We Live in the Future: Ben Bova and the March of Morons

So Ben Bova has a column in the Bonita Daily News that discusses how an experience in gridlocked traffic reminds him of a 50 year old Kornbluth story, "The Marching Morons."

Kornbluth tells of a future world that is overrun with dummies: men and women who don't know anything beyond their own shallow personal interests. They don't know how their society works, or who is running it. All they care about is their personal -- and immediate -- gratification.

I was reminded of "The Marching Morons" the other day as I was driving on U.S. 41, jammed with cars and trucks. A moron in a sports car was zooming in and out of traffic, trying to get ahead of the jam that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was like a scene of out of Kornbluth's story.

I find the idea terrifying, and what bright person doesn't? Oh no, the idiots are going to ruin the world. Nobody will be alive to appreciate Shakespeare! This person bought a sports car and drove like a maniac! The idiots are here! Given the money it takes to buy that sports car, the person behind the wheel could have very well been a doctor or lawyer--not the kind of person we generally believe to be a moron. Intelligence is a broad concept. There are many different kinds. As a child, I was great at school, but I had zero common sense. Some people are good at puzzles, but can't understand why the object of their affection finds them repulsive (it's your body odor/breath/generally weird behavior, dude). It really is most amusing to me that the best anecdote Bova had to include in the article was someone driving unsafely in an expensive car. I think that speaks more about our society than the driver him/herself, that the closest thing to an interaction with a "dumb" person he has had lately was in traffic.

There is no shortage of intelligent people out there. I am more aware of that thanks to the Internet than ever before. And anyway, intelligence is probably more of a matter of education than it is genetics. Yes, ignorant people breed faster than educated people (the real terms we should be using here, not smart and dumb). But are they genetically stupid, or did they just have the misfortune of being born into the wrong end of the social stratum? Ignorance may rule these days, but it's nothing a good education can't cure. If SF authors really wants to do something about this, it could work on inspiring curiosity and an interest to learn in those who are born in the trailer park. Instead of writing the 500th self-referencing insular little community story that only someone who has read SF for the last 50 years will comprehend.

Consumerist societies appear to thrive on ignorance, yes. But I think they eventually eat themselves.