The vast majority are bankrupt in terms of intellectual curiosity and this is the root of most societal problems

I could never understand how 80-98% of people are content to do their 9-5 then scroll tikok and repeat all day every day. This is bizarre to me, it always has been. The world is just a vast and beautiful place, there is so much knowledge waiting to be discovered and so many questions waiting to be answered. I understand that people are different and not everyone can be as intellectually curious as others, but my god how can it be that the vast majority, from what I have seen, anywhere from 80-98%, are completely devoid in terms of intellectual curiosity. I just don't understand how these people never even had questions like "is free will real" "is capitalism an efficient system" "are our politicians telling the truth", etc... pop in their minds.

How can this be possible? I understand that perhaps until after college/university people are too young and just want to spend their free time having fun, but god damn, people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, just doing the same thing all day every day for decades and listening to the SAME news channels that have been using the same cheap tactics for decades saying the same nonsense for DECADES UPON DECADES, never spending a single solitary minute just asking themselves "is there more to all this?" "Am I 100% correct or can I use some improvement in my thinking?" "Is mainstream thinking in society 100% correct as I believe it to be, or can something possibly be wrong, perhaps I can spend a bit of time trying to think about these things, perhaps I can even throw a cursory glance in terms of historical time periods and how they relate to the modern society I live in, perhaps I can throw even a cursory glance at subjects like psychology, sociology, anthropology, perhaps for a second I can simply just attempt to make 1 single solitary logical inference or find one pattern rather than alarm clock 9-5 cooler talk new netflix series yell at republicans and worship the democrats or yell at democrats while worshipping republicans and repeat all day every day for the next 7 decades."

This is why we have problems. When people don't use their brain, it becomes easy for charlatans (e.g., politicians) to brainwash them. And that is exactly what has happened/is happening.

This is why we have the bizarre and immoral and inefficient neoliberal oligarchical capitalist system that the vast majority support and actively vote for over and over again and worship charlatan politicians who are blatantly lying in their face.

I can't understand how people were not able to connect the dots and say ok, if I spend even 2 minutes studying, I will see what capitalism entails, and I will realize that it requires artificially high and perpetual unnecessary production + consumption. 1+1=2. Very easy. Therefore, this explains so many societal ills.

But they completely miss that. And they instead spend their money on charlatan self-help gurus who tell them nonsense. I don't understand how can these people not put 2 and 2 together to realize hey, if that person is selling you a get rich book, would you put 2 and 2 together and get the 4 to know that if those nonsense tactics worked, why on earth would they need to resort to selling you books and charging you 100s of dollars to attend their "get rich" conferences: they would simply use the techniques in their book and will make money like that, and would then have no need to sell these nonsense books to you. I don't understand how this can possibly fly over the head of 80-98% of people.

The top salespeople are the biggest liars. The ones who are honest and tell people the true product specifications will not make much sales. The ones who are charlatans and have superficial charm and use lame tactics that one would EXPECT 100% of people to pick up from miles away, such as immediately complimenting your clothes when you walk in the door, are the most successful ones. How is it that 80-98% of people can't see this? This is bizarre.

The fact that advertisement is a thing and uses similar tactics to sell, such as classical conditioning (e.g., using a good looking model to hold their product and using that emotional association to make the product desirable, even though it has ZERO to do with the product's functionality and they had to PAY the model to hold it) instead of actually talking about the functionality/efficiency of the product, is again proof that 80-98% of people respond to this: this is why advertisement still exists: if it didn't work, it would stop. Are we Pavlov's dogs to be tricked like this? What even on earth? How can it be that the MAJORITY, rather than the minority, are like this?

This is why anybody with the voice of reason will never be able to gather an audience: when the vast majority don't even WANT to listen to the voice of reason, and WANT to listen to charlatans who tell them BLATANT lies and fake promises, then how can the voice of reason ever proliferate? Look at all the famous figures: they are either charlatans, or their message is nonsense. They either tell people what they want to hear and offer pseudosolutions that sound easy, such as a lot of these "self-help" gurus and "motivational" speakers who COMPLETELY neglect the role of society/the system in shaping outcomes and instead talk nonsense like "all you need to do is my 1-2-3 butt off couch hyperthermal post-colder shower super tech technique and bill gates status achieved! that is why I am charging you $200 to attend my conference: because clearly this technique doesn't work otherwise I wouldn't need to charge you $200 to make money and I would instead use that technique to get money! but I won't tell you this second part and you will bizarrely not put 2 and 2 together and will fall for it! Thank you! Book your next conference seat for $400 now!"

Or, they rile up people's emotions, which means virtually every single political commentator. They pick "left" or "right" and try to rile people up against each other. And people easily fall for it and worship them.

Or, they use appeal to authority fallacy to get people to listen to them. There are many examples of this in terms of health/science. Some dude will have a PhD and then SOLELY because of their PhD will get a lot of youtube videos while talking about something completely unrelated to his PhD, then selling people supplements for it. And 80-98% worship that person and when you try to help them they say "But do you have a PhD? Phd>no PhD therefore he is right and you are wrong your RANDOM redditor! You are a "Random redditor": therefore, if you say 1+1=2 then you are wrong. LABELS. CONNOTATIONS. DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS THAT HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH CONTEXT/PRACTICAL FUNCTIONAL UTILITY."

And the worst part is that you just can't get through to these people. They will 100% of the time just double down and attack you when you try to call them out on their selfdestructive + antisocial behavior. They are ruining their own lives and taking down the world with them. When you tell them this stuff they will just say something emotional like "YOU think you know EVERYTHING HUH? YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER THAN ALL THE PHDS?" It's like no... that is an emotional straw man: ALL I am saying is that YOU are not 100% right and that FOR ONCE PLEASE just ASK YOURSELF "MAYBE I am not 100% RIGHT and MAYBE there is more to life, MAYBE even 10% of what this person says may be true.. MAYBE I should FOR ONCE WAKE UP and ask AT LEAST ONE QUESTION instead of spending the rest of my decades like an automaton who 100% worships and believes those who try to sell me the EASY way out.. MAYBE I should realize that life is more complex and that I should stop tricking myself, and part of this means stop attacking those who simply propose some tough questions that are necessary to address if I want to stop the problems in my own life as well as help stop the problems in the world."