How to Smarten Up

Everything is very stupid right now. Like, historically idiotic. Fighting back is easier and more enjoyable than you might think.

- By Dave Holmes

WE ARE LIVING THROUGH THE DUMBEST possible times. We are a nation of adults who know which Harry Potter dormitory we'd be sorted into. We are a country whose newspapers regularly use the phrase “claps back” in breaking-news headlines, whose Department of Homeland Security said “womp womp” in official correspondence, whose finest actresses are calling each other things like “greedy little pig bottom” on Ryan Murphy’s All’s Fair. It is dangerously stupid out there. Do you want to know how I know it's bad? I know it's bad because I know it's bad, and I'm one of the five dumbest people I've ever met.

It was not always this way. I am old enough to remember when George H. W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle, corrected a child's spelling test, marking the child wrong because he had spelled potato without a silent e at the end. I remember it ruining his credibility, derailing his political ambitions, maybe even causing him up to 30 consecutive seconds of embarrassment. In 2025, Quayle would just insist he was right, half the country would agree, the dictionary would be added to the banned-books list, and the kid would have to introduce him at CPAC.

We are using our brains less than ever, avoiding real-life interaction even more. Intellectually, we are now less than the sum of our parts, and we know it, and we're desperate for answers, which is how a Jordan Peterson can build an empire on “make your bed.”

If we’re going to make it to whatever awaits us on the other side of this, we’re going to have to defend what's left of our brain cells. Allow me to give you a few tips to bring some spark back into your cerebrum and maybe even start the process of re-ensmartenizing this stupid world.

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