Why are there so many stupid people?

Strumms

People have given up. They understand democracy now to be an illusion. The Ukrainian situation proves that.

lack of hospital beds, healthcare in general in a jocker.

public transport light years from where it needs to be.

lack of prison places,,

public finances under pressure

but…

” no limit to illegal asylum seekers amnesty “

” no limit to Ukrainian arrivals “

Literally no problem, we’ll siphon the financial, social and every manner of wellbeing away from those who created it and own it and give it to others…

so taking an interest is great… but when nothing will or can change, what’s the point…

hospital waiting lists, crime, etc… those issues are……down the list…

we vote in elections but there is little say as to how that government will represent us. No accountability, no consequences, no point..

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119251285#Comment_119251285

...do we actually have democracy, or is it a warped form of plutocracy?

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119251285#Comment_119251285

Depends on your perspective. I think having a functioning country with basic freedoms, functioning justice system, functioning health service, a functioning public transport system, and show basic human empathy to people in desperate situations, is a pretty good situation.

Ireland isn't perfect in any of those regards. But it's more than simply functioning. Countries don't have to have any of those systems. Taking them for granted is very silly.

sporina

@Strumms no man is an Island and all that..

BalcombeSt4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119216506#Comment_119216506

Yea, spot on & by the time you get to a certain age contradictions start popping up in the system itself, this is a real problem for progress. How do you create innovative, independent-minded & creative people when you want them to be obedient, conformist & just copy stuff from a textbook.

It's the same in the US. In the 70' for example, the Trilateral Commission argued that schools should be institutions for indoctrination, "for imposing obedience, for blocking the possibility of independent thought, and they play an institutional role in a system of control and coercion." -Donaldo Macedo

WJL

People today are from the same gene pool as 100 years ago. Soo the same amount of stupidity around.

People are better educated. But often in one particular field. A little education can be a dangerous thing. It leads to overconfident people making pronouncements on areas they are not qualified to do so.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119321373#Comment_119321373

All measurements show we are more intelligent than 100 years ago. Either your statements is wrong or mine is but you are confident you are qualified to be correct

WJL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119322222#Comment_119322222

Absolutely.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119251377#Comment_119251377

How would you recognize a proper democracy?

WJL

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119322222#Comment_119322222

We possibly have less cop on. Take away electricity and mod cons and few could survive today. 100 years ago people knew how to grow food and survive.

Take the mobile, tablet, PC away from a lot of 'intelligent' folk today and they're lost. Like at the start of covid, toilet paper buying. 100 years ago you did it in a field and wiped your arse with moss or docks.

Bobblehats

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119322222#Comment_119322222

I think it’s subjective, the Irish youth piano championships I looked at was like 80% oriental. Meanwhile our rap showcase was a derpfest.

BalcombeSt4

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119322628#Comment_119322628

Interesting interviews here with Chomsky from 1996 on Democracy in the US, which pretty much applies to democracy in all western countries. Here's two quote which I think explain or at least or give an answer to your question pretty well.

"As to whether it’s a democracy, I don’t think that there is a simple answer to that. Democracy has lots of different dimensions. I mean, basically, the question is to what extent do the people have a meaningful way of developing and articulating their own ideas and putting them forward in the political arena and controlling decisions. That’s the general question. Now if you look at the United States, well, in some respects that’s true but in many respects, it just isn’t true at all." - https://chomsky.info/1996summer/

"Unfortunately, that’s true (you need a good degree of wealth in capitalist democracy). You need resources. It’s easy for me to say, because I’ve got the resources. But for most people, it’s extremely hard. That’s why you need organization. If a real democracy is going to thrive, if the real values that are deeply embedded in human nature are going to be able to flourish, groups must form in which people can join together, share their concerns, discover what they think, what they believe, and what their values are. This can’t be imposed on you from above. You have to discover it by experiment, effort, trial, application, and so on.And this has to be done with others. Central to human nature is a need to be engaged with others in cooperative efforts of solidarity and concern. That can only happen through group structures. I would like to see society moving toward voluntary organization and eliminating as much as possible structures of hierarchy and domination, and the basis for them in ownership and control." - https://chomsky.info/1988____/

Something that I find interesting, but not too surprising is that both the founders of the Soviet Union & the USA were both against direct/popular democracy. For example Alexander Hamilton said:

""That a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity."

John Witherspoon: " "Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage."

And of course Lenin's big thing was the Vanguard party & the role it needed to play in carrying out a revolution. Lenin believed (or pretended to) that the most advanced revolutionary sectors of the working class (Lenin & his mates) needed to led the revolution because ordinary people were basically too stupid & incapable of carrying out a revolution by themselves, although they were doing well before the Bolshevik coup, and had set up Factory Committees, Worker's Councils & created institutions of direct democracy, which were the first things that disappeared when the Left SRs won the first & last free Russian election & the Bolsheviks carried out their coup a few days later & quickly banned all the Socialist, Social Democrat, Labour, Liberal & Anarchist organizations and at the time people like Mattick, Rosa, Pankhurst, Gorter who were to the left of Leninism, criticized him for his opportunistic vanguardism which they viewed as a dangerous tyranny, that's why a 3rd Russian Revolution broke out in 1918 - 1923, and although they fought the White Army Lenin said describing the Kronstadt rebellion as "they are undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich, and Kolchak (White Army generals) combined"