Stupidity

[August1991]

I think Kimmy could have written the Second Law:

Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men are naturally equal and if some are more equal than others, this is attributable to nurture and not to nature. I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction, supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence. Although convinced that fraction of human beings are stupid and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that:

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

Link

A good illustration of The Third Law are the stupid people who jabber on at meetings, wasting everyone else's time and accomplishing absolutely nothing for themselves.

[Oleg Bach]

There is another class of stupid - the clever and shrewd stupid person - commonly called evil - never in my life have I had a problem with intelligent people - nor have I ever suffered an attack by an intelligent person - intelligent people are good people. Shrewd, clever and deceptive is NOT intelligent..in the long run these types my rise to a high level - but they always fall - It is intelligent to give a hungry person a piece of bread - because we are all human and we all become week and in need of a piece of bread - If I do NOT give to the hungry because I am greedy and power mongering - I may benefit for the time being BUT a time will come when I am hungry and I will NOT recieve a piece of bread - because I did NOT give. So the overly socially and finacially successful are not always that smart...in the end they suffer like all of us - it may take a few generations but all families fall from grace - because they were not intelligent - just cunning - which is evil and plain ordinary stupid.

[Sir Bandelot]

Lets not be so high and mighty... every one of us has moments of stupidity. Some are stupid in different ways than others. A person can be highly educated, technically or artistically skilled, but at the same time socially inept.

Let us ask, who among us is not stupid. The ones who take delight in pointing out the stupidity of others, as though somehow to express their inner need for their a superiority complex, also in a way show this trait.

Stuidity is not inherited, like red hair is or like blood types. Stupidity can also be TAUGHT, and in fact there is a preference for stupidity in some western subcultures, the anti-intellectuals. Disdain for science, disdain for higher education. George Bush is a symbol of this subculture.

How is it that two well educated parents can have not-so-bright offspring? Or the reverse, a capable and intelligent person springs forth from a home of butt scratching tv watchers? A mystery, but it happens.

Humans are evolving and the distribution of stupidity can be mapped on a bell curve.

Stupidity, whatever that means, is difficult to eliminate. One reason is that those who are truly NOT stupid, generally keep it to themselves.

[August1991]

Lets not be so high and mighty... every one of us has moments of stupidity. Some are stupid in different ways than others. A person can be highly educated, technically or artistically skilled, but at the same time socially inept.

The link in the OP has a precise definition of stupidity, and it has nothing to do with education, technical ability or artistry. Did you read the link?

Stupid people waste other people's time and their own time too. Stupid people take a $20 bill from you and then burn it.

[Sir Bandelot]

The link in the OP has a precise definition of stupidity, and it has nothing to do with education, technical ability or artistry. Did you read the link?

Stupid people waste other people's time and their own time too. Stupid people take a $20 bill from you and then burn it.

Sorry I was actually thinking... not reading your stupid stuff

[sharkman]

So you disagree with the premise? People are born with different physical traits, and no one can argue this, is it hard to accept that a low IQ is just another such trait?

On the plus side of stupidity, ignorance really is bliss.

[kimmy]

I think Kimmy could have written the Second Law

That does sound like something I could have written...

Vibrant culture... well, larger centres certainly have more prominent and visible cultural symbols. Older centres certainly have more prominent and visible historical symbols. We're well behind the nation's leading communities on both of those fronts, I'll certainly agree. However, if the notion is that people elsewhere are more cultured and sophisticated, I'm skeptical. I am of the view that lack of class is as universal as stupidity. Edmontonians look around our city and find it full of mulleted, jean-jacket wearing laborers and tradesmen, or look around Calgary and see it is full of effete "urban cowboys," and recognize this as the exact opposite of culture. What they don't realize is that Ottawa and Vancouver are equally filled with urban thug wannabe types. I'm sure that the same can be said for Montreal or any other big city that people imagine to be more sophisticated than our little burg. You might not have noticed it while you were touring museums and art galleries and so-on (ie, visiting) but you notice it when you're travelling to and from school or work (ie, living there.) You don't get a chance to meet Ottawa's large population of dumb-asses when you're bumping around the National Art Gallery or Museum of Civilization, just as you don't meet Edmonton's mullet population when you're at the Winspear Centre or Edmonton Art Gallery. But spend a year living someplace, going to school or work, doing the things normal people do... and I'm confident that you'll come to agree with my believe in the widespread universality of the dumb-guy mentality.

Y'know, Jerry, I don't think many of the people who come to Alberta looking for work in the oilfields or trades or labour jobs are the sorts who will be looking for jazz clubs or wine clubs or the opera or interpretive dance or live theatre anyway. Edmonton and Calgary do have all of those things, but as you mention, they're a small percentage of the overall picture. Here's a hint: they're a small percentage of the overall picture "back east" too.

Some westerners have the notion that people "back east" are somehow more cultured or sophisticated or erudite than themselves; I've taken to thinking of this as "I Miss Trudeau Syndrome." One walks down the street in Edmonton and sees all the tradesmen with mullets and jean-jackets, and one thinks "this city is full of the most uneducated, unsophisticated people on earth," and assumes that if they were in a cosmopolitan city like Toronto or Vancouver, they'd be surrounded by cultured and urbane people like themselves. But they'd be mistaken. I've lived in Ottawa and Vancouver and Victoria as well as in Edmonton, and I've seen nothing to support the theory that folks in these places are more cultured or sophisticated or urbane than in Edmonton.

Go to the opera or a jazz club in Toronto, and you'll find the same sort of person you find at the opera or a jazz-club in Edmonton: somebody whose tastes are far outside the mainstream of that city's population, and hardly representative of the populace at large.

Go to a museum or an art gallery in Ottawa, and you know who you'll meet? Tourists.

I visited the Museum of Civilization and the National Art Gallery and the House of Parliament when I lived there. They're certainly spectacular things to visit, and I recommend them highly. But if I wanted to find my classmates on the weekend, I'd go to the food court at the shopping mall.

-k