I think its likely.
What I find most frustrating about that fact is that is entirely possible not to think like an idiot. It’s a trainable skill to think clearly.
We spend a huge amount of money educating people and what we accomplish in 12 years is teaching them to read, possibly to write, and occasionally to be able to add up numbers.
We fail miserably at education. Mostly because we think education is about learning facts rather than learning the skill of thinking intelligently.
If you spend anytime on the internet, you will see countless people make ridiculous points, that have no logic, and/or no basis in fact. They never bother to run an idea through any kind of critical thinking, never bother to do the most minimal research on an idea.
We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to have people starving. Dying of curable diseases. Living without shelter, dying in violence. We don’t have to strip the earth of all it’s resources and have our descendents die slowly in horrible circumstances because we were just too stupid to allow them the privilege of life.
But we do. We do because we are stupid.
And the more people there are in any group, the stupider the group becomes. And humans do tend to herd ourselves into groups, virtually as well as in real life. And once we are in the group, all we hear is the echo chamber of our own ideas and so we don’t feel any compulsion to consider anything differently.
And all of it is within our power to do differently. All of it. It only requires thought. And a desire for the greater good. But even if you are just a selfish clod, you must recognize the benefit gained to yourself by the greater good. Well, you recognize it when you use your brain to think critically.
So little hard thinking is done in this world. And eventually it will kill us.
It's a Thought 
Sadly, I agree with you.
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I vented my frustration too today – not because people are stupid, but because they are so easily manipulated by destructive emotional appeals . . . fear, anger, and greed. I don’t know how to respond other than to say that I aspire to the opposite – hope, compassion, and generosity.
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We do seem to be getting stupider with each new generation, but I’d like to emphasize the word “seem”. We’ve always been stupid. Or at least a significant number of us. Stupid and easily manipulated.
I dig up a lot of very old magazines, many from the end of the 19th century and even earlier, and if you skim through the advertising and articles it quickly becomes apparent that our immediate ancestors were just as easily duped and certainly no more intelligent than we were.
We seem more ignorant, less intelligent today because the internet and modern media tend to magnify stupidity, make it more prominent. I think the percentage of fools in the total population is fairly close to what it always has been.
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That is so very true.
Also there are so many more of us. So our stupidity seems to cause large global problems.
Of course things are getting better on lots and lots of fronts. But I continue to be frustrated by the fact that most people think with their monkey brain instead of their human brain.
And I worry that because there are so many more people now, with lots of destructive things, we will eventually just kill ourselves out of pure stupid.
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We are the US of Entertainment. If it is not entertaining, we tend not to pay attention to it. This makes us susceptible to bumper sticker arguments and so-called leaders who can use a problem to his advantage, but is the last person who should be solving it. Yet, we have exported our entertainment lust to others around the globe, so we will all watch cute you-tube footage, but ignore real problems.
So, while we play, climate change continues and droughts and forest fires get more prolific, we are losing our water, we are losing our bee population, we will have a harder time feeding a growing population and we will need to deal with corruption that stands in the way of helping. And, in the US we will need to deal with our debt problem. So, your post is tongue-in-cheek to a point. And, I should point out this is not just the youth that are not paying attention, as it should be noted the UK youth voted more to stay in the EU and the older folks voted more to leave, which is being and will be further shown not to be the most judicious choice.
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I agree that posts and conversations like this should occur this is how we grow as individuals and as a species. Small incremental change is better than no change at all. Recognition is the first step to cure, so rage on. But I disagree I need to believe that people are basically good. I think society is improving; very slowly and with some back sliding. Do good, support positive change, it will come in time.
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You are, of course right. There are many improvements, particularly in the worst things – hunger, infant death, poverty. Its hard to remember that when it feels like the walls of good around us are falling down.
But things have improved and hopefully will continue.
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Life like cats have their compensations. 🙂
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