Everything for dummies

Yesterday on the train from New York to Boston, I noticed a weird poster at one of the intermediate station's platform. It advertised the "For dummies" series of books. To those unaware of the aforementioned "encyclopedia of the ignorants" a simple Amazon search will suffice to enlighten them on the topic.

The US should actually be considered as the inventor of "easy-everything", meaning this kind of culture under which everything should have a light, easy, user-friendly version and whose products and outcomes range from fast-food to google-scholar. But I admit that a book entitled "Sex for dummies" was something of a surprise even for a suspicious observer like myself. And what about "The Islam for dummies"? This is yet another demonstration of wrong hierarchy of priorities. I mean if you know all you want to know about sex (and would not dare ask) what would you need knowing about Islam or the war in Iraq?

Seriously now, "everything for dummies" comes as an additional proof of americans not taking themselves seriously. Admiting they are "dummies" by buying such a book (or in order not to be too judgy a book with such a title) is one thing. Not moving on to a next level by trying to learn something more, buying another book, with less punchlines and more bibliography, or even buying a newspaper twice a week instead of "Cosmo" and "Men's health" would have saved them the trouble to have to keep up with the latest about history, politics or maybe even sexual trends (although I guess Cosmopolitan might be up to date on this last one). The issue here, goes far beyond book reading or being informed. It has to do with the commercial establishment of "chewing gum for the eyes" culture, with books that make you look smart overnight, music that makes you feel trendy for a fortnight and films whose impact on your stomach is just a little bit stronger than the one you got from the pop-corn-pepsi giant combo you had at the multiplex.

We get used to having everything easy, we don't read because we look everything up in the internet, we don't think because TV star-analysts do it for us, we don't care because there is nothing to care about. It's just like Steinbeck's Lennie, the retarded hero from "Of mice and men" who imagined he would "live off the fat o' the land", only that we are convinced we are actually doing it, and this makes us -oh yes- real dummies. And as long as we don't do something about it, we might as well as start looking for a book called "Switching back to being clever... for dummies".