A theory on the United States

Nick and I were chilling after another nice gym session last night and I complained as to there never really ever being anything decent on UK tv…. I really wanted to chill for a few hours and watch some quality entertainment on the old tube… Thankfully my wishes were granted as “Super Size Me” was being shown on Channel 4. Sweet! Some quality American bashing… Nothing makes you feel better about the moral, ethical, intellectual, spiritual etc standing of your own nation than having a good old perve at American lifestyles….

Whilst watching the movie/documentary Nick, who hadn’t seen the film before, remarked on how stupid Americans are. And this is where I would like to commence my theorising.

Questions:

(1) Are Americans more stupid than the rest of us?

(2) If not, why do they seem so stupid?

Okay. Answer to question one is simple. No. Why, I hear you ask? Well unless you are racist you will agree that we as humans are all pretty much the same and given this the average IQ of America, as it is for the UK Australia and Bolivia is 100, simple as that. Fifty percent of people will be below that and fifty percent will be above that….

But surely the Japanese are smarter… they work harder… right!? Well no… although you can increase knowledge through learning your basic logic and hence intelligence is determined by genetics and cannot be changed no matter how hard you study…. Sorry Nick ;-(

So given that question one is sorted…. Why is it that every American we see appears to be dumb as a post? Well this is my theory:

We see most of our Americans on tv not in real life. Because America has such a larger media exposure to the rest of the world we tend to see a wider cross section of the American public on tv. Put simply we watch Jerry Springer, which shows the worst of American stupidity but we don’t watch Xian Chan (made up Chinese Jerry Springer style spin off) so we only see the higher/more intelligent people from most countries on tv… but for the US we see them all… from their best (insert smart American’s name here) and their worst (hmmmmm…Chuck Norris?).

Also, we associate wealth with intelligence. Given the United States is by far the richest country in the world we expect them to be the smartest. When we see that they are normal and not super smart they perform below our expectations and hence we are shocked and label them stupid. They are just like you and I… Sad but true my friends.

Oh… also maybe it is the accent and the fact that Americans tend on average to be more self centred … self centred being a characteristic often associated with stupidity…

Anyway check this just for fun...

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Rest assured the States have the most nobel prizes in all categories… so they aint all dumb….