With a lot of help from an out-dated electoral process, and a little push from those who would do us harm, the United States finds itself today being ruled by the unruly. George Orwell called them Proles and Hillary Clinton called them deplorables. Sarah Palin called them Soccer Mom and Jon McCain called them Joe the Plumber. In this issue of News by Nature, we call them Idiots. As blacks use “Nigger” in comradery and even respect, so NBN uses “Idiot.” At one time or another we’re all Idiots. NBN remembers fondly working construction jobs with fellow Idiots talking sports, laughing at off-color jokes and using the word “ain’t” a lot.
For Idiots, life is a daily discipline of applying skills learned over younger years to a fresh set of tasks, each loosely defined by the same parameters called a “job.” There’s innovation enough to make those jobs reasonably interesting, but never so much that it cuts too deep into productivity. In the Idiot’s world, there’s a time for learning and a time for doing your job and over time the former yields to the latter until age takes over and then someone younger, stronger and paid less takes over.
This occupational obedience earns Idiot World the respect of a job well done and the reliable measures of a life well lived: providing for a family, and buying stuff and having fun with both.These contentments free us from the anxieties of underachievement while occasionally letting us overindulge when we overachieve. When we over-indulge and under-achieve—when Joe the Plumber becomes Joe Six-Pac—society frowns, we pay our penance to higher authorities and, hopefully, return to work Monday with a clear conscience determined to do better.
Today science, technology, engineering and math are ending Idiot World. STEM is leveraging our daily production to where we continuously and vastly outpace our old jobs. STEM is confronting Idiot World with the ugly contemplation of just how important are these jobs generations before us dedicated their lives to. By contrast, just how important are we that software and robots now do our jobs more efficiently and affordably.
As STEM upends primal forces which have governed Idiot World since the Industrial Revolution, innovation is becoming the most sought-after skill set. That’s got Soccer Mom and Plumber Joe plenty frightened for their future. Frightened people are unruly people and as STEM busily transforms the world around them, we have a fake Idiot in the Whitehouse using the only levers left to keep real Idiots blissfully ignorant: the promise of plenty of pointless jobs and praise from higher authorities. In the Latest Post: The evils of STEM in a God-fearing, blue collar, Idiot World.
