Big Brain V. Brain Rot
I have never earnestly called someone stupid.
Forgive me that was a lie - there’s probably a couple people out there who have had their intelligence personally insulted by me. Firstly, I don’t think I use my brain to its fullest capabilities a worrying amount of the time and secondly, I also don’t view myself as the peak example of a smart person to - who am I to call anyone stupid? No one is truly stupid; we should not allow people to get away with calling themselves or acting as that.
On my explore feeds on social media there is a growing conversation occurring of intelligence as an asset to be leveraged, when placed in the wider context of the frightening and volatile times we are living in, its no debate why this is happening. New schools of thought are arising, older ones are being revisited and applied to our times as a warning of the declining path the world is heading towards - information in all its forms is rampant and more valuable than ever. Yet in the same vein the poison of anti-intellectualism seeps through. On January 2017 DJT trumpeted (lol) the words “Fake News” as a dismissal tactic against CNN reporter Jim Acosta, now let me stress he was not an innovator, nor was he the first person ever to use these words. I have personally decided to use that period in time as the accelerant of the current snowball we are stuck in. The abundance of knowledge available to us should correlate to an increase in awareness which yes exists but the antagonist to this has taken a greater and uglier form one where nothing no longer has a deeper meaning, is too ‘online’ and can easily be cast aside. Distrust of experts, moral flattening, the aestheticisation of ignorance are all symptoms of our time and the list could sadly go on. There have been attempts to fight back, the popular offensive approach is in my opinion too equal to the problem to truly overcome it. When the majority has a short attention span and responds to nicely packaged digestible information it is a complete disservice to the source to strip the seriousness of its language, misapply logical frameworks or to flatten the point of a topic. Instead of a successful offence you have only indulged the intellectual laziness of the opposing team and removed the responsibility of understanding acquired knowledge. This becomes a greater issue when this bite sized information, that has not individually been understood, is then presented and leveraged to others as part of a performance to appear intelligent. I wish I was not exaggerating when I said this has and will lead to further genuine harm.
“Scientia Potential est” a phrase attributed to Sir Francis Bacon and penned by his secretary Thomas Hobbes in 1668, translates to ‘’Knowledge is Power’’, we will all pretend like this aphorism has not been used and abused by every millennial to ever exist or slapped on awfully designed motivational posters a countless number of times. Your reward for agreeing is this fun fact - following 9/11 the Information Awareness Office in the US set up essentially what was a mass surveillance system (with ‘’Scientia Potential est’’ as its slogan) to track down terrorists but then concerns rose about it being potentially misused to collect information about the average citizen. Which is fairly based, especially when you account the mass xenophobic and nationalist commentary at the time. The existence of an entire system that disproportionately targeted specific groups, further entrenched racial biases and encouraged profiling would not be received well; no surprise they denied it was happening and yet it was still defunded. Now feel free to drop this into a conversation and if you want to sound like a deranged conspiracy theorist you can even show them the illuminati-esque logo. Allow me to pivot back to ‘’Knowledge is Power’’; Bacon and Hobbes both understood that our learning of the world around us when applied correctly gives us the potential ability to make things not only better but great. That is why it is no exaggeration that there is genuine harm in allowing knowledge to become a commodity that is not valued and practiced or something to use exert great suffering to objects and expel around us. The ability to use our brains to comprehend and apply things is what sets us apart as the human race it gives us the power to think, change, feel and create. While we’re on the topic of commodities, I will spare some words for Artificial Intelligence (AI); one of the oldest tales of time is people giving up their freedom for comfortability, being given an answer is efficient its nice & easy but the agency of being able to seek out an answer cannot be overstated. To put it as plainly as possible I am begging us all to use and practice our critical thinking skills. There may come a time that the rise in popularity in using these AI computer models will make access to information in its raw form borderline impossible or heavily restricted - do not give in to the lull of the techno-boom (can you tell I tried really hard not to just say AI is evil). Ironically, I am flattening the complexity here unfortunately this is not the focus of my essay today.
Now I have already mentioned the discussions that have been circling on social media, one that I would like to bring focus to is the social benefits to presenting as ‘’an intellectual’’. There seems to be a sentiment that due to the blurred socio-economic lines that the online world creates access to physical material things will no longer hold the same weight individuals will therefore seek out other social determining factors that ‘others’ them: Intelligence. Tom works an underpaying job xyz hours a week and has great issues at hand like feeding his 15 children, if he’s not at work, he’s sleeping and vice versa; Jerry on the other hand barely works he prefers the term fun employed he reads minimum 2 books a week, booked an evening course, frequents exhibits often and in fact has a trip planned where a guide will give him the play by play of xyz. Sorry for my poor attempt at an example, the point I am trying to make is that there is a currency being applied to being ‘smart’. It implies greater access to resources and time to which you could argue that by design individuals from less privileged and working-class backgrounds are excluded from. This is where the whole how to be an ‘intellectual’ larp loses me because it positions knowledge as something to be bought into or as a consumer guideline and it is so frustrating to observe this lie because I understand that it’s origins was an honest attempt at fighting back against brain rot, anti-intellectualism and the overall undisciplined ignorance at large. Tom, however, should not feel like he needs to buy a tutorial to teach him how to be smart I think this just unfairly further ostracises a sector of people who already feel that learning is out of reach. And that is a simple untruth. Information does not discriminate it is available for all who are curious and yes this may be a more uncomfortable experience to Jerry’s and yet you must not let that deter you. Cultivate the desire to seek out knowledge, there is no secret formula to knowing and understanding things, resist as much as you can the comfortability of just being given the answer or even worse believing that you are too stupid to even bother trying.
Challenge yourself everyday there is limitless amount of learning if you allow yourself to entertain the unfathomable.
