After much long and sometimes painful experience, I have arrived at the conclusion that everyone is stupid except me. I know what my reader may be thinking: Sure, I acknowledge that I’m stupid. But how do I know that you, Winn, are not also stupid? As the world’s foremost genius, I implore you to trust my superior judgment on this. It will be challenging for me to explain my brilliance to an audience as inept as that of The Carberry through only the narrow medium of language, but it is a challenge I am willing to undertake.

It was René Descartes who said, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am,” for my readers who don’t speak Italian.) Descartes’ point is that a rational person can doubt the existence of pretty much anything, but the only knowledge one can be certain of is the existence of one’s own mind. The very act of doubting proves that one’s mind is real because what else could be doing the doubting? In summary, the intuition of one’s mind is self-evident. 

I want to take Descartes’ argument one step further: “I think I am intelligent, therefore I am.” I know this for three reasons: 

Speaking of delusion, I will now discuss the minds of others. If, as Descartes says, my mind and its intelligence are the only things I can be certain of in this world, surely it is more than fair to doubt the intelligence of everyone else’s mind except my own. Actually, I’d say I’m giving the rest of humanity a sizable benefit of the doubt by even acknowledging their existence. Since I can’t be certain of anything happening outside my own mind, they could all easily be, let’s say, figments of my explosive imagination. But I choose to acknowledge their existence because, as an empiricist, I believe that what is observable by the five senses should be presumed real. However, while there is observable evidence for the physical existence of others, there is less for their mental abilities.

I am confronted with a striking lack of evidence that anyone else around me is thinking at all. When I observe my neighbors, there is no empirical way for me to discern what is happening inside their brains. Without evidence of thought, I believe that it is safest to assume that there is none taking place. (As the logical axiom goes, “Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.”) Further corroborating my theory is the demonstrated incompetence of everyone around me. Have you ever watched your favorite sports team lose a game and thought to yourself, “I could have made that catch!” I find myself thinking such thoughts on the daily. Whenever I see others pathetically struggling to make ends meet, it is obvious to my superior intellect that they are struggling because they are lazy and stupid, unlike me. Just get a job! Or in politics, with all the pressing problems humanity faces, it is torturous to watch our leaders pass consistently bad, shortsighted, even malicious policies when I know I would do so much better if I were in power (every time I say this, I am inevitably invited by the well-meaning idiots around me to simply vote as if anyone has time for that).

Humanity’s general stupidity is also obvious from my experience engaging in debates on the World Wide Web. When I listen to others, it is easy for me to identify weak reasoning because weak reasoning is definitionally any idea that runs contrary to my reasoning (because, again, I am my own metric of intelligence). I have observed myself to be a rational thinker, so any positions or conclusions I have arrived at are likewise rational. Therefore, anyone who espouses different positions than me must be lying, evil, brainwashed, or stupid (or all of these). In my experience, lying, evil, brainwashed, and/or stupid people are ubiquitous.

This is true not only in the present but also throughout history. Our history books are chock full of stupid people who make consistently dumb choices for no discernible reason. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Salem Witch Trials, gallons of innocent blood have been shed in the name of religions that are mere superstitions. Notwithstanding, the fallacious distortion of reason and science has surely also wreaked mass destruction, from the ravages of communism to the American eugenics movement. It seems that everyone who has existed before me has been motivated by superstition, emotion, and false ideology. It is truly humbling to be the first rational thinker in human history.

Other disasters of history have been the result of profound ignorance. Why did the people of Europe in 1348 not simply wash their hands? Why did Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain not oppose Hitler’s annexation of Austria? If he had only read until page 247 of the AP European History textbook, he would have discovered that such appeasement policies would only empower Hitler to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1939. The evidence is incontrovertible that Chamberlain (and everyone else to exist before me) must have been less intelligent than me.

Further, these history books (evidently also written by fools) expect me to be impressed with the occasional glimmer of mediocre insight. Take Newton, who is described as some kind of groundbreaking visionary. Sure, the laws of gravity are impressive, but please—I’ve known about gravity since I was six. Or take the so-called “Hero of Science,” Copernicus, who spent his entire academic life attaining the knowledge that I learned from watching a Nova documentary. 

All this incompetence is perpetuated by our “education” system, which indoctrinates children in stupidity. Indoctrination, of course, is when children are taught something I don’t agree with. Rather, they should be taught things that I do agree with, which would be the opposite of indoctrination. I have never educated a child myself, but I can’t imagine it would be too difficult to manage. 

I could list further examples, but I now digress, moving on to a discussion of suggested solutions, which my editor tells me readers will expect at the end of this type of essay. What can be done about the state of society? I could reveal myself to the world as humanity’s foremost genius, perhaps run for president, but the inevitable jealousy of my pseudointellectual opponents would surely punish my attempts to do good. Ruling the world would also demand great effort, costs which I fear would not outweigh the meager reward of halfhearted praise from an ungrateful world. Today, I declare that I embrace inaction, resentment, and apathy. The world does not deserve me, so I have decided to simply wait for the world to come crawling back to me for help when it inevitably recognizes my superior intellect. In the meantime, I will content myself by drinking beer in my sweatpants all day. I encourage my readers to follow in my footsteps by criticizing everyone and refusing to vote.