The Death of Thinking OR ‘It’s got what plants crave!’

It doesn’t take a genius to see people are getting dumber.

At my job, I am tasked with being the main representative customers talk to prior to their trips.  I help plan itineraries, sell trips, and answer any questions they may have.  And more often than not, have to burst their bubbles.  Through years of working in this position, one phrase has risen above all others to show just how far we as humans have fallen.  More than ‘I’ve never done this before, what do I do?’  More exasperating than ‘I am going to make you repeat yourself four or more times on what I am to do because I was distracted by a bright shiny object.’  (Actually they say ‘Could you repeat that?’ several times, but it’s all in content.)  More tedious than ‘I booked for later, but can I go now?’  FAR less complimentary than ‘OH GREAT JEEBUS, you truly ARE the Personification of Greatness!!’  (OK, that one doesn’t happen, but I CAN see them wanting to say it in their eyes.)  No, the phrase I dread more than anything perfectly exemplifies what is truly wrong with humanity today:

‘Well, nobody told me!’

I could use this to go off in a myriad of ways and reasons why this phrase sets me on edge, but they all boil down to one thing:  not wanting to take responsibility for your actions.  People don’t want to take responsibility for themselves not thinking or of the consequences of this.  It is easier to abdicate responsibility to the all-powerful “Nobody’ instead of confronting the one in the mirror.  As an exercise, add ‘Well, nobody told ME-’ to the following phrases:

·         ‘-that I had to be here more than 30 seconds before departure!’

·         ‘-I need government identification to use a credit card!’

·         ‘-that I can’t strip naked in public!’

·         ‘-you have to pay for groceries!’

·         ‘-to not drink too much alcohol!’

Really, I could go all day with these examples, but I like to believe the 3 that read this are smart enough to get the point.

As I mentioned earlier, people want to give up their responsibilities of taking care of themselves and live blameless lives.  Be it to corporations, government, what have you, it’s easier to live in blameless bliss than accepting the consequences of your actions.  And when people give up responsibility for their actions, they also give up thinking.  Think about it:  if you give up all responsibility for what you do to someone else, no matter what you do you are taken care of.  Why worry about anything?  Why actually utilize your mind for anything?  Let all that difficult thinking be done by someone else.

And we slide closer and closer to a world of eating margarine and drinking Brawndo…

I wish I could end this posting with hopeful ideas to counteract our decent into Idiocracy, but I have no answers.  I will, on occasion, challenge people to defend their actions, to get them to flex the mental muscle, but there is nothing else I can really do.  I am sure I could man up and make a more concentrated effort to counteract this…

But nobody told me it would be this hard.