Lean to the Light, Turn Away from the Dark...

You know, if you follow along with Darwin and the grand natural experiment, Evolution, we are the "smart" and "tricky" monkeys, the species that dominates this gloriously beautiful, blue-planet. We are imaginative, creative, funny, weird, we love to be fruitful and multiply. We are practitioners of great mischief, and uncommon grace and kindness. We murder, we rape, we invent crazy-ass schemes and commit horrible atrocities. We also conjure up great beauty and wonder in the Arts and Sciences.  We are fairly smart, although we might not be as smart as we think we are. 

Lately, and maybe always, as a culture, a society, as nations, civilizations, we lean to the light or the dark, depending on our collective mood. Check out history. We have our "Dark Ages," and our "Enlightenments."  We kind of ping-pong between them. Sometimes, we have our dark age right in the middle of our enlightenment. Like I said, we are tricky.

So, yes, to get to the point. Lately we have elevated the Stupid to grand heights around the globe. Maybe it a bit of a delusion of grandeur, or the crazy-making mood in the face of our climate catastrophe, looming death, destruction and massive extinction.

Just when we should be elevating the smart ones amongst us, we instead celebrate and elevate and anoint the stupid ones. It's a really fucking retrograde way, not a way forward at all, it is a turning backward into a certain stupid death and oblivion.  We see it everywhere. The stupid has been unleashed. Our MAGA King and his legion of followers is a perfect encapsulation of this tendency. These folks are not very intelligent, but they are loud, quickly resort to anger and violence. They get lots of attention, and often  dominate the conversation.  They multiply the stupid, being stupid is super-contagious. They are a minority, but because they are loud and armed and stupid, they tend to suck all the air out of a room.

The others, the smart ones, or maybe the less stupid ones, need to wake up. There are ways to work around the stupid ones. There is Democracy, the Rule of Law, Norms, kindnesses, small acts of gentleness and understanding. Lead by example. By doing the good work. Carrying on despite the B.S. Lean to the light, turn away from the dark.