Reverse Idiocracy 2
Just a century ago, the word idiot had a completely different weight. Very few people in developed countries were well-educated and had the freedom to decide what they would do with their lives. Most people didn’t spend decades in schools or academies, and were instead becoming low paid workers or housewives at a very young age. In most cases, they didn’t even get to choose the job they would follow or the person they would marry. Employers and parents were controlling your life and were doing their best to turn you into a productive member of society as fast as possible.
Things have changed drastically since then. Now most people are educated, they are given decades of free time to choose what they want to do in their life, what job to follow or what person to marry. And even if they do, they can always change their minds one day and switch jobs or partners in life. This is possible mostly thanks to how easier it has become to make money and education is mostly free. The rise of the middle class allowed the average family to have both parents making enough to keep themselves and a couple of children well-fed and well-dressed, instead of having just the husband of the family working all day for keeping alive a housewife and a dozen children, who have to become workers as fast as possible as means to lighten the burden.
It’s obviously not that rosy for everyone but the point is people are not magically born smarter nowadays. They are given a lot of time and ways to become educated, which is also why the word idiot has become much more insulting. It’s not the same thing when you do something stupid today as you have the means to do it right. It was a lot easier to forgive mistakes a century ago, since even if an expert was calling you stupid for something he knows and does better than you, it’s like he was insulting 99% of mankind for never being given the choice to decide what job they will do or who they will marry. How accountable can they be if they never had the change to know more?
It can be argued that the bar has risen to unreachable levels nowadays, and no matter how much you know it’s never enough to truly call yourself smart. The best you can do is being well informed or experienced in a few very specific things, with everything else being out of reach. Still, nobody can be excused when they can easily be informed about something and instead blindly accept anything they are told. When you have access to the internet and decades’ worth of experience with a subject, you’re a real idiot when you mess it up.
Anyone who says something stupid on the internet, is a million times bigger idiot than anyone who says something stupid without having access to the internet. Most of the answers are at arm’s reach and yet he deliberately ignores the facts and says any dumb shit that comes to mind. Like it or not, the age of the internet initiated the age of reverse idiocracy, where the educated who are too bored to spend 30 seconds in checking out a few facts before saying something, are bigger fools than the fools who didn’t have access to the world’s mass media and infinite pools of knowledge. Anyone who gets offended by that word, should first wonder if he deserves it, instead of instantly playing the victim card and throwing all the blame on the accuser.