"If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle,
perhaps every fourth person is a dumb fuck."

Nomeansno

Gramsci wrote:

Eksvplot wrote:"most people are idiots."

i'm unresolved about this...

However, the capacity for intelligent behaviour is inert in all of us. Linking this to the Chomsky poll, he argues that therefore we have a moral obligation to create a political society that facilitates maximising every individual’s chances to use this capacity. I would say that society –especially in the US and the UK- encourages people to behave like morons and is by Chomsky’s standards morally reprehensible.

It's probably worth distinguishing between stupidity and ideological stupefaction. Then again, mi hombre Theodorges Adornos said something like 'stupiditiy is not a natural quality, but one socially produced and reinforced.'

[pulls book from shelf]


That's the quote, it's in a passage about Nazi Germany where he also says "only leaders who resembled the people of the country in their ignorance of the world and global economics could harness them to war and their pig-headedness to an enterprise wholly unhampered by reflection."

Ouch. Some things. . .

Chapter Two wrote:"If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle,
perhaps every fourth person is a dumb fuck."

Nomeansno

I give you 'props', as the brothers say for the Nomeansno quote. One of the top 10 best records ever made, that 0+2=1.

Marsupialized wrote:

Chapter Two wrote:"If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle,
perhaps every fourth person is a dumb fuck."

Nomeansno

I give you 'props', as the brothers say for the Nomeansno quote. One of the top 10 best records ever made, that 0+2=1.

"those Jones's........
You gotta LOVE'EM......"

agreed.

full point wrote:

Marsupialized wrote:

Chapter Two wrote:"If every fourth animal in the world is a beetle,
perhaps every fourth person is a dumb fuck."

Nomeansno

I give you 'props', as the brothers say for the Nomeansno quote. One of the top 10 best records ever made, that 0+2=1.

"those Jones's........
You gotta LOVE'EM......"

agreed.

It's just a shame nothing they've ever done before or after even comes close to this record. There's little bits here and there sprinkled all over their catalog but this record just awesome from start to finish.
This thrash band I was in played a cover of 'Valley of the blind' at my high school talent show REALLY fucking loud. Was great.

yes, the key word here is "people"
most "people" are idiots, and adhere to the flock...

but i do believe if you can get a person away
from people you can remove the idiocy using
logic or brute force.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:Like they say in A.A.: "You spot it, you got it."

This quote, she is brilliant! I have said this same thing these many times, but never had the shorts-hands for it like this! Salut, Brett Eugene Ralph, for passing along this wisdom della recoveria!

i concur with Gramsci that society obliges stupidity.

while i don't believe most people are unmitigated idiots and/or not worth talking to/learning from, i do believe the desire to fit in (and/or be lead) runs staggeringly deep. history has shown that most people are quite prone to conformity, which in turn enables stupidty to flourish.

to me, intelligence has less to do with being well read or having a high IQ than it does being able to think for one's self and make some sort of intuitive sense of the world -- without the consent/approval of people at large, the powers that be, etc.

i used to sorta vaguely think "people are idiots" without giving it too much thought. then i remember seeign the movie Ghost World and being really ticked off at how resentful and us vs. them it all was. yeah, there were some funny moments (Blues Hammer, anyone?), but i was so irritated at how fucking smug the whole thing was. i feel the same way about The Onion. a lot of the people who read it are the most servile dorks imaginable -- cretins who think they're "in the know" cuz they get the joke. really it's just another form of kitsch. but i digress...

remember that joke from kings of comedy about how everyone has that one guy in his office that's this close to getting his ass kicked?

if you ain't laughin' it's probably you.

most people are idiots. if you don't think so, you're one too.

A friend passed on this gem to me from a friend of his:

Do not treat the idiots like they are stupid humans, but like clever animals.

These Clever Animals have learnt to wipe their arses, use a mobile phone and run up credit card bills. good for them, lets not be discouraged just because they havn't evolved to the point where they can do something constructive, like discuss 1970s European Cinema.