Anti-intelligent Species

”Where I come from no longer exists. The last time I saw my home, there was nothing much left but ash.” Speaking about it was painful. Urgency however diffused the traumatic nature of the discourse and required the story to be imparted.

My quivering voice may have exposed my apprehension. The small group gathered to hear my warnings and fidgeted nervously. While I had their full and undivided attention, their eyes were averted, as if meeting my gaze they too would share in my pain. C’est la vie. Some experiences can only be shared with a slightly disconnected distancing. One, and only one, dared meet my eye. The sparkle in her eye was not the glint and glitter of light reflected through gathering tears. It was a spark— a brilliance, a level of deepest understanding, and an openness to experiencing even the unfathomable.

“I was targeted, a torch-bearing mob. It all started with a lie, followed by compounding untruths, an onslaught of libel, and bludgeoning defamation. I was nothing but a teacher. Perhaps I still am and this is my last lesson. I just wanted to impart knowledge. I loved learning. I loved teaching even more. I valued my students highly. I worked hard to see them succeed and gave each individual attention. The first twenty years this earned me utmost appreciation from the students and their parents.”

The twinkly-eyed girl barely lifted her hand from her lap, I wasn’t sure she intended to raise it to ask a question, or if it was just an involuntary movement to a more comfortable position. I called on her nonetheless. “Yes, you in the back, you had a question already?”

She bit her lip and hesitated a moment. “Yeah, I guess... it’s just.. well you sound like a great teacher, like one I had at a time in my life I needed one... I guess... I..” There was deep emotion in the halting quality of her speech. If a tear did appear it went unnoticed. “I guess I don’t understand. Torches? Lies? Where did it all go so wrong?”

It was the exact question at the exact moment I needed in order to go on. “Things changed. You know it. You saw it. You just had no idea how bad it got. Do you remember a few years ago? Was it seven or eight? When school boards were mobbed by angry parents, incited to a frenzy over culture wars? Remember when they banned children’s books, and accused teachers of grooming? There was an all-out war on education. Teachers were threatened for daring to teach. You saw them quitting, only to be replaced with propagandists. They stopped teaching how to think, and instead prescribed what the students were allowed to think. Yes, the dark years only lasted a few years before the entire academic community voiced their deepest concerns about the complete collapse of modern civilization. They backed down; the politicians that is. Not the enraged parents. The thing is, once the political will to exploit the culture war was gone, the insanity lingered in the dark fringes.”

The girl only nodded sadly. “Yes, I remember. That was when I lost her, the teacher that changed my life.”

I knew how she felt. “Teachers always change every life they touch. How can they not? From A-B-C’s to Plato or particle physics in so few years. From counting fingers to calculating the gravitational forces on a course toward the stars. Do you remember the last straw? The thing that ended the war on independent thought?”

The same girl again moved to raise her hand politely but was interrupted by the collective murmur. “Flat earth.”

Thinkers. Yes, it is nice to be in the presence of the cognitive. “Yes, well, that may have been the last straw, but there were many others that fell before. It never got as bad as having to teach the stork, but the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees all became myths. Evolution, environmental education, and even self-identity were on the chopping block. There was an attempt to eradicate anything that one or two misguided parents were told was inappropriate. I say were told— because they never read the books they objected to! Whatever the TV and radio barked at them about they attempted to eliminate. How many Sci-fi stories predicted thought policing? We were witnessing it in real-time.”

I had paused to wet my throat when the young girl blurted out without even the twitch of a finger, “The teacher that replaced her wouldn’t even admit there were dinosaurs. I hated that ignoramus! She taught me nothing but regret.” Standing now the tears flowing freely she asked, “Was that it? The Flat Earth Rebellion back in ‘28? What a silly thing to throw a life away for.”

The rebellion wasn’t the overthrow of education and science they intended it to be. “No, by the time Mr. Neuhaus had strapped a bomb to his chest and blew up the NASA visitors center, causing the backlash that ultimately saw common sense and reason overcome anti-intelligence Dunning-Krueger mass insanity, many other things had gone horribly wrong. In only a few short years of anti-science, all of society suffered. We barely recovered. People died. It was senseless. In a very literal sense. There was no common sense at all. People were marching towards not only their deaths but extinction as a whole. When Harvard warned of a mass casualty event, they received dirty bomb threats. By the time common sense and basic self-preservation instinct overcame the political propaganda machine, over thirty-three million had died. Eighty-five percent were directly linked to the rejection of the very things that would save them. As an educator, it was mind-boggling.”

”But.. but.. the torches. What about the torches?” The girl was getting impatient and wanted me to get straight to the point.

The fidgeting settled as all eyes in the room finally stopped studying every flake of paint on the blighted walls. With their full attention, I went on to relive that day. “Well, you see, I was teaching intro to genetics, that is before it was eliminated. So was astronomy, health, biology, physics, trigonometry, and so on. Each department downsized and combined. Math was math; from one plus one to E=mc2. The sciences from reproductive to my field- genetics- were combined into something even those who taught it didn’t understand. The theory of logic. We were expected and required by rather sketchy new laws to teach that all things logical thereby are only theoretical. That alone was a logical absurdity many teachers could not rectify— and quit. I stayed for my students.”

There was a gasp from all, except the young inquisitive girl. Self consciously I realized I had rolled up my sleeve exposing the scarred and charred flesh. “Oh, yeah, I guess we are now ready for the torches. There was one student, one very much like you.” I realized I was speaking directly to the girl, no longer the group as a whole. “She was bold, brilliant really. She came to me with questions. Questions I couldn’t answer, although I had the solution to each and every one. I shouldn’t have said couldn’t, I meant wasn’t permitted to. I could. And I did. I simply answered her questions. Genetics. Psychology. Sociology. Evolution.”

My scars exposed, the inferno undeniable. I was now committed to completing my historical rendering. “They called themselves ‘Dads of Death’ a small group of radicalized terrorists. They had been plaguing the school board meetings; even showing up armed. Nobody knew them as neighbors, and no students knew them as parents. Not even the student with questions. Somehow they got word that I explained the simplest thing to understand in genetics. She was black because her parents were black. I had violated a statute prohibiting the discussion of race.

That night, through my window I saw the flicker. I smelled the kerosene. I heard the angry shouts. Commands. I was used to the threats by this point. Every teacher was. But these were deadly serious demands. My children. They wanted..” My hands were trembling. Going on was more than I could bare. The girl mouthed the words ‘you’re okay’ silently. I wasn’t. But maybe if I tell it all, someday I will be.

I choked on the words that burned my throat like bile. The burning. Oh god. The burning.

”They wanted to hang my children. Something I would never allow. With my children fleeing to safety through the back door, they settled on burning me alive instead. It was a small price to pay for the safety of my children. It was not a price I would pay in full, however. I survived. They say I was lucky. Only sixty percent burned, and not a scar on my face. That is what they claimed without ever looking into my eyes. The scars could not hide behind tears.” I had never been so open while giving lessons.

“My house, my life, and almost my body were consumed by the flames. I had nothing. My children were safe, but we were alone, destitute, on the streets. The same people who tried to kill me tried again to destroy me fully. They claimed I abused my children, pretending they only cared to save them— from me! After they had tried hanging them and killing me. My children were taken. That wasn’t enough. They tried and failed to have me jailed. They even twisted the story to claim I tried burning myself and my family. The media and the court ate that up, despite my children’s insistence on a different chain of events. Those who rejected science rejected all things factual. Innocence was only further proof of my guilt.”

The girl sprung to her feet. “But— that’s illogical! It makes no sense!”

Cognitive dissonance dissolves when submerged in a sufficient quantity of common sense and logic. “Ah, yes, making sense was no longer necessary. Emotional manipulation was the name of the game. The game was deadly on so many levels. You are a smart girl, when they banned Winnie the Pooh because they claimed his fascination with honey was somehow turning people gay (despite there being evidence of homosexuality before the written word existed) it was the beginning of the end of education as we knew it.”

The girl seemed to forget there were others in the room and jumped to her feet with an armful of papers in numerous folders. “No! It was not the end! And damn right I’m a smart girl. It wasn’t the end just an obstacle to overcome. Do you remember, when the flatties marched on the capital demanding we ‘abandon the gravity and globe myth’ and even the media that pushed the anti-intellectual agenda refused to back such nonsensical garbage, they gave up on bashing those smarter than them and resumed bashing those poorer and less fortunate? Education was changed but continued. I told you I lost my teacher that inspired me, but I never lost the inspiration. I never stopped thinking even as others around me had meme-level mentalities. I have a confession. I know you. I followed you. I didn’t come here by accident.”

For someone who was nearly burned alive, these last words would be alarming coming out of any other voice box. Her voice however was soothing, even reverent.

She shoved the folders towards me. “Look. Look what I found. Genetics. You made me love genetics. I studied on my own. Frankly, it came easy to me. The hardest part was tracking down some reference papers deemed unsuitable here but celebrated elsewhere. In an archive in Dubai, I discovered an experiment begun, then promptly shut down here. Look, you see? These three proteins? Do you see what they all have in common?”

I didn’t. But I was fascinated. “They are common and inert. Leftover genetic fragments no longer applicable.” I paused in a moment of humility, adding, “as far as I know anyway. What do you think you discovered?”

She looked at me like my Ph.D. meant nothing to her; like I was as dense and unthinking as the torch bearers. “Look again. Cancer, think cancer. See? These proteins are unnecessary DNA that can simply be bred out of the gene pool. Three generations, and cancer will no longer exist. Well. To be precise. Eighty-eight percent of known cancers will be gone. I’m afraid we will continue to create new forms through toxic exposure, but most cancers, we can be immune to, by simple safe breeding practices.”

She had it. The holy grail of knowledge and discovery. The student has become the teacher. Out of necessity, and a passion for learning. When the teachers are not allowed to teach, the students are free to learn. What they learn can be right or wrong.

When a few parents try to enforce what students are allowed to learn, very few students put forth the effort to think outside the box. The rest, pick up their torches and set fire to all they refuse to understand.

”This— you discovered this on your own? It is brilliant. Cancer! You cured cancer! You must have presented this to other scientists, what have they said?”

Her tears returned. “It’s bad. Worse than you can imagine. Of all the so-called scientists, you are the first one that didn’t reject it completely with conspiracies of alien DNA.”