Gradations of madness, low intelligence, and plain stupidity are the unfortunate outcomes of forty years of stoking the fires of mediocrity here in America. Instead of forming the foundation of strength found in strong education, our country, for reasons unbeknownst to me, has gleefully accepted banality over the extraordinary.

Scholars and people of privilege isolated from the masses would likely disagree with my assessment, as would the typical person unaware of their own potential or lack thereof, but who among us is listening? Who goes out to explore the various socioeconomic corners of our country? I have, and I listen. From the television to the coffee shop and from the airplane to the national park I have watched and been witness to the conversation and behaviors of those around me.

Call me delusional, but I yearn for the general population to ascend to a higher degree of curiosity, verbal acuity, and discernment. “Why do you care?” is how this concern is most often met by others. Why can’t I just accept people for who they are is something I’ve been asked countless times. My answer hovers around the fear coursing through my mind that these aberrations are, to some degree, a part of what is normalized in our society.

If the common person accepts that they needn’t continuously improve and add to their knowledge over the course of their lives, they set a poor example to others in their communities and their families. Without striving for betterment, they merely exist, except they often don’t do so silently. Many will lament what they sense they are being denied and that others are somehow gaining easy access to the things, wealth, and experiences they themselves desire.

Is my knowledge or perception that of someone on a pedestal, and is my concern an exercise in futility? I suppose I should answer both with a yes, as the person who believes I’m talking down at them would see me as arrogant, trying to place myself above others. For the second half of the question, I see the likes of Noam Chomsky atop his bully pulpit and must accept that I will never have the audience reach he has achieved. Even if I were to gain greater readership, it would probably be for naught, though, since I fail to see a large impact from Chomsky and other intellectuals who have been able to push back on the crush of idiocy charging forward.

To contradict my answer in the previous paragraph, I have to offer up a qualified no as my true answer. I come from a blue-collar family, dropped out of high school, and was an enlisted soldier in the military. If I’m on a pedestal, it wasn’t conveyed to me by formal education or privilege in society. I know what my demands are of myself and would hope that my fellow citizens were able to strive for at least my humble station in life. As for the exercise in futility, while I don’t have thousands or millions of readers, I do feel that if even one other person were to glean something of benefit from my musings, then I have contributed a thing of value. I’ve known of people who’ve taken other’s lives and seen their suffering with shame; I, on the other hand, will never have to face shame for wishing others to do better than myself.

Polarization, using categorization that amounts to name-calling or as a bludgeoning affront to someone’s intelligence, has become our preferred and maybe most sophisticated current means of engaging in a dialectic.

Just that one sentence is longer than your average tweet and exceeds 85% of the U.S. population’s ability to decipher it.

From our political leadership to many in the popular media, we are pandering to our worst tendencies and apparently have given up on trying to elevate our society. While we ask for increased skills, we are failing to nurture a dialog beyond the utterly inane.

Take this old tweet from our president: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!”

This missive can be understood by the majority of those considered functionally illiterate as their reading comprehension level is that of a 4^th grader, while my first sentence required 19 years of education (according to various readability tests). This is not an exercise in writing obtusely for the sake of lording my version of complexity over anyone. The larger point is that if you are over 30 years old and are relating to the words of 10-year-olds and cannot comprehend the words of a 55-year-old high school dropout, then maybe the problem is not your perception of me being obtuse or arrogant but that you have neglected the responsibility to yourself.

Why should I feel so alone in my knowledge? Is it a fringe belief system that hinges on delusions and conspiracy theories? No, while I find some of those entertaining, they are mere fodder for distraction that needs to remain where they emerged from: on the fringe.

On the contrary, I’m in love with history, philosophy, and sociology, the glue of culture. From out of the sciences we learn of the building blocks of the very nature of the universe to the emergent organic beings we are.

Meshed together, we form a society that is disparate and grossly unequal. Our shared existence is fracturing as we seem intent on stratifying those who might vaguely understand things from those who are oblivious though self-righteousness while they falsely believe they are the true holders of knowledge.

Those who claim the power of knowledge but are relying on politics to sway a corruptible underclass into becoming their mob are betraying the very values that are supposed to be indicative of their intellect: professional education and proclaimed religious affiliation.

We are not lifting up the masses; we are merely making their poverty comfortable. Poverty is not only about the goods or capital one possesses or fails to attain, but it is also about the intellectual tools that help form decision-making rigor, which leads to better life choices.

I cannot claim to have a professional university education; I dropped out of high school. I cannot be certain that drug use hasn’t fogged my perception. So, what knowledge I might have can easily be dismissed as a perfunctory superficial education that was acquired willy-nilly. All the same, I have to scratch my head in disbelief at what we, as a citizenry allow to pass as being credible from our leadership and even from one another.

Basic logic is lost in hyperbole and an attention span dictated by threes. Some thirty years ago, my idea was as follows: large issues could remain in the public’s mind for upwards of three months, such as political issues, serial killers, and freedom movements such as apartheid. The next block was three-day attention, and it pertained to movies, sports, and larger local issues. Finally, there was the three-hour attention that might see people talking about a TV show, a celebrity drama, or a local sporting event at the high school.

Today, I have to revise this to three hours, three minutes, and three seconds. While it could be argued that a relatively recent event, such as the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, spent more than three hours in the news cycle, I’m suggesting that the majority of people didn’t spend even three hours in consideration of or contemplating the impact of the process that was unfolding. On the contrary, I’d suggest that the average person only needed three seconds to make up their mind. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything that can raise the ire of a person enough to get them engaged for more than about a few minutes.

There’s an inherent problem here in that none of us will ever know anything of any value if we can only ever afford three seconds of decision-making after three minutes of information gathering. We cannot learn languages in three minutes, three hours, three days, or even three weeks. To that end, we are collectively being manipulated by broadcast and social media-driven political establishments that are able to distract the uneducated with a superfluous dusting of titillating fragments that delude their adherents into believing they are well-informed.

Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Message, and Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death all foresaw the dangers of our passivity but were powerless to curb a population bent on self-destruction and having already turned away from the written word. Now, amplify their prognostications by taking the internet and reducing the dialog to six-second videos found in what became known as vines and speech that is reduced to a tweet, and the recipe for stupefaction is well in place.

Let’s return to my opening statement: why do I feel so alone in my knowledge? At any given moment in my day, I cannot be surrounded by people who care or are able to consider ideas that their intransigence isn’t able to engage. Their memes, which have become their mentors, fit nicely for a minute or two and only work to reinforce their sense of certainty that plays to their continued ignorance, masquerading as a kind of knowledge but one without depth.

I don’t necessarily see a refuge where I can turn to be in a community that cherishes or at least respects the age of knowledge that is quickly fading if it’s not already dead. Populism easily escalates into nationalism, and this is especially so when able to lob these idiocies on a disenfranchised, poorly educated populace, which is exactly what we’ve cultivated for the past 40 years.

Maybe the better question for myself should be, why have I been cursed with this sense of awareness that impinges on my well-being?

What are you doing to cultivate your potential? How often do you practice literacy? When was the last time you tried something that wasn’t necessarily physically demanding but had you questioning if your mind was up to the task?

Every day, I ask myself why it appears that so many are comfortable in lazy banalities. What’s wrong with digging into our minds whose currency and lifeblood are words? Our imaginations have become muscles atrophied through the neglect brought by existential angst. Don’t worry about those things outside yourself; dig into the things within that are vast landscapes awaiting your exploration.

Where do you begin such an enormous task? Maybe right there on your smartphone. Go ahead and ask it to tell you about the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory or lookup Burmese Laphet Salad. Stop listening to your favorite songs and tune in to some music you think you hate. Don’t make it easy. Go way out of your comfort zone and try some Merzbow. You could make a commitment to watch an entire Bollywood film that would certainly feature at least half a dozen hit songs, which would give you some idea of the music nearly 2 billion people on earth enjoy.

Other avenues await you, such as recording some video on that phone, installing Adobe’s Creative Cloud of applications on a computer, and learning video editing and storytelling. Or open up Photoshop to learn that tool. Indesign is another one of Adobe’s tools, and with it, you can collect your thoughts and photos and publish your own book.

Video, photography, and writing are not your cup of tea. Grab a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and start watching tutorials on how to make music. Download some free VSTs (instruments and effects) and just playmaking sounds until you develop some skills.

Like drawing or sculpting as a kid? Krita for drawing is free, and Blender offers sculpting as part of their suite of 3D tools and it too is free.

Feel like you already have too much screen time with your connected devices? Turn off the TV and reclaim that time so you can set your attention to productivity tools that actually reflect who you are instead of passively continuing the diet of useless nonsense. Pick up a bunch of knitting needles and make a pair of socks, or buy some clay and sculpt a blob of nothing in particular.

Still not ready for challenging your brain with learning stuff you “think” is too hard? Go to a museum, a concert of music you typically don’t listen to, a play, the opera, or go volunteer at a hospice, halfway house, or other services that help your community.

The thing is that you have to break out of your routine because your routine is potential already realized. You own the repetition of fully knowing how you do the same thing day in and day out; there is no surprise or growth with standing in place. To get somewhere, you must take a step forward. Do not take steps backward or trace the ones you’ve already walked in; where do you think they’ll get you?

In effect, you must walk on the hot coals of discomfort and over the edge of certainty. Only through the continued effort of exploring where you might fail to enjoy the chore or fail to master something will you achieve the skills you need to wear down the calluses of your own stubbornness against change.

Nothing is perfect. The conversations are about survival, dreams, religion, education, and politics. There are the meth-addicted here, plasma donors, students, and people trying to save their financial footing. I’m on the edge of an area known as “The Square,” which has the reputation of being a high-crime, impoverished corner of Phoenix, Arizona.

A Tesla leaves the drive-through as a couple pushing two shopping carts straggle by, one drawn by the brand and the other by toilets and ice water. A drug deal has been going on where a woman left her van to sit in another car before exiting to rejoin the person in the van who’s waiting on her. But the business is not done as she stumbles back to the black car. This time, they drive to another spot in the parking lot; maybe they think they won’t appear so obvious that way. The guy in the van works his pimples while the girl is likely hand-jobbing her dealer to make up for the shortage of shekels the couple has access to. Having probably run out of zits worth milking, the van driver has taken to compulsively picking his nits; he’s almost frantic in his determination.

The police have shown up, and after a second unit joins the first an officer approaches the car. The van driver remains cool, and after only a few minutes, the policemen leave, and the couple continues. Shortly after that, the party breaks up, with the woman going back to the van and everyone going their own way.

Some guy at a nearby table finally emerges from an extended stay in the bathroom where he’d gone nearly 30 minutes ago. He doesn’t look like a junkie, so I’m left thinking he’s incredibly constipated. Less than two minutes out, and he’s gone back for round two; I listen for the telltale signs of explosive diarrhea.

There’s a near-constant amount of foot traffic from the blood plasma donation center in this parking lot, but they walk on by instead of stopping in today. Within this coffee shop, there’s a diversity that’s missing from yesterday’s location. People from various countries, including China, Mexico, and/or other points in Central America, India, and Pakistan, black, white, young, old, thin, and obese are all represented. On the other hand, most of yesterday’s clientele were between 35 and 65,  of average weight, and predominantly, maybe even exclusively, white.

Are we segregated? In many ways, we are, but it’s not necessarily forced by cultural convention but by class and opportunity that are silently imposed. America favors a homogeneous structure and does its best to tamp down diversity. While America may be the leader on some fronts regarding personal freedoms, there is an undercurrent of intolerance even from those that often fain openness and inclusivity.

Against this backdrop of reality, we are shown an impossible dream of happiness through endless happy consumption where we are all just a latte and 64-inch TV away from nirvana. The truth, on the other hand, is something more akin to accepting your series of personal failures and perceived opportunities that proved to be dead ends. At the end of the day, far too many will try to assuage their pain using the crutches of food, drugs, alcohol, pets, and various other surrogates on their path to futility.

Fortunately for the masses, there isn’t much thinking that goes along with the grind. There may be a general dissatisfaction, but it’s misfocused on blaming some mysterious “other.” Accountability for one’s own intellectual progress is myopic at best, which blinds people to understanding their own complacency for how this state of affairs has come to be our status quo. There is no red pill, and there is no blue pill in a world where one’s trajectory has too much momentum towards mediocrity.

Everything is perfect. The talk is about business, construction, golf, travel, and stocks. There are no junkies here, no homeless people getting free ice water, the bathrooms do not have coded door locks. The world eight miles from here is in a parallel universe, for while the product and brand are the same, the clientele may as well be from an alien planet.

Here are the doctors, lawyers, managers, engineers, executives, travelers, and tech workers, while over there are laborers, students, alcoholics, the impoverished, and occasionally those from the former list who are lured in by the brand, unaware that only the name and product is the same. In between is the universe of the majority who, should they drop into either of these locations, won’t have time to sit there and busy themselves with these differences. I, on the other hand, have the daily luxury of choosing a coffee shop where I can go write without too many distractions.

Obviously, though, I’m a magnet for distraction, on the hunt for something to write about. Since I was an early teen, when I’d secretly spirit myself away on public transit for the hour-long bus ride to downtown Los Angeles, where I could spy every flavor of aberrant behavior and ailment I’d never considered, I was looking to witness the extents of society. Forty-two years later, I’m able to drive myself to the location of my choosing and I have to admit this has grown old as the cast of characters now easily fit in their box of stereotypes. Each plays their role and works hard to ensure they don’t deviate from the behaviors that ensure their brand of conformity fits tightly.

This reminds me of why I travel: it is in order to escape the predictability of people. True that the people out on these travels are often as prone to the same mediocrity and banality that I see in the city, but there are nature and history to take the edge off my antipathy.

Maybe this has you asking, “Hey John, is that a hint of animosity I hear?” I’ve met the rare person who has a legitimacy of character where you sense they are not playing a role but are genuinely comfortable in their skin. On the other hand, there are the actors who are trying to be a parent, a boss, a friend, someone with street cred, a sophisticate, a muscleman, a proper lady, and the list goes on, even though their facades are thin to the point of transparency. I hear you thinking out loud, “Wow, who gave you the superpower to look into the souls of humanity?” Experience and a lot of time out looking and listening to people have helped, but make no mistake; I’m been wrong plenty of times.

Why does it matter? My sense of the tribe extends far beyond me and those in my immediate vicinity. There is much to learn from those who have the knowledge of things that are interesting. I’ve always loved the stories of exploration and invention and so I keep an ear close to the ground for those occasions when I can meet an adventurer of life. This routine has brought me into contact with many a creative person where others’ timidity might not have allowed a conversation to develop.

Is there a downside? My network is elusive and mostly ephemeral. I drop into it while others skirt on the edge before jettisoning off in new directions. This transitory nature has had the effect of reminding me that I’m probably a nomad by nature. When the economic situation demands that I cannot uproot everything in order to head out on a new exploration, these constant new encounters help simulate the condition where one is wandering the earth and discovering new places and personalities.

So, is everything perfect? Well, that depends on who and what I listen to and what I’m witnessing. Writing among the depraved and impoverished can bring a kind of hostility and sadness due to the extent of how people have not cared for themselves, while at other times, I revel in the absurdity. Sitting among the well-to-do can bludgeon me as I witness the over-exaggeration of their own self-worth while they play with their own grandiose sense of importance. Truth is, though, that I need both extremes and everything in the middle, as my curiosity revolves around the entire human condition and the full spectrum of who we people of Earth are at this tiny moment in the history of our species. I guess then that things are as perfect as they can be.