The Age of the Idiot
How Did the World End Up in Such a Mess? Big Idiots Rose to the Heights of Power by Double Crossing Little Idiots
One of the great unanswered questions of now is this: is the gruesome state of the world the result of a few big idiots, a lot of little idiots, or, perhaps, a lot of little idiots following a few big idiots, like so many times before in history? There’s a simpler way of putting all that: is democracy obsolete?
You don’t have to look too hard to see the tragicomic plight I mention. There are the big idiots. A fascist American president, pimping democracy for cash and favours…then boasting about it…and then throwing tantrums about being caught…as if Monty Python wrote the Godfather. A British PM who repulses decent people with the vapid rhetoric of war, extremism, and hate. The list could go on for a very long time — but let’s delve in.
Then there are the masses of idiots who — stupidly — helped these grotesque men rise to power, only to be…double crossed. The Trump voter who lost his or her job thanks to tariffs. The Brexiter whose career got blown up thanks to businesses moving en masse. And so on. The little idiots got used, manipulated, abused, and dumped by the big idiots. But since they’re idiots — most of them don’t care. Maybe that’s the most astonishing thing of all. Mostly, the Trumpets and the Brexiter are still…the Trumpist and the Brexiter…despite being hurt most by…Trumpism and Brexit. But then how else would they be idiots?
The big idiots and the little idiots — in a suicide pact. These day, the world seems to be plagued by them, in this weird, fatal, dynamic. The big idiots lead the little idiots to the edge of the cliff. They say: “Jump. You’re not going to fall — you’re going to fly!!” The little idiots high-five, and take a leap. Gravity kicks in. They start to plunge downwards, into the abyss. But the whole way down, they keep telling themselves: “any minute now! I’m going to fly! They told me so!” Smack!! Have we hit bottom yet? Nope. And so the suicide pact between the big idiots and the little ones is still at work everywhere. Is that an accurate summary of the world right about now?
So how did we get here? I think that the rise of the idiots has everything to do with neoliberalism, or, more simply, American capitalism as a system with which to run not just the world — but an attitude that came to pervade minds. An attitude of a kind of selfishness to the point of martyrdom. If that doesn’t make sense, think about what the martyr really wants: 72 virgins in the glorious afterlife. They’re not in it for anything other than themselves. But I’ll get to that.
Idiot, in classical terms, means someone who has no conception of the public good, the common wealth, a shared interest. It meant, to the ancients, someone who lived a completely private life. To them, virtue was moral excellence, and because morality is something that we do and have regarding the betterment of others, a person living a completely private life couldn’t be virtuous at all. They were regarded as idiots. More worthy of contempt, sometimes, than slaves — because slaves, poor things, had little choice in the matter. But idiots did.
Now. Doesn’t all that still strike you as, well, an astonishingly resonant description of what went wrong with us? What the idiots of now really are, believe, want? They’re purely self-interested — to the point that they’re willing to burn the whole world down (literally) to stand atop the ashes. They don’t seem to get that ashes aren’t something worth of standing atop. Hence…idiots. And yet that’s the logic of the Brexiter or the Trumpist or any other true believer in the various militant extremisms sweeping the globe to a T. “Burn it all down! I’d rather be a king of ashes than a citizen of a decent society!” What the? The Greeks, perhaps, were righter than they knew — or we still know.
Now, at this point, idiots usually object. “But what I want is DEMOCRATICCCC!! We VOTED for it!!!!!”, they whine, endlessly, eternally. And sometimes, thoughtful people even believe them. Hey — we live in democracies. Aren’t Trumpism and Brexit and whatnot totally valid, as long as they express the will of the people?
Let’s go back to how neoliberalism, American style capitalism, caused the age of the idiot. It says: only pure individualism matters, and even then, in a very specific way: materialistically. Society is nothing more than a sum of individual preferences — and therefore, the only job any person has is to look out for themselves, to maximize their own profit, advantage, power, money.
The logic of markets, therefore, is applied to polities. As long as I’m “voting my own self-interest”, then all will be well. That’s our only job — all of us. Now, there’s one very big problem with all this. Can you see it yet?
What exactly is my “self-interest”? Well, it’s what neoliberalism and capitalism have taught you it is to begin with. To have the most money, power, and sex, basically. “Self-interest” in neoliberalism is being an idiot to thinking people — and to believe in anything more is to be an idiot to those indoctrinated by neoliberalism.
This kind of hyperindividualistic self-interest is really just better called greed. IT forecloses any idea of joint values, of common good, of a public interest. If I’m voting for my own “self-interest”, then, sure, I’ll always vote for lower taxes — why should I bother funding your dirty, filthy kids? Even, crucially, if it’s a better deal for me — because under the terms of neoliberalism, nothing that’s shared can ever be better than anything that’s private at all, by definition. Therefore, even if public healthcare, retirement, education, transport, media, in fact offer me a better deal — more bang for less buck — I’ll be ideologically incapable of “believing” it.
And that leaves democracy in a paradox. Just the paradox that America and Britain find themselves in. Neoliberalism taught people to be purely self-interested atoms of aggressive acquisitive, robotically materialistic maximizing behavior. The result is that many of them are left incapable of seeing democracy as anything other than a tool — or maybe a weapon — to do just that. They cannot believe that their interests can converge with anyone else’s — how could they, when my only job is to dominate and outcompete you, to make you into a subordinate, or maybe a subhuman?
Intelligent people understand by now, I think, how badly neoliberalism and capitalism failed economically. But they have to fully grasp how badly they twisted our politics, by warping our attitudes and beliefs.
Why are we in the age of the idiot? Because for decades, American capitalism has been creating idiots by the millions, one desire, one pleasure, one day at a time. It’s taught much of the world that the only way to be a person worthy of respect or dignity is to have the most money, sex, power, fame, pleasure. If you don’t have more than that person — what kind of loser are you? They don’t deserve what they have, do they? No — you deserve it more than them. And so a kind of vicious cycle of aggression and cruelty kick off.
Neoliberalism’s idea of “self-interest” is basically being an idiot, amassing money you can never spend, earning a fortune by being a miserable human being, having lots of conquests but never a relationship. So when we beg and plead with idiots to respect their own self-interest, they look at us as if we’re the stupid ones. Don’t we get it? Don’t we understand that self-interest is the raw expression of will-to-power, the acquisition of the most money, power, sex, and violence? Duh! They’re not the idiots, we are, they think.
They tell us that “voting” for things like concentration camps and kids to be caged and families to be separated is perfectly “democratic.” Duh! Democracy’s just the “will of the people” — which means the will-to-power of millions of aggressively self-interested people jockeying to have the most — even if it means, collectively, burning down everything, including the planet, life on it and…democracy.
Everything’s gone Nietzsche. When democracy is just a contest of will-to-power — how much I can dominate you, by being the most cruel, ruthless, and vicious one of all, so that I win the most, even if you lose — what should be progress turns into regress. You end up with the bizarre dynasties of predators that run our societies now, because they are the most insatiable and cruel little packs of wolves of all. But wolves don’t ever form societies bigger than packs, my friends. And most predators are just lonely individuals. See the point? Predators aren’t capable of democracy, by definition.
Before it’s the raw expression of individualistic appetites for power and pleasure, democracy must be something deeper. Sure, it’s what we vote for — with one very crucial condition. As long as what we vote for is consonant with, expresses, enacts, fundamental democratic values of freedom, equality, justice, truth.
Let me make that crystal clear. If enough of us “vote” to put everyone else in concentration camps — everyone who doesn’t vote for it — is that democratic? Of course not, LOL. It’s completely barbaric — intuitively, you know it’s the opposite of democracy. If enough of us “vote” to make the other subhumans, who have to live in little boxes, and be the other’s slaves, is that “democratic”? Of course not. Again, you laugh because intuitively you know what your mind sometimes fights: democracy isn’t just “whatever people vote for.”
That’s what the idiots think it is, though. Because decades of neoliberalism have indoctrinated them into believing that. It’s the logic of the market, of capitalism. “Whatever people want” is what we should give them. Sure, that’s one way to run a business (and not even a very good one at that) — but it’s a completely ruinous way to run a society. And the moment that we equate the aggressive, relentless, individualistic pursuit and exercise and acquisition of power, pleasure, and profit with…democracy…we’ve become idiots, too.
And by the way — remember the double cross? How the big idiots double crossed the little ones? If all that we believe in is the above, the aggressive pursuit of our own power and profit then…of course we’re going to get double crossed. And while we might be confused…we’ll never really object. It’s only fair in our logic, after all. Explain a lot? Why the Trumpist or Brexiter who lost their job and livelihood and home is still one? But you can’t build a working society on double crosses — just a collapsing one.
Democracy is more than a long, endless chain of the more powerful double crossing the less powerful, over and over again, while the less powerful enthusiastically line up for yet another round of abuse — which is what the age of the idiot really is. Democracy is the very opposite, in fact. The living expression of a set of fundamental values. Special and unique ones. Freedom, justice, equality, truth. I’d add a few more — humility, decency, humanity, gentleness — but that’s beside the point. The moment that we “vote” to reduce, shrink, evaporate, or corrode these things…we aren’t democratic anymore. We’re autocratic, maybe fascist, usually authoritarian.
(It’s true that the Brexiter and the Trumpist might even say they’re increasing those things. But it’s trivial to see they’re not. Putting kids in cages doesn’t increase freedom, nor does hiding it increase truth. Taking away the right to live and work across a continent doesn’t make Brits freer or more equal — it just makes them less of both. Idiots don’t usually have very good arguments, my friends.)
It’s painfully self-evident that we live in the age of the idiot. The age where antiquity’s worst predictions about what could go wrong with a society came true. Not just famine or flood or war. But idiots. Make enough idiots, enough aggressively self-interested maximizers of power and dominance and pleasure, and soon enough, the little ones will start following the big ones, and everyone else will soon enough be swamped in a rising tide of idiocy. If that sounds like now…I guess we’ve got our work cut out for us. Because, my friends, the next question is: then how do you unmake an idiot? And the answer to that is: nobody knows, and good luck.
Umair
September 2019
September 2019
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