Be Stupid

You may have seen the 2010 Diesel advertising campaign somewhere around town, on a billboard, in a store and or in some other instantiation. It all revolves around "Being Stupid." Among its many mantras include "Smart Critiques. Stupid Creates," "Smart May Have the Answers, But Stupid Has All the Interesting Questions," "Smart Has the Plans, Stupid Has the Stories," "Smart Listens to the Head. Stupid Listens to the Heart," "Smart Says No. Stupid Says Yes," "Stupid is Trial and Error. Mostly Error," "Smart Had One Good Idea and That Idea Was Stupid," "If We Didn't Have Stupid Thoughts We'd Have No Thoughts at All," "Only the Truly Stupid Can Be Truly Brilliant" and "Smart May Have the Brains But Stupid Has the Balls." Usually it is a series of billboards that end with the "We're With Stupid." (http://www.creativeadawards.com/diesel-be-stupid-advertising-campaign)

While the ad has a certain resonance, attempting to argue for the freedom of the human spirit, creativity and a certain joi d'vivre, it also captures one of the deepest problems in America today. Essentially, do we really need advertisers to implore Americans to be stupid? Aren't we succeeding on that score without the necessity of reinforcement? A troubling trend that has developed is a firmly entrenched belief that actually thinking, critiquing, being creative outside the largely delimited scope of consumer culture and thinking outside the business language of "thinking outside the box" may actually lead to something truly radica or innovative. Wrapped around a relatively cynical veneer is the continued triumph of the conservative idea that certain knowledge is dangerous, that elites are those that are actually educated and question conventional wisdom and that accepting things as they are is a more pragmatic and realistic approach to life. This is fortified by a ahistoricity that demands short term and long term amnesia. They thus accept American exceptionalist ideology, fully believe that corporations and the market are somehow de facto superior to the government (even in the midst of the financial crisis), that the poor and minorities are to blame for their own situation (even if they work 60 hours a week) and that teachers somehow define all that is wrong with education. A deeper problem appears to revolve around a certain laziness of thinking across the political spectrum. I find many liberals as bad as conservatives at accepting party or ideological orthodoxy without any real thought or critique. The immanent critique of critical theory or perpetual deconstruction of Derrida seems like the only way to get out of the current intellectual malaise, but one wonders whether people have the will or training to actually inspect their own ideas with any rigor. In fact, schools seem to be teaching students the opposite most of the time these days (under the auspices of passing tests and keeping knowledge "neutra").

A new poll reinforces our adherence to stupidity, or maybe just not thinking at all. Apparently one in five Americans now believe that Obama is a muslim: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081806913.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzhead. Um, he isn't! And this follows a series of misperceptions of the public in recent years, from a belief that Saddam Hussein planned 911, to the idea that it was Iraqis on the planes, that there were weapons of mass destruction there, that we later actually found them and that our mission in Iraq was to spread democracy once the other reasons proved false.