Why do we Celebrate Stupidity?

We all have our moments where we shake our heads at ourselves. But you wouldn't want to put me on TV, and I certainly wouldn't want to go.

But what is it about blatant ignorance that we find so appealing? Why do we pay money so that we can watch people displaying their ignorance of everything? Is it so we can point and laugh? Is it so that we can feel better about ourselves; so we can go "Well, at least I'm not as thick as Jade Goody¹".

When we export this drivel, do they get the joke, or do they just take it as symptomatic of the nation? Judging by the reaction to moronic sledging of Shilpa Shetty in CBB4, they think we're all mindless, bigoted cretins. And who can blame them? We're making them pay to watch programmes where we endorse their opinions.

Is the prevalence of the ignorant celebrity the result of failing education? The ignorance displayed by a lot of celebs, younger, more naiive ones primarily, can only be down to poor education, at school and/or at home. It is strange that it has taken Celebrity Big Brother to show up this racist undertone, where normal Big Brother has never had this issue. It would be a pleasing and convenient truth if celebrities were more ignorant as a rule.

Behind every celebrity is an agent who takes a percentage. I'm sure the main reason we have to put up with these dolts are agents saying "Go on, do Celebrity Big Wife Swap Dance Idol, it'll do wonders for your career!". Being bears of little brain who find big words scary, they display their ignorance in private one last time and agree, before having it broadcast to the world in a prime-time display of conspicuous stupidty.

Beyond the car-crash element, I've never really seen the point of Big Brother. But one could argue that it holds a mirror to society, allowing us to see ourselves as others see us. I bet that is what the producers keep telling themselves; you know, in between counting the cash from the millions of drivelling fools (of which I am occasionally one) who pay to press their noses against the glass of the Endemol Stationary Freak Show.

I'm with the old, dead guys when it comes to knowledge, or its lack. "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance" - Socrates; "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein.

Even for those of us for whom knowledge is something to be persued, rather than evaded, it is an effort to avoid ignorance. As the breadth of human knowledge expands, individual grasp of that knowledge cannot keep up, or it lags behind at some percentage of the whole. Older, less applicable knowledge is "aged" out, while it is replaced by newer knowledge. Logically, the breadth of knowledge at an individual level is reasonably constant, generation on generation, but the breadth of all knowledge continues to rise.

So, sadly, we're probably all more ignorant than our parents. But please, in the name of all those who crave wisdom over celebrity, don't go on telly and prove me right.

¹Poster Child for Stupid. On the Wikipedia Page for Ignorant Cretinous Moron, she ranks above Dubya . I would make her the Queen of stupid people, only she would think it was a good thing. And she would bestow her wisdom upon them and, lo,they would lap that shit right up and ask for more. Hell, that's where we are right now...