16 IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE OPENING SCENE OF IDIOCRACY

From Return of Kings:

As stupid as this movie seems to be on the surface, these 180 seconds are chock full of wisdom that is worth articulating:

1. IQ matters

Your IQ determines far more about how your life turns out than we’re comfortable admitting, for better or for worse. Smart people, thinking about their goals and ambitions, strategizing and implementing their goals, can plan for a long-term future that, well, idiots won’t be able to do because they just lack the capacity to pass the marshmallow test.

2. …But an IQ that is too high can be a curse

But for all the PhDs and classy lifestyle of the intellectual couple, they overthink rather than act and ultimately descend into misery and early death because their life is barren, barren in the most literal sense of the word (having no kids) as well as in the metaphorical senses as well: empty and devoid of meaning. That’s because…

3. Having children matters more

Without children, not only is your genetic lineage dead but civilization dies. The future belongs to he who shows up—and those without kids are not even showing up. When the idiots are the only ones who show up, they are the ones who then win, by definition.

4. Life’s trade-offs aren’t obvious

The intellectual couple, for all their cumulative IQ points and ability to work hard to focus on the future, just didn’t realize that by postponing having children to earn more money and get more education they were condemning themselves to not have children at all. If life’s long-term trade-offs were obvious, there would be many more deeply moral millionaires.

5. Values matter

How come the high IQ couple didn’t realize the importance of having kids? Because values matter. They had a value system that prioritized education and money over children. Had their value system put children front and center, they wouldn’t have made that trade-off. The intellectual couple admits this directly when the wife says “There’s no way we could have a child now, not with the market the way it is. It just wouldn’t make sense.” They are letting the stock market determine if and when they have kids.

6. You can afford more than you think you can

The intellectual couple thought they couldn’t afford kids when the idiot couple, with substantially less money, not only had the kids, but they’re the ones who have descendants rather than disappearing from history. Think of your great-great-grandparents, who were surely very poor (well, at least 1 of your 16 was), and yet they were able to raise your great-grandparents so you could exist.

7. Don’t postpone what’s important

One of the most timeless messages of all classic traditions and religions is the brevity of life and, as a result, the importance of not putting off what is important to do. You think there’s always another tomorrow, and there always is… until there isn’t.

8. Time passes faster than you think

Another piece of classic wisdom is tempus fugit, “time flies” (although in the original Latin it is “time flees,” a great image: time escaping like she is a bandit). The intellectual couple got old and the man died before they even realized it. They thought they had decades left when they just didn’t.

9. Passive aggressiveness is a losing strategy

The intellectual wife, whose husband dies while masturbating, was consistently passive aggressive with her husband once the going got tough. When she says “Well, we’ve finally decided to have kids, and I’m not pointing fingers, but…” that is the sort of bitchiness that no man wants to put up with. And probably no woman, either. It’s not a coincidence that that woman ends up alone, without even children to comfort her in her final years.

10. Indeed, bitchy women literally kill their husbands

Not only did the intellectual man die before reproducing, but the wife had pressured him to agree to artificial insemination and he died while masturbating for that very purpose. So it was the wife’s pressure that directly lead to his death. As Ecclesiastes, that bottomless fountain of wisdom, pointed out: a bitchy woman is worse than death; in its original words (7:26): “I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets.”

11. Even after failing in every aspect of life, the woman still thinks she’s worthy of a great man

The high IQ woman is unable to realize how profoundly unattractive she is and that she missed the boat. She is cannot admit to herself the reality of her situation. She even says “…just as soon as the right guy comes along.” She’s a 50 year old woman sounding like a teenager, capturing a key truth that no matter how educated they are, women are still that naive, unrealistic little girl inside. Too many women never develop realistic expectations about life or about men.

12. Man is starting to conquer evolution, and this has dire consequences

Survival of the fittest has for all of human history (in fact, pre-human history) slowly weeded out those who would fail at life. But modern technology is quickly putting a halt to this, letting those who would not have been able to survive in an earlier era thrive.

The narrator of this opening scene makes the argument very explicitly: “Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater number than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits.”

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.