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Pity the Sub-Genius
From the Slope of Hope: They say be careful what you wish for. And, as is often the case, "they" are right.
As a kid, I wished the world favored the smart. I was a smart kid, and it seemed like the world - at least my world - was dominated by bullies and airheads. Might made right, just like in the times of old. My high IQ and love of learning were no match for popular dolts, so a portion of my childhood was wasted just trying to disappear into the background.
Unknown to me at the time, much of the adult world operated the same way. It didn't take a 
lot of intellect to have a respectable, enjoyable middle class existence in the world of the 1970s. The willingness to put in a full day's work (or, if protected by a union, a portion of a day's work) was enough to trump the potential impediment of a double-digit IQ. As I've mentioned before, my own uncle had a nice house, an even larger vacation home, and plenty of leisure time, and he worked inside the stink of a Louisiana paper mill.
The world did change, however, exactly as I hoped. My first indication was a cover story of California magazine titled "Revenge of the Nerds" with Steve Wozniak's smiling face and Apple-logo eyeglasses. It turns out the grey matter languishing in my head started to have value. At 15 years of age, I began writing articles for nationally-distributed computer magazines. At 16 years old, I wrote my first published book, which was followed by a couple dozen others. I was earning enough money to buy a Porsche in high school. It was suddenly cool - and profitable - to be smart.
The Simple World
This post isn't about my misspent youth, however. I simply use that as a point of reference, because the gap between the fates and fortunes of the "smart" and "not as smart" has become grotesquely large. So much so, I'm starting to yearn for the days when the cavemen among us had some say-so.
It wasn't that long ago that the world was relatively easy to comprehend. Take the world political scene, for example. It was stone-cold simple: the USSR (and its myriad satellite states and sympathizers) on one side and the United States (along with the rest of the "free world") on the other. The ideological differences were clear and comprehensible, even to young people, and nuclear-based Mutually Assured Destruction kept the globe on edge but largely at peace.
But ask someone, even a person who is very well-read such as myself, to explain, say, the conflict in Syria. You'd get a blank stare. To truly comprehend the political problems of the world these days, you practically have to make a career out of it.
Consider the same yesteryear for central banks: for all their illustrious titles and grand offices, the job of the bankers used to be to move interest rates down when the economy needed stimulation (and could risk inflation) and crank them up if inflation needed to be suppressed. Elementary school children could more or less get this, and and on the nightly news, if David Brinkley stated that the Fed has moved interest rates up 1/4% or down 1/4%, Joe Sixpack could grasp what that meant and how it would affect him. The world, as a whole, was a pretty straightforward place to grasp.
History's End
Everything changed, of course, after the financial crisis. In the examples cited above (the world of work, and the role of central banks), something big affected each of them.
In the working world (and I'm focused on the United States), several closely-related changes have conspired together to hollow out the middle class and create unprecedented deformations in wealth distribution. The majority of middle-class-supporting manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. The kinds of jobs available to people with sub-breathtaking intellect are such things as retail sales clerks, fast food deep-fat-fryer button-pushers, and the poor devils at health care facilities that have to collect the bedpans. If you don't have a Mark Zuckerberg brain, you would have been better off in the 1950s than the 2010s.
The central banks, of course, have changed drastically as well. In the throes of the financial crisis, I (very naively, it turns out) figured the Fed was all out of bullets, because interest rates were at 0. After all, for my entire life, I was aware of the Fed's role in turning the dial up or down on interest rates, but I assumed (again, naively) that once rates were at 0, all the Fed could do was sit back and hope for the best.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
As we all know now, Bernanke's pledge to not monetize the debt was utter hogwash, and the nation is now $18 trillion (and quickly growing) in debt. The rich among us are ecstatic, because they are richer than ever. Everyone else is, once you strip away the nonsense and get down to reality, isn't one iota better.
I'm not here to regurgitate about wealth inequality and central banks, however. That's been beaten to death for years (and I would point you to my review of the sensational Great Deformation for my own recommendation of what book to read about these topics). What I wanted to address was how the vast majority of the world is awash in willful ignorance about what is going on around them, mainly because, as the Facebook relationship status message says......it's complicated.
Enlightenment Requires Effort
What got me thinking about this was this recent article on ZeroHedge about how Carmen Segarra's whistleblower case is being dismissed out of hand by a federal court under the most corrupt of circumstances. Perhaps you recall Ms. Segarra is the woman who covertly taped the breathtakingly close relationship Goldman Sachs has with the Federal Reserve "regulators". This briefly was national news, but most citizens have the attention span of a gnat, so the story went away.
The ZH article showed quite plainly how the judge (Ronnie Abrams) and her husband are very tight with Goldman Sachs. The conflict of interest is screamingly apparent, but Ms. Segarra and her whistleblower lawsuit are S.O.L. because, well, Federal Judges tend to have a lot of sway when it comes to the law.
But here's the thing: taking the time to even have an awareness of this kind of thing is something 99.9% of the public isn't going to do. Endeavoring to do so isn't simple. It doesn't have a laugh track. And there's no Kardashian in it. They just. Don't. Care.
Ratchet this up several notches, though: consider for a moment what it takes to understand the economic state of the world today. Consider all the elements: quantitative easing; foreign exchange cross-rates; sovereign debt; the spider's web of relationships between the economies of Japan, China, Europe, and the United States.
The fact that you've even made it this far into this obscure post easily puts you in the 99th percentile in terms of people who are interested in, and read about, the topics I'm addressing. This is not mere flattery to butter you up, dear reader. I really do believe that. Never, ever underestimate the ignorance of the general public or its laziness. Today's world is really, really complicated, and it takes a Herculean effort to have a basic understanding as to what's happening all around us.
As foolish as I think Jonathan Gruber was to wreck his reputation (and enormous consulting income) by spouting off about the ignorance of the American voter, ummm, the fact is, he's kind of right. He's very right, actually. I'm reminded of George W. Bush's retort to the notion that people in the military must not be smart; he declared them "plenty smart", which was as patronizing as it was inaccurate. I'm sure the intelligence of soldiers would follow the same kind of bell curve that any body of humans would.
As Slope's patron saint George Carlin once said on this topic: "Think about how stupid the average American is, and then realize than half of the population is stupider than that." If you have your doubts, take note:
+ 25% of Americans don't believe in evolution;
+ Only half of Americans could answer which of these three major religions was the oldest: Judaism, Christianity, or Islam;
+ More Americans can name at least two of the Seven Dwarves than two justices on the Supreme Court;
+ More Americans can name each of the Three Stooges than the three branches of our government
In that kind of environment, what percentage of the population do you think could successfully and articulately explain what the central banks of the world have done to the world? Five percent? Two percent? I think even that is too generous an estimate.
It's not that the subject is breathtakingly complex, like learning Arabic or quantum mechanics. It's just that the effort required to understand this stuff at even a superficial level is pretty significant, and very few people are going to bother. Hell, I was absolutely crazy about Great Deformation, and that was a multi-week slog through a 700+ page book with not a single graph or table. Awareness in our modern world is a lot of work.
And that, my friends, is why the elite have it made in the proverbial shade. If the highest reaches of society were holding up banks with machine guns, that crime would simple enough for the common man to grasp, and he might actually agitate for prosecution.
But a complex scheme to saddle future generations of the masses with debt in exchange for the immediate gratification of the rich getting richer? They've already gotten away with it. The masses have enough hamburgers to eat and enough Kardashians to watch on the tube. They're going to stay blissfully ignorant and just keep scraping along.
The 1% have won. Most of the 99% don't know and, thus, don't care. And a tiny subset of the 99% who are clever enough to see what the hell is going on might find themselves envying their less-knowledgeable brethren, since ignorance is, at times like this, a blissful alternate to awareness.
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For the most part, I enjoyed the article. It was just last night I was telling my wife that one can take what is on the surface and be happy with that or work harder and see what is down deeper. I agree wholeheartedly that things are waaaaay more complicated today than they were in the 70s, 80s, or 90's. Mostly due to the various forms of information that have exponetially increased the disinformation or lies.
That being said, I would like to take the writer to task over a couple of points. The first would be the culpability of the "smart" people who were in charge of eductating the rest of us. A clear principle was lost along the way. That principle could be stated, "Give a man a fish feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for life". You quit teaching people how to learn and rather what to learn. Specifiacally a basket of hand picked facts that would shape them and their minds into the drones you wanted. No doubt the masses are responsible for their dumbing down, but the smart elites took advantage of the working man and his children to program and shape them into dumbed-down little animals that would do as told when told rather than thinking for themselves.
This world is a world of lies and the truth must be sought after by hard work. Like anything of value in this life, it must be worked for. The things that come easy are crap 9.9 times out of 10. Today lies flow uninhibited while the truth is suppressed, ridiculed, and even oppressed. It takes more than just an industrious spirit to wade through it all. It takes an ability to think. An ability to look at what is and put aside what is said. Laziness is a problem but ability is key as well. We all have the ability but it is like a muscle that was never used, weak and uncoordinated. That muscle was to be trained and exercised in our "schooling" years. Which brings me to my second point.
I am going to use the comment about "+25% don't believe evolution" to make my point. What we are teaching everyone today is that they are just the highest form of animal life. Well, Mr. "High IQ", I have a news bulliten for you. There is a hell of a lot more that separate us from the animal kindom than just our intellect. There are things called morals, character, principle, etc. that are as unreachable to the animal world as Jupiter is from a landing by a Richard Branson spacecraft. I have written before in these pages that the problem in our society is the lack of morals and character and NOT the lack of educated facts. You and your IQ worshipers have turned our society into a bunch of animals "whose god is there belly". People who are only concerned about "bread and games" because they have been told their quest in life is to "get theirs" before somebody else does. People who have been programmed that the apex in life is sex, food, entertainment, and moar sex, food, and entertainment. Evolution has turned people into predators with no thought of their fellow human beings. Why that is so hard for an "educated, smart man" like yourself to see is clear to me, but obviously not so clear to you. The human quest today is to satisfy one lust after another.....at any expense. People clasify themselves by the level of lust they get to fulfill. That is why people are so enamoured with the Kardashians. They are jealous/envious of the lust that those whores get to lavish themselves in on a daliy basis. Because that's what animals do; eat, mate, sleep. Every waking moment is about fulfilling their wants. That is why it is easy for us to trap and manipulate them. Pretty sure you don't deer hunt much, but if you did, you would understand why deer season is during the "rut" when bucks lose their minds chasing a doe that is in heat. That is when the bucks are easiest to kill. Also you would understand why we use corn feeders, lick blocks, and other "natural" attractants to draw them into the killing zone. Animals are soooo easy to manipulate and fool because they are dominated by their natural instincts and base drives i.e. lust. That is what you evolutionist have done to humanity with your "scientific religion". We have built a world to fulfill the lust and desires of animalistic people. A world of sexual perverts, drug addicts looking for another high, people who weigh 600-1000 lbs, rich people who can never get enough, people who desire to be someone else to the point of self mutilation, people who justify killing their own kids for a career or higher income so they can get moar, etc. I could fill up this entire page with a grotesque list of the unthinkable things people do to get what they want i.e. to satify their lust. And, why not? We are just another animal, right?
The elites have made sure to glorify those in this world who are willing to do anything to get more. Long ago, I was taught that was the definition of a whore. And when I say anything, I mean anything. "More" is the moral compass of the evolutionary elites. It must be, else we deny our animal nature, and that just can't happen because you elitist, evolutionary, man worshippers have to be right no matter how many lives and families you destroy. These politicians and bankers today are the product of the humanistic/godless/evolutionary education of the 60's and 70's. If you think it is bad now, just hang around for the next 20 years.
Lastly, I would like to point out that there is a Grand Canyon size divide between knowledge and wisdom/understanding. Animals have a preprogrammed knowledge. Like a sparrow raised in a cage for the first two years that is then turned loose in the spring and flies south in the winter with all the other sparrows. Why, because it was taught? No, because it is pre-programmed. Wisdon/Understanding is the realm of humanity. The ability to understand the importance of character, morals, truth, and principles over what we want. This separates us from the animal kingdom............and cannot be evolved. It is a thing called a conscience that you smart people have tried (somewhat successfully) to educate out of humantity.
Well my kids may not be the "smart nerds" but they will know that in life there are things (called people) that are more important than sex, food, drugs, freedom from pain, entertainment, money (which is just the means to get moar). That maintaining ones integrity, character, and reputaion is to be dilligently sought over fantasy football, a hot date, faster car, bigger house, or higher paying job. That an ounce of Wisdom is worth all the "knowledge" in the world. That honesty and integrity are priceless.
In conclusion, I feel sorry for you smart boys and the educated world of animalistic, sociopaths you have created. I think of what happens to animals that lose their usefulness. I think of the dog-eat-dog world you have created and about which you now cry and complain. I think of the masses that will need a world calamity to awaken them from the drunkeness of fulfilling their lust and desires 24/7. I think about that awakening and the carnage that will ensue as the animals scrape and claw to get theirs over and at the expense of others. What a mess all you smart people have created........simple because you chose to deny the truth.........and write your own.
"Righteousness exhalteth a nation, but sin is reproach to any people."
"Sin" is missing the mark. People like you were put in charge and missed the mark decades ago. The further we go on this path of "misdirection" the further we are removed from the truth and the "mark".
Funny, how easy is it for a dumb guy like to me to see it so clearly, while a smart guy like you just can't get it. Who is "wilfully" ignorant now?
We don't have intelligence or Miltown men on Q99X2
(s)low<------- 100 -------->low
I think it's time our beloved ruling class meet The Stark Fist of Removal
That pic. I can only think of Spastica Rex
http://www.zerohedge.com/users/spastica-rex
How dare you take Bob and the Church of The Subgenius and use it to your stupid purpose. We shall be looking at your bits with interest.
Remove Abrams, and debar her. Surely she swore to an oath, to uphold justice, and not her pocket book. Remove and De-bar.
Remove Abrams, and debar her. Surely she swore to an oath, to uphold justice, and not her pocket book. Remove and De-bar.
The amusing thing about attempts to equate wealth and power with any form of happiness is that it ignores the following immutable fact:
1)You're going to die and you can't take it with you.
The conclusion: time and the manner in which you use it or squander it are the only real source of wealth. I've never owned anything that has brought me anything other than very transient pleasure. Yet, skiing down an isolated slope in near whiteout conditions in waist deep powder-priceless.
"+ 25% of Americans don't believe in evolution;" - if it's a science then you don't "believe" in it, it just is. So what is evolution then if it requires "believing in it"?
Don't get me wrong I think evolution is mostly correct but there is much it cannot explain also.
Listen fool. It is not that no one can figure out the deal. It is that there is nothing about it that can be done. Guys are either strong enough to carry on and provide as best they can or they just tune out and chill as best they can. There isn't much hope out there and that is what is really scary. When it gets real serious the one who is quiet and does the best he can will be the one that cracks up first, because he has a lot to lose and is not going down without a fight. Let the protests turn ugly let em burn a d loot. When they show up at the wrong end of town the. Shotguns come out and game is on.
"Tune out and chill" would be your advice then, correct?
i also find it interesting how self-described 'smart' people always feel compelled to let everyone know how smart they are and how they suffered because they were smart. insecure much? you may be smart, but doesn't seem that you're very 'wise' - at least in spiritual terms.
outstanding article.
the essence of the subgenius is slack. bob
Perhaps you recall Ms. Segarra is the woman who covertly taped the breathtakingly close relationship Goldman Sachs has with the Federal Reserve "regulators". This briefly was national news, but most citizens have the attention span of a gnat, so the story went away.
B U L L S H I T
The problem isn't the average American. The problem is the news media. Whether it's due to some grand conspiracy, or it's just a matter of what gets ratings, the fact is most news outlets only deal with the sensational. Most news outlets work in sound bites. Most news outlets treat the American public as if they are idiots. I wouldn't be surprised that the editing of most modern TV programs, news programs, and films not to mention the shoddy writing in news articles like the one above, are, in part, responsible for the gnat-like attention spans the author rails against.
One major component of "the problem" is the failure of our public educational system to truly educate.
If you take a look at what was required of students for high school level work around 1900 and compare it with today's material, you can see the decline.
It's very difficult to "educate" when we don't actually know anything.
Yup. Like I've been saying...
Humans are finished. Game over.
Oh, I doubt that. I think we will struggle on for a few more thousand years either with or without cell phones, i-pods, and Botox.
Unfortunately with the current crop of "geniuses" who are running things I am inclined to agree with you. I mean picking a fight that could result in a nuclear exchange during a period of low sunspot activity, that also happens to coincide with the recent end of the Holocene, is just a genius fucking idea.
The world was not simpler then or ever. It was just presented in a simpler way because there were not so many ways of gathering information as there are now.
All you had was the newspaper and the nightly news, and they both said the same thing.
This article is fake. Among other things, Porsches were not status symbols in the 70s. Denying The Man your contribution was much more important, and thats why our replacements are here now.
Fuck off and die, Tim.
PS. My IQ score on the adult Stanford Binet was 238 - when I was 15. I do know.
Bullshit on your IQ - you're lucky if it was 138 - very lucky.
Bullshit on your IQ - you're lucky if it was 138.
Yes they were.
The newest religion always trumps the one before it. Currently, the religion of science holds that position.
You must be joking! What passes for science today is almost competely captured by what is called government. Just because so-called "scientists" are willing to claim whatever the predators-that-be want them to claim (like AGW), does not mean what they are doing is science. What they are doing is obeying orders, namely to rationalize whatever the predators-that-be want them to rationalize. Today, exceptions are few.
Traditionally, historically, through all cultures and all forms of government, politics and religion have gone hand in hand and used one another to control the people. Further proof that what we call 'science' is only the newest religion. Thank you for bringing that up.
Agree Ann, the commercially funded science of today is so far a cry from impartial scientific method as to be almost unworthy of the name. Perhaps we can abandon the term 'science' to the decaying waste of today's overarching paradigm and seek to promote the underlying principle of the scientific method: rationalism.
Mr. Knight is nowhere near as intelligent as he thinks he is.
That implies that monetary policy is/has been weakly Pareto-optimal...because a subset has been made better off without making anyone else worse off.
That's a fundamental misrepresentation of the situation: the people who are better off are that segment of society holding instruments with leveraged exposure to the money stock; everyone else is worse off, including 'rich' people whose holdings are all in interest-bearing securities (a retiree with a million dollars in CDs certainly qualifies as 'rich', n'est-ce pas? Well they're going backwards in real terms - even using B[L]S hedonised/bastardised inflation data).
Question! Is the "oldest" religion also the one that is the most legitimate and therefore always, and everywhere, right?
No.
Yes but that religion was not mentioned in the article.
No, it is not the oldest, but the newest, religion that always claims the honor of being "right". Currently, the religion of science holds the title.
Science is not a religion, but a method. In science it’s the argument that has the strength – the analysis, the data, the empirical evidence, the observations. In good science there’re no Truth only good arguments (valid and reliable data).
That doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of bad, corrupted or unscientific arguments ‘cloaked as science’. That’s not an argument against science per se, but an argument against the general corruption and decay of all institutions of the modern world. Including the institution of science. In USA it has been bad for decades (‘science’ have been usurped like the rest of US-society by the corporate forces and thereby corrupted to serve the same fascists ends) and in Europe the same tendencies are now accelerating (also in Denmark were I'm from).
We do not need a new religious awakening – we need a new enlightenment based on some of the same values as the first: humanism, science (the real sort), curiosity and art.
Science is a beautiful, logical argument based on an assumed premiss, namely, that there is no God, while more traditional religions are equally beautiful, logical arguments based on the assumed premiss that there IS a God. The problem is that to date, neither science nor the more traditional religions have been able to definatively prove that there either is, or is not, a God.
So, I'll say again, science is nothing more than the most recent faith-based religion and it will continue to be so until it can prove there is no God pulling the strings for his/her own amusement or purposes.
I can see you're clueless about these matters.
If there is no God in science, then Newton and Einstein (and many others) are not scientists.
BS. See above. How can you tell? Easy. Which of the following is true?
-----
#1: scientists are employed by predators-DBA-government.
#2: predators-DBA-government are employed by scientists.
Well, there you go. Case closed. Now you know who works for who.
Yes - and if anyone says otherwise, may Apophis tear their still-beating heart out of their chest and feed it to Sutekh.
6000BCE, bitches. more than 3000 years before anybody ever thought to make up some shit about an incestuous Mesopotamian nomad (Avram was fucking his half-sister Sarai), and base a genital-mutilation race-cult on a promise from a genocidal Sky Monster.
Avram . . . is that a Chrysler product?
"More Americans can name each of the Three Stooges than the three branches of our government"
Are they not one and the same?
Damn! Stooges and SubGenius in one thread! Zero Hedge just gets better and better. Now I'm going to have to break out my old copy of "Three-Fisted Tales of Bob" and my well-thumbed copy of "Revelation X" and reacquaint myself with the rantings of the great Ivan Stang.
"Don't backslide into the happy tarpit of diminished expecations!"
Slow day in Contentville.
Sorry, not impressed.
This article was satire, right? The only similar ego pieces I have seen were done by jews who all want to write books and tell people how smart and hard working they are and that their superior intelligence led to their success, when in fact it was their connections through their family that got them the money and the initial customers for the business they started while they were still in school. Any genius can start a successful hedge fund right out of school, right?
it isn't the stupidity of dumb people that enables the "smart" to take advantage that is the danger.
the danger is the stupidity of self proclaimed smart people proclaiming they know the answer while dragging millions of willing(because they are stupid) people along to their death to prove their righteousness. come to find out these self proclaimed smart people are not very smart at all. intelligence has nothing to do with success and only some with brains skills.
if you really want to use your ample brain for your own best use then the conclusion should be to drop out by participating as little as possible in the status quo designed to perpetuate the reward of evil over good.
Country Boys Will Survive...
Especially Smart Country Boys.. when the SHTF... :)
the only good thing about being in the 99%, we're 99%, and the 1% can't juggle that many, HUMAN BEINGS forever.
here lies the 1%ers problem, so 60 yrs. ago the pre-facist, communist dem.'s set about their ideoligly agenda, divide, and conquer, men vs women, black vs white, pro-life vs pro- death, religion vs state, rich vs poor, and on and on.along with their bigest accomplist made it possible, 85% of americas communicatios co.'s, their news programing is something that would make geobells leg tingle.
now reality is setting in, in ferguson, what people that could be considered, middle to upper-middle class, policemen, and assorted city officials are putting their families into hidding.
i've commented on this before, 1%ers are realitive, the broke person on the street needing money for food, drugs, or wants, the next person they see with cash, or anything of value, are considered the 1%er.
the 1%ers are loving making it 33% + 33% +33% instead off 99%.
That's why the 1% need and encourage the 23% to be the cops, local court judges and prosecutors, reporters, politicians, human resource managers, and all-around administrators. Not all the 23% end up with much, but many of them end up with more than they would in a free market.