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The Daily Toad: Proudly disseminating sensationalised rubbish since 1645. 29th March 2020

A brain yesterday (Wikimedia Commons, Credit: Nevit Dilmen)

Mankind's averaged collective mental age as defined by the United Nations Human Maturity Index has been steadily going down for the past seventy years. But, say experts, recent events show cause for optimism.

'The most recent high point for the aggregate mental age was back in the ashes of the Second World War, when humans moved into previously unknown levels of maturity as to how such a devastating conflict could be avoided in the future,' said Professor Manfred Cerebellum yesterday in a carefully prepared speech.

'Measured between the formation of the United Nations in 1945, through the creation of post-war welfare states to the Declaration of Human Rights and the European Union Initiative of 1949, our average intellect hovered around that of a generally knowledgeable and well mannered nineteen-year-old.'

'Unfortunately,' he continued, 'the Cold War then kicked in and with several damaging proxy wars and the move to disposable consumerism and arms proliferation, by 1965 the human age-related intellect had dropped to only fifteen years.'

The sixties and seventies saw the average human intellect briefly stabilise as scientific advances along with music and artistic endeavours balanced the negatives of continued conflict, but sadly, aside from two brief spike upwards in 1968 and 1973, the trend has been downhill ever since.

'The gradual slide over the past twenty years has had a number of factors,' said Cerebellum, 'with the last five years seeing the Global Intelligence Quotient fall ever more steeply. The rise of right-wing popularism and the rolling back of hard-won rights for the disenfranchised coupled with a trenchant cry to embrace policies of political disunity has been a factor, as has an idiotically shortsighted approach to the deregulation of the global financial sector.'

He went on to add that it was 'particularly worrying' that experts in general and climate scientists in particular were roundly ignored, and how anger was ludicrously redirected toward a Swedish teenager. In short, by November 2019, the Collective Mental Age of Humankind barely reached nine years old - the lowest measure since records began, and well below the 'Shouldn't really have custodianship of any planet, let alone this one' threshold of twelve years and two months - although the experts did concede that some 12-year-olds actually might do a pretty good job.

Scientists at the United Nations Human Maturity Index were, however, surprised by a sudden and very singular rise in global intelligence over the past two months.

'It was astonishing,' said Professor Cerebellum, 'governments are once again acting on the advice of scientists, and administrations previously seen to be in favour of a small state and trickle down economics are suddenly embracing strong socialist principles, and the citizenry themselves, far from acting like twatty sheep, have decided that a unified and responsible approach to an incoming threat that strongly embraces care and egalitarianism is actually probably the best policy.'

'We've seen huge acts of kindness and selflessness,' continued cerebellum, 'not just colossally hard work and dedication from NHS workers, but from others: those in retail, haulage, pharmacy employees - and countless others - who were three weeks ago on minimum wage, but are now putting themselves in harm's way from a sense of the needs of the greater good. The global intellect index is spiking upwards and is currently soaring past the fourteen-year-old level, and will probably rise even higher.'

Projected estimations of the Global Collective Intelligence Index are as yet unknown, but the members of the United Nations Human Maturity Index all agree there has never been a better opportunity to celebrate, understand and reflect on how humans can be at their very best when things are at their very worst, and how we should all carry this through beyond the end of the current crisis to deal better with ourselves and our place on the planet in the years to come.

Josh Hatchett, for The Toad