Marching Morons / Idiocracy

[Guest Lester Weevils]

http://home1.gte.net/bookies/BookClub/Marching%20Morons.txt

C.M. Kornbluth was a pulp SF writer who started publishing in his teens, went off to fight WWII, then came back and wrote for a few more years before croaking at an early age.

His short story The Marching Morons shares characteristics with Idiocracy, more than 5 decades before Idiocracy. I've found a few web sites claiming that Marching Morons was the inspiration for Idiocracy, but haven't yet run across a reference where Judge attributes it as such, though perhaps he has at some time.

Kornbluth recycled the theme of an earth populated by genial, good looking, complete idiots, in a few more stories, as background rather than main plot device.

His versions of idiocracies include a tiny percentage of remaining smart people who cooperate to keep the technology going "behind the scenes" out of a sense of duty to the hordes of morons, wheras Judge's Idiocracy shows anyone with a lick of sense having gone extinct.

There is a biologist who wrote a web article who hates the theme. Says it is biologically impossible, and offensively elitist. Which may be, considering that offspring in large groups tend toward the mean. Exceptionally smart parents are likely to have kids who may be smart, but not as smart as mom and dad. Exceptionally dumb people tend to have kids that are smarter than mom and dad, even if the kids might not be geniuses. However, dunno if that seeming fact rules out that the mean itself could not drift downward over time.

Have read some opinions that folk a few hundred years ago may well have been on average brighter and more fit than we are today, though global IQ tests seem to have continually risen to this day, ever since the tests were invented. So it isn't a cut and dried subject matter.

Kornbluth has interesting details reflecting situations in his own time, and ours. For instance he describes automobiles that look very fast and futuristic, and sound like they are going real fast, when in fact they move very slowly so that idiot drivers don't kill themselves too often in wrecks. And it is certainly true that the average popular vehicle looks much faster that it really is. :)

[TMF]

I don't think the Idiocracy we are devolving into is necessarily IQ related, but cultural. Certainly there are extremely smart dirtbags. The problem is when kids of scum bags are being reproduced at a much higher rate than kids of productive members of society it changes our culture into one of self serving, lazy, morally/ethically bankrupt wastes of oxygen.

Surely there are some basic intelligence issues related to this, as entitlement sucking leeches tend to be lower in intelligence, but I don't think it is so severe that these people lack the intelligence to be productive and take care of themselves. It's cultural.

[whitewolf001]

I don't think the Idiocracy we are devolving into is necessarily IQ related, but cultural. Certainly there are extremely smart dirtbags. The problem is when kids of scum bags are being reproduced at a much higher rate than kids of productive members of society it changes our culture into one of self serving, lazy, morally/ethically bankrupt wastes of oxygen.

Surely there are some basic intelligence issues related to this, as entitlement sucking leeches tend to be lower in intelligence, but I don't think it is so severe that these people lack the intelligence to be productive and take care of themselves. It's cultural.

Well said TMF, the culture that is being encouraged today is only producing more and more lazy generations which are in turn going to create even lazier ones than the previous. When I have kids, I'd like to move to a small town WELL outside any major metropolitan city and raise them proper, far removed from the mass collections of people whom would in turn try to turn my offspring into lazy husks as well and I will NOT have that. As small minded as that sounds, I am only trying to preserve the sanctity of their work ethic and frame of mind. After living in Miami for a short stint, I can tell you there is in fact a cultural difference between those of the city and those of the country. Just my  :2cents:

Edited January 16, 2014 by whitewolf001