Kakistocrats

Do you ever get the feeling that our age is one

In which the phrase, “Any fool can do this!”

Has been construed as a sort of challenge, motto, or even

Imperative, as in “Look, I’m a fool, and I’m doing it right now. So can you!”

Running households, businesses, means of communication, negotiation, even navigation

Entire states, provinces, territories—entire nations

The world, simple and complex, small and galactically huge

Run by fools: venal, ignorant, selfish, greedy, proud, arrogant, vain, fools

With shiny toys that make them seem wise

If you are wise, you are not proud. You cannot be. You know how vast your ignorance is compared to your knowledge. You know how little you can really do without the help of other humans, most of whom work harder than you do for a tiny fraction of your fortune.

You can’t do it without the other humans, but you do not act like you know it.

But the current crowd goes mad for the likes of you!

Perhaps it’s because you’ve helped to nurture a culture that makes every story about “me”

Such that I can imagine being the fool running things and making a killing

Anything this fool does, I could do, if I wished to exert myself

Whatever the fool gets away with, I can get away with

Whatever brings worship and admiration to the fool

Even if it ought to bring shame and obloquy

Can redound to my credit one day

A culture that loves ignorant, proud, greedy mediocrity

Or even technically proficient, vulgar madness

Yields heroes and leaders like this

Who show that vice and virtue are meaningless categories

Wealth and power are our measures of all things

And when any fool thinks he can get them

Maximal manifestations of them

Implausibly serious

We can stop trying to become better humans

And just have fun getting as much as we can

In fact, if we can get enough, even disease and aging and death

Might become meaningless categories too

Some of these machines are dead clever

We may not have to think at all, soon enough

Writing, reading, getting knowledge

Making things up that are worth thinking about

It’s exhausting and tedious work

Let the machines do it

As long as I get the gist

And the credit

Who cares?

Fools don’t care

We ought to care

If we cease to do so

The fools will swamp those who care about being better humans

They’re gaining on us

Stop letting them get away with it

Do you want, vicariously or in your own, peculiar life

To be the fool?

The fool amuses the serious, virtuous humans for a while

And then they get back to work

An occasional, wise fool comes along

But really is not the fool to begin with, you know?

Anyway, back to work go the serious people

Seeking to improve themselves and the world

We clean up real nice, we humans

When we care about keeping it together

Just for the sake of our own dignity

As human beings

Occasionally foolish, but capable of dazzling feats

When we apply ourselves

And stop the foolishness

We can become and create so much

Just look at the great and terrible characters we have been

And imagine those, good and beautiful

We could become