But even when everything is banal and everybody seems to be very incompetent and unable to create anything complex, good or bad, still a lot of things happen. The answer seems to be that it doesn't take a lot of effort from a lot smart people to set some things in motion.
Discussion
But reconciling all of this requires letting go of our impulse to interpret things through a functionalist lens. Which is hard to do, because our dumb brains *really* want to take that shortcut.