An idiot and a genius walk into a department store. Their paths never cross, but both are looking for a microwave oven, and only two basic models are on offer. One has a 64-button touchpad, 167 derived functions, and looks like it was made special for a Steven Spielberg sci-fi thriller ripoff. The other has a dial each for two simple functions, time and power setting. These are the only two logical functions you need.
Sure as you’re born, the idiot will choose the sci-fi model every time because the other one “looks like it was made in the stone age.” In other words, get with the times already, and note that these are the kinds of things that give meaning to the life of the idiot. Without shiny objects to look at and put on display, suddenly the meaning of life has to be examined, and there’s nothing an idiot hates more than feeling out of his or her depth where souls of the past (and perhaps the present) have made their towering mark of insight in creating masterworks borne from a sacrifice of personal desire.
Why even make the distinction? Because idiots are by nature oblivious to most things, let alone subtle shifts in perception that geniuses or otherwise intelligent people make and articulate at regular intervals. The moronic workflows dictating modern engineering for mass production, and the trivial decision of choosing a home appliance, can show a unique perspective. In the past when these decisions could have meant life or death, idiots would set up camp on the wrong side of the hill and get marauded by Indians. Hence they were culled in a natural way as opposed to via acts of genocide, because who ever thought to police “idiocy” on the plains of the frontier?
Yet they exist in overwhelming numbers today seeing as life is so easy: with only a social security number and a mundane job you can more or less live like a king or queen, do nothing important, offend no one, and act as if life is merely a moronic trial to overcome on the path to a peaceful but meaningless death.
Whether loners or family-oriented, stoners or church-oriented, idiots will gang together against genius to call it “fascism,” “witch-craft,” or just plain “evil” because they lack the biological intelligence to see cause and effect, and the safety of the herd is about the sum of their existence. Evil in scare quotes because of course idiots misunderstand it, and define it in the most narrow way possible, i.e. a personal morality based on what was done to them. Personally.
In most situations, idiots will outnumber the intelligent 9 to 1. That’s an underestimate — it’s probably more like 96 to 4. The problem for idiots is that most of them are unaware, so can be kept in suspense (or maybe suspension) by extramoral geniuses until the truth stares them in the face like the snout of an hitherto unbeknownst demon. There is no malice in this when you consider that two significant components of idiocy are selfishness and cowardice. They will in actuality only be looking into a mirror, a mirror that reflects the willful ignorance toward the horrors that help drive reality. Who has the courage (and desire, and fortitude, and patience) to change their hearts and make them reach for abstract goals? Maybe you do.
Future Consciousness 