Usually Stupid Wins!

I have been re-reading two different David Foster Wallace non-fiction books; collected essays and articles. Is it possible that just reading DFW makes you smarter? It's like having a really, really intelligent friend, a friend who takes you deep into a topic, takes you deeper than you've ever gone before. There are speculations, and facts, and footnotes, and little epiphanies on almost every page.

It all gets me thinking, sets my mind a reeling. And it doesn't really matter what the subject is, it could be David Lynch movies, or the Porn industry, or Lobsters, or Tennis, or sports Biographies, or Dostoyevsky, or Kafka, or Television, Irony, or Politics.  You will learn something just by traveling with DFW. You will find that subjects that you don't really think you are interested in, are interesting, maybe even fascinating.

Makes me think about how so much of our culture values "the stupid." How so much of our entertainment and pop culture machine actually celebrates the stupid, the dumb, the mind-numbing. We willingly seek out the stupid. We have been told by Pop and Advertising and the Hype machine that stupid is good, stupid is fun, stupid isn't really stupid. We have been sold on the idea that we can't really have fun unless it is stupid fun.

It's not so much that we are "amusing ourselves to death," but that we are "making ourselves stupid to death." We are stupefying ourselves all the time. As in "benumbing," or putting ourselves in a pop culture "stupor."

There are books worth seeking out that can open our heads. There are movies and records that do the same. Maybe it's a little bit elitist to think that there are cultural artifacts that make us better, smarter, more intelligent. But I think it's true. Seeking out work that makes us think, makes us work a little bit, makes us focus, opens our heads, challenges our assumptions is really better work than the stuff that renders us stupid.

Look around, stupid wins. But we lose. Seek out the smart stuff. It's out there. It's all around us. And it can make you smarter, and smart can be fun too.