Stupidity

I have known some remarkably stupid people in my life (and I count myself as one of them), and by remarkable, I mean stupid beyond all reasonable expectations. At the least, we'd like to think that we could expect of each individual some sense of self-preservation, but experience seems to indicate that this is not reasonable to expect. Many people seem to survive in defiance of the principles of self-preservation. If this were truly a Darwinian society, we wouldn't have nearly five billion people running around on planet Earth. Most of us are so amazingly stupid that we would have died long before we had the chance to live. Many people seem, by their daily actions, to disprove Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest.". A needful note here: "survival of the fittest" means that those entities which most fit their environment are most likely to survive in that environment. It does not mean, as the fascists twisted it, survival of the most "physically fit". For the most 'physically fit' may not necessarily conform to the environment, and may, instead, as the fascists did, create great dissonance between themselves and their world. These are the ones most likely to become quickly extinct (and the fascists, despite their nearly mythical status as the evil uebermenschen, were criminally and inexcusably stupid people). It is the cockroach, which conforms best to the demands of an ever-changing environment, who is most likely to survive.

Which would indicate to anyone who prefers the life of a human being to that of a cockroach that survival, in itself, is not necessarily the greatest value. I know I'd rather be a short-lived human than a long-lived cockroach, if for no other reason than the fact that as a human being I get to drink coffee, sleep in late on Saturdays, and enjoy the sight of human females in thong bikinis. Pleasures such as this I do not care to give up (or, as Mark Twain put it, "Better a short, happy life than a long miserable one," or words to that effect).

Which means that maybe stupidity is not such a bad thing after all - a conclusion that astonishes me, because human stupidity (particularly my own) outrages me beyond measure. How dare we be so stupid in such a dangerous and flesh-eating world? How dare we put down our guards, even for a moment, in a world where thoughtlessness is so ruthlessly and universally punished?

But one man's stupidity is another man's wisdom. I guess the word 'stupid' means that I don't know something that is obvious to you, and instead of blindly and unthinkingly following your wisdom, I must puzzle it out by myself, making my own foolish mistakes in my own ignorant way, over and over again, until I get it to work, whatever it is. Which seems to indicate that it is my stupidity, not my wisdom, that makes me unique. And whether we like it or not, wisdom is not a static thing. Wisdom changes, just as we change ("If I had to do over again...", "If I only knew then what I know now...", and so on). A wise choice today may be a stupid one tomorrow, and it we fully understood the ramifications of everything we did, nobody would ever do a damn thing. Instead, we would simply graze like the cows in the fields, who neither reap nor sow, and who may be, after all, the world's greatest philosophers.

It is because we are stupid we try to do stupid things, which, every once in awhile, provide us incredible benefits. Some of Da Vinci's experiments with parachutes were, for example, and in hindsight, incredibly stupid. Some of Edison's experiments were profoundly and astonishingly stupid. Even Kant, Einstein and Bertrand Russell were stupid now and then. And they each pursued their stupid notions with the same passion and intensity they pursued their brilliant visions. Thank God they each had the courage of their stupid natures. Thank God they were each willing to risk their own welfare in this flesh-eating world, to try something dumb. Undoubtedly, for each Da Vinci and for each Edison we know of, there were countless others who tried to do the same stupid things, but did not survive long enough to tell us about them. So this thing we call 'genius' is nine-tenths dumb luck.

The first person to put wheels on his shoes (a Frenchman, I understand, who seems to have broken his neck experimenting with his contraption), did something that was just plain dumb. But his stupidity was not as aggravated as the stupidity of the second person to try it. Even so, roller-skating is fun, and gives a whole new dimension to the human experience. We can bless the persistent stupidity of these people.

And we all have the right, in a free society, to be as stupid as we please. We sometimes forget this. We sometimes assume that it is our obligation in a free society to be as intelligent as we possibly can, in everything we do. Sometimes the most educated among us will attempt to protect us from the repercussions of our own stupid actions. Sometimes these, the so-called 'best and the brightest', feel the moral obligation to protect us fools from ourselves and to idiot-proof the world so we may be safe. But these attempts to idiot-proof the world, if ever successful (which I doubt can ever be), would only give us results nobody wants - a world filled with idiots.

And a truly enlightened soul does not despair of human stupidity, does not seek to educate the world and everything in it. The truly enlightened soul loves our stupidity. For knowledge, by itself, does not give us wisdom. Books are not wise. Books are dead things that do not move. Humans are wise, because humans do stupid things and learn from them. Stupid human nature fills our world with song and humor and art. It is not because we are all-wise that poetry stirs our souls, but because we are foolish and far from perfect. Foolishness and stupidity provide us motivation, give us reason to move and to do, instead of sitting and stagnating all our lives like unread books on a shelf.

It surprises me to see what I have written here, for I started out to write a polemic against human stupidity. I see I was wrong. Belligerent stupidity still fills me with outrage, but the issue here is with belligerence, not our stupid human nature. When we are belligerent in our stupidity - when we insist on behaving stupidly no matter how many times our stupidity is punished, then we are guilty of arrogance and conceit. And every time our arrogance is punished, we are punished rightly. But stupid people and stupid behavior are wondrously delightful things. The world would be a poorer place without us.

So, let us sing the praises of human stupidity. It is our stupidity that makes us human, and it is the fact that we apply our imaginations and industry to our stupid ventures with the same intensity we do our brilliant ones that makes us uniquely human. It is our stupidity that gives us reason to laugh, and this is a good thing. It is by making dumb mistakes that we learn our most powerful lessons, and this is also a good thing. So thank God for our stupid human natures. It is through our stupidity we discover our souls.

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