05-29-2008, 11:21 PM
I've known for quite a while that the majority of people are actually stupid, including myself. Most people are smart in only particular aspects of life, but have significant deficiencies in knowledge which ought to be common, but isn't.
I think a lot of it has to do what people are forced to be exposed to, IE, news, TV, well known websites, magazines, ads, etc. People need to be hungry for knowledge in order to dig deeper, and most people are not hungry, they'd rather not ask questions, because they feel they have more important things to do with their time.
I saw a girl walking down the street with the latest issue of Cosmo in her arms, and I just started thinking, why does this girl read that magazine? Does she buy every issue and read it? If so, has she not yet realized that it's the same magazine every month with a different girl on the cover, with the same tips on how to please a guy that just don't work? I know that whenever I spot someone with Cosmo, or OK, or whatever rag found on the supermarket shelves that I can feel better than that person, because only dumb people would spend money to read / look at the ads of those magazines.
I read an article on the website of Staten Island's newspaper about how Councilman James Oddo got a bunch of townhouses fined by the Buildings Department for having driveways that were too steep to meet code. Now, the island, over the last few years, has been inflammed by the notion of "overdevelopment", in a borough that is the least developed of any of the five, so whenever the newspaper brings up a story about a builder getting a violation, or a building not meeting code, the citizens get into a rage about how the politicians are in the builders' pocket, how corrupt the buildings department is, and how someone tiny infraction is the main example of why the borough is overdeveloped, when in truth, the problem is traffic, because there are no trains, and you have to get to everywhere by car. The people of the island are so stupid that they start SCREAMING for buildings to be torn down to punish the people who caused the infraction. They don't stop to think about what if this happened to them, would they want their homes torn down. In this case, the builder made the driveway too steep, and so, the people want these houses torn down to teach them a lesson.
I think a lot of it has to do what people are forced to be exposed to, IE, news, TV, well known websites, magazines, ads, etc. People need to be hungry for knowledge in order to dig deeper, and most people are not hungry, they'd rather not ask questions, because they feel they have more important things to do with their time.
I saw a girl walking down the street with the latest issue of Cosmo in her arms, and I just started thinking, why does this girl read that magazine? Does she buy every issue and read it? If so, has she not yet realized that it's the same magazine every month with a different girl on the cover, with the same tips on how to please a guy that just don't work? I know that whenever I spot someone with Cosmo, or OK, or whatever rag found on the supermarket shelves that I can feel better than that person, because only dumb people would spend money to read / look at the ads of those magazines.
I read an article on the website of Staten Island's newspaper about how Councilman James Oddo got a bunch of townhouses fined by the Buildings Department for having driveways that were too steep to meet code. Now, the island, over the last few years, has been inflammed by the notion of "overdevelopment", in a borough that is the least developed of any of the five, so whenever the newspaper brings up a story about a builder getting a violation, or a building not meeting code, the citizens get into a rage about how the politicians are in the builders' pocket, how corrupt the buildings department is, and how someone tiny infraction is the main example of why the borough is overdeveloped, when in truth, the problem is traffic, because there are no trains, and you have to get to everywhere by car. The people of the island are so stupid that they start SCREAMING for buildings to be torn down to punish the people who caused the infraction. They don't stop to think about what if this happened to them, would they want their homes torn down. In this case, the builder made the driveway too steep, and so, the people want these houses torn down to teach them a lesson.