Apt142’s Blog

A strong theme in a great amount of our literature, past, present and future is the idea of protecting the weak from the strong. Stories even as far back as Beowulf and the Arthurian Legends all have this central concept that those with power should protect those without. In addition, those with power who prey upon the weak are evil and akin to monsters. Or, in many cases, actually are monsters. It is the duty of the righteous man to hop on that horse and ride galiantly into the bad guy’s lair and smite him for all his wickedness. And, if a few of the bad guy’s cronies need a good bit of smiting on the way, well, so be it.

The terms weak and strong are sort of relative here. I suppose you can say that weak and strong are adjectives to the power those individuals wield, in whatever form that takes. For my argument, I’ll go with that.

Let’s take some pop culture examples and move this out of the abstract and into something we can visualize and quantify. That makes Darth Vader our Strong Bad Guy or SBG for short. Luke Skywalker can be the Strong Good Guy or SGG for short. Just about everybody else in the universe whose name you don’t know and does not work for the Empire will be The Weak.

We know how the story goes. The SBG (Darth Vader) oppresses The Weak. The SGG (Luke) rises from the ranks of The Weak and brings some well intentioned smiting down on the SBG. SBG gets smited and the SGG goes home. The Weak maybe throw a parade or who knows, maybe they have the SGG on an aircraft carrier with “Mission Accomplished” flying in the background. Shortly after that, the SGG goes away never to be heard from again. Or at least not until they make a sequel, prequel, or alternate universe version of the story.

Notice how in all but a few stories, the Strong’s power is measured in physical might, cunning, special abilities or even luck. It’s very rare that the power of either one of the Strong characters Good™ or Bad™ is measured in intelligence. There’s never a grand finale based entirely on intelligence. Cunning usually plays a factor. But, I’m not saying cunning is the same as intelligence. When I say (er… type) intelligence I’m indicating brute collection of knowledge and problem solving skills. I’m talking Stephen Hawking not Donald Trump; Intelligent Spock to cunning Kirk.

It’s usually the case that the Good Guy is intelligent. And there is a general theme that the Bad Guy is intelligent. But the choice of dualing weapons is rarely intelligence.

It cannot be denied that intelligence is power. It is, perhaps, the ultimate power. No matter how grand the weapon is, an intelligent strategy can find a way to nullify or work around the weapon’s capabilities.

This is fascinating to me because the traditional bullying that happens in life is seen as the big strong guy/kid who physically threatens the smaller guy/kid. But it is just as possible for the smaller guy/kid to threaten or bully the much larger guy/kid if he approaches it intelligently. The smarter of the two has an inherent advantage. The most fascinating thing is that the smarter of the two can take advantage of the other one with out he/she knowing about it, or at least recognizing it for what it is.

I would argue that most of the great epic battles that happen in real life are of the intelligent picking on the dumb variety. However, since half the population is by definition dumber than the average person it goes largely unnoticed.

Take for instance the Atkins Diet. What proponents of the Atkin’s Diet will tell you is that it is a great way to lose weight. What former practitioners will say is that it works so long as you are on the diet. The general principles of weight gain is that the body is consuming more calories than the body is using. The body therefore stores it as fat. The way to correct this is to consume less calories and/or increase calorie useage. In essence, you need to diet and exercise. The problem with fad diets is that they manipulate the diet part and not the exercise part. They also aren’t maintainable forever. Once the diet goes back to normal the calorie inbalance returns. That is assuming an absence of an exercise routine to bring the calorie consumed/calorie burned equation back into balance. Which must be maintained.

But, nobody has ever made money selling the “Diet and Exercise” diet. There is no “Diet and Exercise” potato chips. No “Diet and Exercise” soda. No “Diet and Exercise” snack packs. Somebody decided that the Atkin’s Diet would work and released it in an effort to make some money. They knew full well that the entire concept failed unless maintained in specific ways. But, people bought into it lacking that information or the foresight to look for that information.

And months later the South Beach Diet came out, picking up the failed Atkin Dieters.

Somebody smart exploited the people not smart enough to question or research for themselves. The worst part about this type of bullying is that the bullied are thankful for being bullied. Even after they lost and regained the weight.

This type of bullying happens everyday. From the ads that use your hardwired desires for sex to tap into your attention span to the laws that are put forth to “Protect You,” somebody is trying to manipulate and bully you every day. Some of it is natural. Some of it is even ok. We just need to be aware that we are being coerced and identify when that’s ok and when it is not.

The following issues are issues that I think much of the population is unaware of in terms of intellectual bullying: Digital Rights Management, Net Neutrality (or lack thereof), Copyright Extentions, DMCA, and the Patriot Act. There’s lots more but an exhaustive list would be impossible.