Successful Nerds are Killing Us. Seriously*

Once there were two Johns living in the same village. When people would reference them there was confusion over which was which. John the baker or John the butcher? Pretty soon, it became John Baker and John Butcher. The surname was born. True story* - an asterisk * will mean, probably not factually correct but you get the general point.

Smith, Potter, Mason, Tailor, Weaver, Webber, Thatcher, Slater, Miller, Baker, Spicer, Cook, Fisher, Shepherd, Carter, Skinner and Gardener... These are (or were) professions and as you probably realize, surnames also. They were passed down and traditionally, from the male side of the family tree. This makes sense that professions were used as identifiers and why males passed the names as illustrated by this historical story*.

In the 1200s, Attractive Mary walked into a pub. She got talking to John and he bought her a drink. She liked the look of his strong frame but was unsure if he was the right kind of person with which to have kids as she couldn't have a job and needed a provider. She asked John what he did and he replied he was a butcher. Score! A professional and one that has the perk of bringing home money AND fresh meat. They got married and had kids. Their sons as was the custom, followed in their fathers footsteps. Jack, Frank and John Jr. Butcher took over the business, went to the same pub, found attractive wives and had butcher children themselves.

This is the way of the world.*

Good providers were at a premium and were sought after as mates by women that were not allowed to work. At the time, most professional jobs required physical skills. Weaver, Thatcher, Shepherd etc. These jobs and therefore names commanded respect because they were important positions in society and in limited supply.

These days, it isn't in the manual labor jobs where the best providers* are found. The financial providers are in the white-collar desk jobs. They are engineers and tech entrepreneurs. Managers and lecturers. For their jobs, mental skill is the priority, not physical.

In 1200, Attractive Mary probably wouldn't be interested in Dexter Engineer and as a result Dexter didn't get the prettiest bride* but the one he did marry may have been equally as smart as she had to survive in a world where her beauty would not be enough to secure a provider.

This meant that there were physically weaker smart people, and physically stronger dumb people*.

For a long time the physical prowess of the professionals had the upper hand. But slowly, the intelligence of the weak began to show. First they took over operations that were more suited to them like accounting and sales. Then they started the banks to manage the money. After, they developed new machinery that needed to be bought. They loaned the money to the strong to buy the new machines and they became indebted to the smart. Soon the smart invented tools and machines that made the strong largely redundant but still indebted. So the strong took jobs working the new tools now owned by the weak to pay off debts and purchase whatever they were slaving away each day making.

The smart sat up in the office counting the money and watching the strong work. At the end of the day, the weak would go to a fancy pub and buy a drink for an Attractive Mary and have kids that are intelligent but physically weaker. But as Attractive Mary is not necessarily Intelligent Attractive Mary, in time there may be both weaker and stupider offspring that have access to the resources gathered by past generations.

Because they are physically weaker but have resources, they create entertainment that they can partake in. Previously, this may have been sports activities, but now due to their physical incapability, it is technology based. This will in turn lead to high value demand for such technology and therefore create increased wealth for developers. This will make them very attractive and they will command the best Attractive Mary mates, who will in time again further weaken the physical genetics.*

Because of this, new tech will be invented to cope with the lack of strength further degrading physicality. The new tech will come with augmented reality aspects that will make people feel they have body strength, but not actually create it. Further weakening.

In the end, the tech will become so advanced that humans will become no more than brains in a jar wired into a virtual reality that allow them to feel like they are inhabiting a body that doesn't actually exist.

All roads lead to us enslaved in the Matrix.

The moral of this story is; Nerds are evil.* It is scientifically proven through genetics.*

Now, this is of course nonsense* and has several holes but think for a moment. Humans have two general skillsets. Physical and mental. With industrialization, we have moved rapidly away from manual tasks and these jobs moved into less physical, more mental sectors such as tech and service fields. Now, it is time for the mental skillset to shine. But, since humans generally invent to make life easier, bit by bit the inventions will crowd us out of most of the mental arena too. In the past, we could progress (or retreat depending on perspective) into thinking jobs. But, we would now have exhausted our two-trick-pony range and will have nowhere to move on to.

So then what?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]