We ARE living in Idiocracy. There’s an old adage from Charles Dickens that says, “This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.

Sounds to me like they might be planning to eat you.

You make the very silly observation that just because someone has a limited education they must be stupid and that their opinion isn't valid. My father never even went to high school and he was a very intelligent man. He was great at math and could do any calculation in his head without a calculator. He was great at languages and could speak five languages fluently.
I see many highly educated people that have no common sense and have no real life skills to speak of. They make know everything about 17th century English literature, but they can't boil an egg or change the oil in their car.
I think an honest appraisal will show that there are very intelligent people that have limited educations, and there are very intelligent people that are highly educated. You seem to have judged everyone based on your experience with a small group of dumb people. Keep an open mind and you might learn that not everything is black and white.

You must be that insufferable in-law, who carries himself in the company of others with all the quiet assurance that he is saving the world, whose countenance carries the barely concealed- but still openly readable (lest his family not understand how little he thinks of them)-distaste, who thinks he's doing the world a favour by being a vegan, etc.

Look, ignorance is rife, but it does come on both sides. You think the privileged, entitled SJW kids are doing much better for the world than the small town bigots? Don't deceive yourself into thinking you know more about the world than the next guy because you took a sociology class in university. Unlike math or physics, those are just ideological views of society, some of which were written by some very sick people. They are not truths. And sometimes, even the simplest people will surprise you with the depth of what they know.

As a smart person, you're going to have to accept that humanity, at its core, is savage- that we are animals living in willing bondage within the shackles of civilization in order to produce more resources in our lives. That light and darkness beats within our breasts, ever hatefully at struggle, and that we are what we choose to be. Know that large amounts of stupid people has always existed, and that history, try as we might, is doomed to repeat itself, over and over and over again. Know that we are all insane, just by varying degrees.

So... be at peace, live for today, do as well as you can, and don't be that guy at the dinner table. Creepy Uncle Steve might get the wrong idea. No, I do not talk like this in real life.

Buy them the book Your Not So Smart by David McRaney. It's essentially a class in self awareness for those with very little. I wish it was in every motel drawer in the world.

... electronic and mechanical devices creates the impression that people should operate on similar principles. Some do, some don't. For most of our evolution, people didn't "con" or "convince" one another of much, they just sort of lived.

And we are living in idiocracy---recent evidence suggests IQs have declined _within families_ since the 70s, which means it's an environmental influence. We have no idea what it is. Feminism? TV? Radar? Wifi? Increase in vegetable oil consumption?

... also, "rights" have no existence in nature, they are political constitutions between individuals. If you think "rights" are natural and that you can have "knowledge" of them in the sense that you accurately perceive their existence, like you might accurately perceive the existence of a rock hurtling toward your head, you're nowhere near as smart as you think you are.

YOU are living proof of the age of idiocracy. Your assumption that you know more because you have "education" is ridiculous.

Some people like small towns with plenty of fresh air, and some like big cramped city ghettos while thinking they're smarter, and more educated than everyone else. You can be as highly educated as they come, but it doesn't make you any less ignorant, and any less stupid as you have always been.

Actually people in big cities are less knowledgeable. They're only more indoctrinated, and really don't do anything of value or anything of importance for the world. Think about it, if all the major cities, and all the people in them suddenly vanished off the face of the earth, this world would be a much better place, and life would go on better than before.