I just found out something truly terrible about me; I have cognitive privilege. I was born a little smarter than the rest of you.
I deeply apologize.
I am sorry your genes did not align to make you as genius-y as me. I'd go back and try to dumb myself down, but science hasn't advanced that far yet. And, quite frankly, I'm not interested enough to go into the lab and figure out that problem. Perhaps somebody with unlimited resources and his head already halfway up his ass like Mark Zuckerberg will do so.
What is cognitive privilege, you may ask? Because even I was unaware that this was a thing until some really smart people pointed it out.
Dan Williams, a student at the University of Iowa, and the new prophet of cognitive privilege, wrote in a column in a student newspaper last week:
There are many kinds of privilege besides white privilege: cognitive privilege, for example. We now know that intelligence is not something we have significant control over but is something we are born with. We are living in a society in which success is increasingly linked to one's intelligence. This is not to say that intelligence is the only factor that is important. All that is implied is that below a certain threshold of intelligence, there are fewer and fewer opportunities. These opportunities are being shifted upward to jobs that require heavier cognitive lifting or else are being replaced by robots. Thus, the accident of having been born smart enough to be able to be successful is a great benefit that you did absolutely nothing to earn. Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.
See? Not only am I privileged because I was in the lucky White sperm club, I am now doubly privileged because I am smart. And I like to read. And I like to use my smarts to make a living.
I was born with a natural predilection to reading and study. It's in my nature. Like trans people, I was born that way.
But now, I am supposed to feel guilty for being smart, and working to improve my smart-i-tude.
Intelligence is a lot like athletic skill--you can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't develop it, it won't take you very far. Conversely, you can have some talent and combine that with a work ethic to exercise and grow that talent, and you can make a comfortable living.
But not to these faux privilege folks. Nope, because you're smarter than everyone else, you should be put in the corner.
This is nothing more than "Idiocracy" come to life.
"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."
In the world of the Privilege Hall Monitors, the intelligent among us should become an endangered species.
If we give into the notion of Cognitive Privilege, what do we really do? We just give life to the old phrase "there is no fool like an educated fool."
Perhaps we will all be gathered together to roam free in vast libraries where tourists will take pictures of the Intelligent in a Natural Habitat.
Perhaps there will be special events where people will pay to watch the Cognitively Privileged mocked and beaten and forced to fight hungry, wild beasts. Actually, that sounds a lot like my middle school years, so maybe not.
Perhaps the Cognitively Privileged will just leave. And let the rest of you poor dumb bastiges put Brawndo on your plants because plants crave electrolytes.
And Brawndo's got electrolytes.