Ignorance and Collective Idiocy: The New Global Pandemic
Flattened Curves, Flattened IQ's
We “survived” COVID, hoarded toilet paper, and learned how to use Zoom. But now, a new pandemic is sweeping the globe—-not viral, but virulent nonetheless.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Pandemic 2.0: The Age of Stupidity (or…the Pan-dumb-ic?).
It spreads faster than herpes at a frat party and mutates more often than Elon Musk’s public image. Forget coughing. This one’s airborne via groupthink, X threads, and comments on your Facebook posts from that one lady with an American flag profile picture that sells Herbalife out of the back of her van.
Schopenhauer Called it Early:
Arthur Schopenhauer, a grumpy 1800’s philosopher with a bad haircut and a worse attitude, called it early. He didn’t believe stupidity was a moral failing. No, he believed it was a feature, not a bug, baked right into modern society.
“Stupidity is an incapacity to think for oneself.”
He didn’t think you could teach your way out of it. Education, he believed, often just made stupid people confident. And while Schopenhauer spent most of his time ruminating alone with his dog (which honestly sounds great), he also wrote extensively about how most people are not only ignorant—but aggressively so. They wave their ignorance around like a Blue Lives Matter flag at a January 6th Insurrection (that never happened).
Classic Symptoms of the Pan-Dumb-Ic:
The Flat Earth Resurgence
Somewhere, Schopenhauer is doing a slow, eternal facepalm. In an era where you can get satellite imagery from your phone, people continue to argue that we live on a giant cosmic frisbee. They “do their own research,” which mostly involves watching TikTok’s made by guys named Chet.
The Great Bleach Incident of 2020
A terrifying moment when people considered ingesting disinfectants because, you know, science. That’s what happens when you trade epidemiologists for improv comedians at press briefings.
Financial Influencers on TikTok
“Ladies! Here’s how I bought 3 investment properties by 24 by maxing out 12 credit cards and manifesting abundance from the moon.” Thanks, Becky.
AI Panic Without Reading Past the Headlines
People: “AI is going to kill us all!”
Same People: blindly paste sensitive data into ChatGPT and ask it to do their taxes.
Why is this Virus so Contagious?
People often choose groupthink and stupidity over critical thinking in the same manner many view leg day at the gym. Most people skip it. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. And it doesn’t get you many likes on Instagram. Self reflection is akin to flossing for the soul—-sometimes painful, often tedious, but ultimately good for you.
Deep thought asks uncomfortable questions like “What am I doing with my life?” or “Is this meme a metaphor for late-stage capitalism?” Ignorance and groupthink, on the other hand, just hands you a bag of Lay’s and says, “Shhh, let’s binge another season.” It rewards conformity and punishes nuance. Algorithms feed us what we already believe, allowing us to remain in our cozy, dopamine-rich echo chambers, with the intellectual depth of a puddle in Arizona.
More Schopenhauer gold to drive it home…
“The wise have always said the same things, and the fools… have always done the opposite.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Scientists say, “We have data,” and people respond, “I have vibes.”
Prognosis and Treatment Recommendations:
Unfortunately, this one's not going away with a booster.
But here’s the thing…Schopenhauer didn’t despair for no reason. He believed there were some people—rare, glowing embers of awareness, who saw through the BS. The philosophers. The artists. The weirdos staring out windows wondering if everyone else has gone mad.
So if you’ve read this far, congratulations. You might just be one of them.
The Prescription:
Think slowly.
Question everything—even (especially) yourself.
Read more philosophy.
Touch grass (the kind on the ground)
And maybe, just maybe… get your head out of your phone.
Because stupidity might be contagious, but so is clarity.