People laughed at the 2006 movie Idiocracy. The movie follows Joe, whose life changes when he becomes the guinea pig for a secret hibernation experiment. When Joe finally wakes up after 500 years, he realizes that he is the smartest man on the planet.
The satirical film shone a light on modern society's anti-intellectualism and consumerism. It showed us a future dominated by idiocy, where dumb reigned supreme and world leaders were utter morons…
Fast forward 20 years, and it might no longer be considered a comedy but rather a prophetic vision and the perfect portrayal of societal decay, which is anything but amusing.
Many argue that Idiocracy arrived much sooner than any of us thought possible. There are disturbing parallels between what was portrayed in the satirical film and the reality we’re faced with today. “Are we living in the age of stupid? The era of the idiot?” asks the Guardian in an updated review of the 2006 dystopian comedy.
“The answer of course is yes,” it continues. “With examples of monstrous moronicism everywhere – from climate deniers to the ‘plandemic’ crowd who believe Covid-19 was cooked up in Bill Gates’ basement.”
Even those who acted in the film now wonder if it was more of a documentary than fiction. Terry Crews, who played the part of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, said in a 2017 interview that Idiocracy was “so prophetic in so many ways it actually scares people”.
One of the scenes shows Camacho firing live rounds from an automatic rifle to get people’s attention in the House of Representatives, and one can almost imagine something similar happening in today’s world, where presidents are going on manic rants and casually dropping F-bombs on social media.
“The jokes flow thick and fast and the premise, while a little one-note, never gets old. The underlying message of course is that humans ought to take such things as science, research and knowledge seriously, lest we create our own Idiocracy,” reads the Guardian’s review.
“Will we heed the warning? In the cacophony of modern existence, with so much stupidity flying at us from so many directions, it’s difficult to be optimistic,” it continues. “One day future humans may very well ask – provided they are still capable of forming a sentence – why come we no listen?”
Research has shown that humans are, to put it politely, not getting more intelligent but rather, quite the opposite. One University of Michigan study found that people across the board are finding it more difficult to concentrate and losing their ability to reason and problem-solve.
According to researchers, it’s a trend that appears to have started in the mid-2010s and got much worse during the Covid pandemic. Six Seconds, a global emotional intelligence community, released a grim report in 2024 that stated bluntly, “The data is clear: we’ve entered a global emotional recession.”
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The “State of the Heart: 2024 Report” found that global emotional intelligence scores have declined for 4 consecutive years. “From 2019 to 2023, global average emotional intelligence scores declined 5.54%; scores on every individual competency also dropped,” it notes.
The report also reveals that well-being scores declined for the five years between 2019 and 2023, dropping 5.3%.
“On average, people are more volatile; less likely to be able to navigate emotions. They’re less likely to feel connected to empathy, or a bigger sense of purpose,” said Six Seconds CEO Joshua Freedman. “They’re less likely to be able to accurately understand and label the feelings they’re experiencing – a crucial foundation for mental and emotional health.”
