The Stupidity Olympics

Panta Rhei You really have to make an effort to be this stupid, to be this stupefied. I am of course talking about the plague of phone-starers I encounter whilst out cycling. It seems that people just cannot leave this thing alone, that they are indeed addicted to this device and what it does to their brains. And this may well be the crux of the matter: that phone-staring as a form of stupefaction and thus stopping (of the natural flow of brain) is actually a pernicious and extremely addictive drug. Indeed, the whole point of a drug is to mesmerize and 'stop' that which has been causing you pain or anguish. As far as this is concerned the modern internetted phone is to the mind what the car is to the body. Where the car prevents the heart from engaging and the body from bodying, the phone prevents the mind from engaging (as undistracted conscious awareness) and from minding. The mind, like the stretchered body, thus deteriorates as it is mesmerized and carried by others. It is like this that mindlessness and dementia soon become par for the course. Phone-staring however is not the only stopping-stupefying device around. Society, under capitalism, is replete with stopping devices and behaviours that halt your conscious awareness and thus mesmerize. Sitting in front of a TV for example is a great example of stopping and being stupefied simultaneously. Car-drivers need only look at a red-light to realise how much they have compromised the natural flow of things. Meat-eaters, similarly, are stopped through indulgence (and the mesmerism of 'taste') if not the actual meat itself which plays havoc with the brain, the digestive system and the body in general. Then we have the mesmerism of fashion and its ability to stop the aboriginal self in its tracks, not to mention the mesmerism of adverts, movies, music, and western culture in general. So, we're up against it in a society and economic model that seeks to get you to consume (the non-essential) through mesmerising you first. This is what mesmerism is, essentially: a form of stopping (of the flow of conscious awareness) by highlighting a peculiar and particular 'object', and thus the stupefaction of mind. It is here, in this gap between Being, where stupidity manifests itself.