnitude that protects america from hubris portion urging america forward. Achieving it isn’t easy. ♦