Destructive Stupidity

Our ignorance might be the biggest threat we face as a species

a man reads a newspaper upside down while wearing sunglasses in a dark room, sleek digital art — by DALL·E

Who oversimplified our complex world? We all did, and we all do.

It is hard to be the bearer of bad news. If we are the ones to connect the dots, spot the signs and decipher them as bad omens, we will do well to believe that most people will rather not listen to us. Instead, leaders who sell stories of past glory and future resurgence are much more appealing.

For instance, a British journalist recently dared to ask questions at a Republican Party gathering in Arizona only to be sneered at by those gathered. They argued he could have no idea because he wasn’t from there. The ad hominem attack is appalling, but if one manages to suffer a few more minutes of listening to the exchange, these individuals will inevitably sound more ridiculous than offensive. At the question of whether claiming election fraud based on a hunch wasn’t too much of a stretch, the answer was, ‘No, in America, it’s not.’

In the meantime, Brazilian voters were asked why they would vote for one candidate over the other. Even looking past the wild accusations of satanism, one reason stood out to me: prices were lower when Lula was in power. Dictatorial tendencies are hard to elucidate, climate change is too abstract a concept and the deforestation of the…