“We’re too stupid to have better things,” cried Society.

Maybe the shark has been eating like, a lot of carrots?

Take action on my behalf? Absolutely not. Go fuck yourself AI.

The “please tread on me harder” state.

A figurative decimation.

Sure, but it’s the difference between a few who are able to pierce the veil of their indoctrination, vs a large majority who retain the early childhood conditioning through the rest of their lives. If nothing else, it creates a steady dissonance that ultimately only serves to make life and/or living feel less innately enjoyable and more like livestock in a predatory system from which we cannot escape. All so that the same small group of ultra rich can further their wealth and influence.

If we had a functioning government, they would have regulated the corporate landscape decades ago, but instead we’ve all been forced to labor under and increasing marginalization, while the ROI of our efforts yields less and less. Hardly seems sustainable.

Big tech just following the indoctrination program of Big religion; get the kids before they’re able to think for themselves.

They’re all velociraptors testing the fences

Be somebody

*in debt

It’s probably a lot more than just one thing, or another.

There are a great many people who simply have no intellectual curiosity. People with zero interest in seeking out and verifying new information, who feel no impetus to figure things out for themselves, or who resent those more knowledgeable than themselves because they see that information asymmetry as a personal attack. People who aren’t curious about anything are idiots.

The issue that you describe- intellectuals treating idiots like idiots, is probably rooted in years, or decades of one-sided conversations, or trying to hold conversations with people who don’t feel the need to argue in good faith. At a certain point, low information people with low curiosity are a burden to engage with, let alone attempt to meet as peers. I’m not saying that’s right, but I can understand it.

For those who retain curiosity, Education and exposure are probably the best way to thwart the rise of idiots, which is probably why public access to high quality information and education resources have been massively curtailed, and/or monetized to the nth degree over the last 40 years. There is a distinct correlation between broad idiocy, and declining quality of life in industrialized nations, and that has certainly been the paradigm in the US.

So, we understand where the idiots are coming from and who benefits from their lack of understanding, we just need the idiots to understand WHO is depending on their remaining useful and WHY they have been denied a path toward bettering themselves. And, of course, the crux of the matter is that idiots cling to their idiocy as an integral aspect of their identity, which means any real changes will have to be long term solutions, wherein children of idiots are allowed to break the cycle leading to better understanding and insight. But there are challenges inherent in that evolution too, as you underscored poignantly; it can be stark and lonesome and heartbreaking for children to realize that their parents are idiots.

Your parents are idiots; they make the hypocritical arguments of idiots.

Unfortunately, for several decades in the US, we’ve been culturally conditioned to “respect” others’ beliefs, rather than hold up a mirror to their idiocy.

No more. They’re idiots. If they don’t want scientific solutions, if they want to undermine the work and intellectual efforts required to create a healthy society, then they’re a stone around our necks.

Because they want to privatize all aspects of living so that a handful of exorbitantly wealthy people can build larger hoards. There’s no end to it; it’s a mental disease, enabled by Capitalism and the death of real Labor laws and rights.

Every industry should have unions that actively work to dismantle owner authoritarianism, but for 40 years Boomers have been paving the way for every awful piece of shit “business owner” to have some idolized place at the top of our society. And of course, the knock-on effect of that over time is that the pieces of shit have carved into the legislative and political arenas that provided even a modicum of worker/commoner protections. The digital divide is just a coefficient on the slippery slope.

Greenwashing is a fraud.