Idiocracy

There have been a lot of movies that have predicted a future of earth.  Some say we'll be a prosperous, highly advanced civilization with robots and self-driving flying cars and where the normal life expectancy is 250 years.  Others say we'll be destroyed by war caused by those robots becoming self aware, or aliens coming to Earth, or even just because we want to destroy each other.  The one I hope for it Star Trek's prediction, where we no longer need money to be happy, and instead are hungry for knowledge and work hard to better ourselves and those around us.  Where we become explorers, scientists, doctors, historians...all for the advancement of what we know of the universe.

However, I have a feeling the opposite will happen.  If you've never seen the movie Idiocracy, do yourself a favor and watch it.  It will make you laugh, but if you look too deep into it, it will make you want to learn everything you can about...well, everything.

The basic idea of the movie is this.  The most average guy in the military, and a regular run of the mill hooker, are frozen for an experiment and wake up several hundred years into the future.  Through a trend of intelligent minds not breeding enough children because they want to wait for the right time, while those of, to be kind, less than average intelligence breed like wild fire, the world has become a pit of dumb.  Even the most common knowledge ideas such as water making plants grow, has become something that is hard to convince people of.

It may be a bit extreme, but looking at every movie prediction of the future, this is the most likely.  No robot apocalypse, but instead an overpopulated world of morons living in their own filth and having the mental capacity of a four year old.  And this is coming from someone that considers himself an optimist.

I see it happening around us everyday.  I see mother's with 6 children, of various ages, all of whom are unruly little hellians and their mother does nothing about it.  Or seeing twitter feeds of teenagers and even college students who don't understand concepts like Leap Year or the phases of the moon.  I constantly see the laziness of people everywhere, who all figure that the world is owed to them and so they just do whatever they want and expect someone else to take care of it.  I see it in our government as they allow corporations to take over the legal system in order to fit their needs so they can make a profit.  I see it in our school systems where a person that can't read or write is able to pass high school.  The parents that don't teach their kids anything practical to survive in the world, yet are more than happy to teach them that dinosaurs and humans lived together less than 30,000 years ago.  The people that preach intolerance, conformity, and hate instead of helping people find their own niche in the world and loving all.  Even the people who get visibly angry with people who are just trying to do their job, but feel they need to explode in rage about a mistake that they made.

That image sums it all up for me.  Some people say that bad things happen for a reason, but there is a steady decline of intelligence in the world.  And those that dedicate their lives to being as smart as they can about a subject are being dwindled out slowly.  We live in a world where money and appearance is the only thing that matters, rather than happiness, intelligence, and togetherness.