Is it possible to create a nation of stupid people? I don’t think this is an easy task. You can train people to do things but training people to be stupid is quite a remarkable call. The more formidable task is to educate them, give them the best tertiary education, let them think they are smart, but actually stupid without knowing it? Now that is really something isn’t it?
In communist, totalitarian or authoritarian countries, I think the task is so much easier. Just clamp down on the news and information and feed them with all the information that the state would want them to see and hear. Keep repeating that their lives are the best in the world, everything is fine, and the rest of the world are suffering, in poverty, with bad govt, and no dear leaders to help them. After a few generations of not knowing what is happening to the outside world and only seeing a world within, the people will be convinced that they are living in paradise.
Now, how can this situation be recreated in a cosmopolitan and open democratic country? Can it happen, that people living in a democracy, cosmopolitan, well travelled and well informed, and stupid at the same time? Really, it is impossible to do so. Such well educated and informed people will not be gagged, will not be fooled, will not allow to be blinkered. Any attempt to do so will be met with violent protest, unless they are really stupid.
A stupid people will elect a govt to be their masters, to control them, manage their lives, squeeze every cent from them, and tell them it is for their own good. And only a stupid people will believe such things without questioning and live happily ever after, and keep going to the poll to elect the same people to be their masters, to control them, to threaten them, to sue them, to keep them in fear, to keep their money from them, year after year.
It will be one of the major wonders of civilization, an achievement no one has ever done in human history. I am still wondering if it is possible, to train or create a nation of stupid people.
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com