I look around and wonder to myself where all the hard-working, ambitious, go-getters brimming with intelligence have gone?
I think potentially they are still there, Going by my community page on fb there are a lot of youngsters and indeed older people, coming up with ideas, willing to work hard and give it a go. But it's not easy in the current economic climate . . .
The general public seems very fucked in the head. I LOVE when a normal person engages with me - we seem to be a diminishing minority, us brainy folk. This is not cynical. I think the demographic is diminishing by the month. It's fkn sad.
For some time I have been of the belief that we are slowly heading for a future like the one described in C.M. Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons": ignorance of science and of the obvious detrimental effects of overpopulation has led to people of low intelligence reproducing at a much higher rate than medium-to-high intelligent people. The two groups are growing more distinct and the ratio is increasingly favoring the "morons".
In Kornbluth's story this led to a tiny minority of overworked and exasperated intelligent people throughout society, surreptitiously steering things to keep the wheels turning and avoid a total collapse of it all. We're not anywhere near that point yet, and I don't think any of us would want to face the serious moral decisions that would have to be made if we were. But maybe we can all find little ways to make it better for everyone.
Getting back to the main topic of the thread, but keeping in line with both the above and with the recent conversation about contradictory and socially anomalous people, I can think of two I have met:
In the 1980s or so, I would often speak with a woman at the laundromat. She was obviously in a low income bracket, living in a nearby residence hotel, and had the types of problems you would associate with that. She blamed all her problems - and those of society at large - on "them". Any entity that wasn't an individual she knew was part of "them", even if their goals were at odds with each other: The government. Democrats. Republicans. Independents. Big Business. Small business associations. Mainstream media. Alternative media. Libraries. Book banners. The DMV. The IRS. Landlords. Labor unions. All of these were part of some big amorphous THEM, and I don't mean she had some grand conspiracy theory; she literally could not discern that these were separate entities.
At around the same time, I worked for a studio that did photography and video of weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc. We would often arrive at the venue quite early to set up, particularly if the ceremony and party afterward were in the same location. On one extremely hot and humid day, we arrived at the location to find the air conditioning had been set so high that the place was at near-refrigerator temperatures. This is not unusual; catering halls know that a room full of dancing people will raise the temperature significantly, and usually chill the place down in advance. However, in this case I got so cold that I was feeling pain, and was beginning to feel like my body wasn't functioning well. I decided to step outside for five minutes to warm up.
After a while one of the guests who had arrived early stepped outside and almost immediately started talking to me: "Oh my God! It's so hot I'm going to plotz! You shouldn't be out in this. Come in. You need to come inside." She was insistent that I follow her commands, as if I was either subservient to her or too stupid to come out of the heat. She didn't back down until - a minute or two later - I did come in of my own volition.
Come to think of it, I have encountered several people like this - insistent that I do as they say, as if it were insane and dangerous to do otherwise, and not taking no for an answer.