A "dystopian" dark humor film with a "dysgenics" theme, Idiocracy (2006) paints a picture of America's society in 2505 - piles of Trash, dense advertising, mythical technology, and stupid humans are the main codes that make up this picture.
On the one hand, as a reflection and critique of evolutionism, the film takes the constitutive codes of "consumerism", "commercialism" and "anti-intellectualism" to the extreme. Exaggeration, on this basis formed a not entirely new "Brave New World". The chaotic, filthy world depicted in this film may look very different from the "perfect" utopias of divine totalitarian rule by Huxley, Zamyatin, and George Orwell, but it is still Parody, exaggeration and vision of our current society.
On the other hand, the direct source of the theme reflected in this film is the debate on "fertility and intelligence". William Shockley , who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956, said: "The future population is threatened because people with low IQs will have more children than people with high IQs"[ 1], however his controversial assertion was confirmed at the beginning of this century that "low IQ families are more likely to have more children" [2]. The Flynn effect, which keeps people hopeful, believes that intelligence will continue to grow, and it is also impacted. The actual effect of the Flynn effect is gradually diminishing, and it may be impossible to find this in developed countries in the future. One effect [3]. In the late 20th century, novels with such themes entered the field of American literature and art, and some writers began to care about the future development of society, population and education. American writer David E. Comings wrote on the theme of "degeneration". "The Gene Bomb" ( The Gene Bomb , 1966), Cyril M. Kornbluth also wrote " The Marching Morons " ( 1975) based on the same theme. The stupid state of people in the future reflected in "The Evolution of Stupid" is exactly the same as the two novels in 1966 and 1975. In particular, the hero (Joe) repeatedly emphasized to the heroine (Rita) that when he goes back to the past, he must insist on drawing to influence the people around him, telling everyone to insist on reading, and after he became the president of the United States, he told the TV speech. People: Reading is not stupid, these bridges are imitations of the former, and reflections and responses to the Flynn effect.
However, the focus on grand themes does not mask its own flaws. We have to suspect that behind the splendid colors and absurd plots, it is very likely that there is a strong theory of elite class supremacy and a more fundamental theory of scientific supremacy. Because the elites have a better grasp of the form of scientific discourse than the masses, they unconsciously take on the color of absolute authority like religious divinity. Does mastering science mean mastering truth? Feyerabend once pointed out: "The superiority of science is assumed and not demonstrated" [4]. When the modern state replaces the classical monarchy, science also replaces religion as the new unquestionable dogmatic discourse. Weber said in "Scholarly Industry": "There is no more mysterious and incalculable force at work, and people can master everything through calculation", but whether "science" as a methodology can be equivalent to What about absolute truth? When we "disenchant" the world, do we also need to "disenchant" "science" itself? In "Fool's Evolution," superstitions about science are projections of our attitude toward science. Perhaps the main reason for the continuous decline in the number of elites and the continuous decline of human intelligence quotient is the superstition of the elites themselves on "science".
[1] William Shockley, Roger Pearson: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems Scott-Townsend Publishers.
[2] Rodgers, Joseph Lee; Cleveland, H. Harrington; den Oord, Edwin; Rowe (2000). "Resolving the debate over birth order, family size, and intelligence". American Psychologist. 55 (6): 599–612 .
[3] Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2006). IQ and Global Inequality. Washington Summit Publishers: Augusta, GA.
[4] [America] Paul Feyerabend: "Science in a Free Society", translated by Lan Zheng, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1990, p. 75.
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