Define Stupid
This little word gets a lot of wear and tear but what really constitutes stupidity?
It is Labor Day, 2021. I just watched a video of people crowded together, having a good time at football games. They were cheering, wearing sunglasses, showing big smiles, whooping it up, fists pumping the air as they celebrated more than a sports game; they celebrated the freedom to be a physical part of that game crowded together with countless like-minded individuals. In an instant, I had a vision of them as a bunch of apes celebrating something simple like finding a rubber ball. I surmised that this must be how we would look to advanced beings. To advanced beings, I believe Earth humans would look like primates.
I’m not an advanced being; I know that. But these people—both sexes, various races, various ethnicities, various ages—all looked alike to me. In a pandemic people were essentially saying, “FUCK YOU COVID! WE’RE HAVING OUR GOOD TIME!”. To which COVID will essentially respond: “come to papa”. The question isn’t whether or not these people are acting foolishly: they are. But I think it’s worse than that. I would give much credit to any one of them if they said, “this is risky behavior but, at this point, I’m willing to take that risk.” But when you’re not thinking about consequences you’re simply not thinking. I don’t see why the word “stupid” would not apply to them.
I am guilty of overusing the word “stupid”. We all are. It’s said often enough, especially when talking to the television. But what really is stupidity? And are the people being called stupid truly stupid? Are these just people punished with verbal abuse for committing the crime of not thinking the way I think? Most would agree that this form of expletive, using the word “stupid”, is little more than opinion, just a quick grab at a retort. But why do we insert it so often?
One recently republished article from The Independent, “5 Habits of Stupid People that Smart People Don’t Have,” by Lisa Schonhaar and Gisela Wolf, is useful:
1. Stupid people blame others for their own mistakes
2. Stupid people always have to be right
3. Stupid people react to conflicts with anger and aggression
4. Stupid people ignore the needs and feelings of other people
5. Stupid people think they are better than everyone else
The only problem I have with this list—and I do agree that stupid people have all five traits—is that narcissists also exhibit these traits and some of them are smart.
Now I know this does not seem to require deep analysis. When we’re in the presence of stupidity no one is going to pause to accumulate data to prove the legitimacy of a claim. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, intended as a show-stopper; here, the spectator if they are honest, will admit they are more entertained by the speaker’s gutsiness than their measure of intelligence. “Do you believe he said that?”
But some people really are bottom-of-the-barrel stupid. That’s why the word sometimes works. And I choose to exclude those who suffer from a documentable intellectual deficit—people labeled mentally retarded because their IQ score is below 70. If we blindly accept a low IQ as a limitation, then we have a society of people who have little means to overcome a limitation that they were assigned at birth which they did not ask for. And I, for one, don’t think of the mentally retarded as stupid.
I won’t go into great detail about the six to nine (depending on your internet research) different types of intelligence: visual/spatial, linguistic/verbal, body-kinesthetic, logical/mathematical, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic and pedagogical. This list was compiled by Harvard professor, Howard Gardner. He has created a lot of stir noting that most IQ tests typically only cover two areas of intelligence: language and logical. It’s perhaps true, then, that some folks deemed stupid might actually be geniuses.
And anyone can utter something foolish, sometimes. That doesn’t mean that their stupidity is a chronic condition. There is both momentary stupidity and permanent stupidity. We should applaud the people who are consistently stupid because they’re easier to pick out. People who are erratically stupid frustrate me because it makes it hard to be judgmental, which is something I do recreationally.
So, I came up with some criteria of my own. I’ve been thinking about this list for some time and I feel, as it stands, it’s comprehensive. If someone consistently exhibits two or more of the following, the label of “stupid” is intelligently applied. Stupid people are stupid always; intelligent people are only always occasionally stupid.
STUPIDITY IN NUMBERS OR “I’M WITH STUPID”
Isn’t it time those who use the sheeple argument saw the irony?——to be one of a gazillion who run to this handy term to describe people who follow the crowd? More than the people they think they’re outing, I find that these folks utilize the “strength in numbers” argument: “if my brethren feel this way, I feel this way.” But there is also stupidity in numbers. One person might wax moronic. But a whole gaggle of stupid can cause an insurrection. Or at least give it a shot.
I really, really a lot want to call the January 6 insurrectionists stupid. These thousands of men and women credited with attempting a coup against the U.S. Congress because they believed the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump indulged themselves in many foolish ways. From consciously creating evidence of their own crimes (their own footage is broadcast more than footage from the Capitol’s surveillance cameras), to shouting from every social media rooftop that they were there and even posing for pictures others took (like the naughty little boy kicking back on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk which he knew he wasn’t supposed to do).
The insurrection itself might not be a product of stupidity (which doesn’t mean it was a product of smarts) but the gee-golly quality found in the above-mentioned expressions of “insurrection” make them seem pretty bottom-of-the-barrel to me. If you’re really trying to overthrow the government wouldn’t you put away the narcotic (smartphone) so you can keep focus on the task of overthrow, which probably requires a fair amount of focus? These people weren’t trying to overtake the government, these people went to Disneyland.
THE WILLING SUSPENSION OF INTELLIGENCE
We all see it and probably live it, at times. Not admitting you’re wrong is so important to so many that they simply dismiss data that opposes their belief system. This comes in many forms, conspiracy theories being most dominant. A conspiracy theorist—with the aid of a healthy brotherhood and sisterhood—uses crazy theories to answer for issues that seem puzzling otherwise—or not, since the issue itself is often invented or borrowed (think QAnon). These theories come with gaping holes; therefore, “dumb” is used to caulk up any loose ideas, of which there are usually plenty.
And remember, stupidity is twofold. It is not strictly the absence of intelligence but the willing abatement of intelligence. Being ignorant doesn’t make you stupid as long as you are capable and interested in learning something you don’t know. I don’t mean knowledge——anyone can memorize——but the integration of information. If someone plugs their ears and starts singing because they know an opinion contrary to their own looms nearby, we can safely say that person has been ordained with stupid.
When a gun advocate protests gun control litigation, I think that person is engaging in willful stupidity. How often have we witnessed someone screaming about how no one’s gonna take their gun away yet I’ve never met a gun control advocate that wanted to ban gun ownership. I’ve heard of banning assault weapons and making it harder for unstable people to purchase firearms. But gun owners always invent this narrative where they want to believe someone is coming for their precious firearms. They respond to calls for control as if something entirely different was being stated.
PREJUDICE/VIOLENCE
This is an easy one. Racism is the most notable form of prejudice but, truly, it happens when something or person(s) is deemed abhorrent; divinity is often “cited” as evidence. Prejudice says, “I don’t understand it—I should probably kill it”. Not understanding something is not the issue. We all misunderstand many things we are in no hurry to clear up. But we make peace with our ignorance—we don’t flaunt it. Prejudice includes the decision to not understand something and then to choose to view that thing as wrong.
I think there’s a real danger to the barely civil war between liberals and conservatives. The good folks at QAnon do their part to make it physical. What do we make of Edgar Welch, the man who shot up the Washington DC pizzeria that he believed was a front for the Democratic Party’s sex trafficking rituals? In the video he made of himself, he is earnest in his belief that this evil actually existed in the back room of the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. “I can’t let you grow up in a world that’s so corrupt by evil,” is his message to his daughters while driving to the pizzeria. The impression is that he believed he might not return. Is it unfair to categorize Mr. Welch as stupid? I think not. I think it’s even generous.
PERSONAL INTERESTS OF LIVES OF OTHERS
An old saying goes something like, “Simple minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas”. And when I say simple minds, I’m talking about cattiness. To be clear, I’m no genius in this regard; I’ve done plenty of gossiping about others. But there are people—I won’t name names—who do a lot of talking behind the backs of others. I’m just saying. Doing this a lot is a sign of low self-esteem. Hell, even doing it a little is. After all, we all get down on ourselves sometimes and pointing out another person’s flaws reminds us of our occasional superiority. But if you find yourself constantly in this basement of intellect, you might want to consider a self-diagnosis. And I suggest that the conclusion of that diagnosis might be stupidity.
IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION
Who coined the phrase, “I WANT IT ALL AND I WANT IT NOW”? Television commercials are effective presumably because people actually believe them; they offer the potential of instant gratification for a want that the consumer may not even be aware they had. No one wants to feel left out. And it’s this desire for instant gratification that reveals the limits of our intelligence. We all sometimes want something immediately, of course; a drowning person might reasonably want air pronto. This impulse often harkens back to infancy where being granted something on demand without negotiations was possible. But any being taking the trip back to infancy may have had trouble developing past that infancy. I don’t think adults often say, “I want it now,” seriously, but we know that many of them do want it pretty damn soon. The baby thus “learns” that the result often should be that things ought to stay the way they want them to be.
Think New Coke. It took the website Save Darfur ten years to get 1,000,000 signatures on their petition regarding that region’s genocide in the 2000s. By contrast, the number of phone call complaints the Coca-Cola company received per day when it launched New Coke in 1985 was over 1,500. That would mean reaching 1,000,000 in less than 2 years—if Coke didn’t solve the “crisis” by bringing back Coke Classic. Sudanese mothers beaten in front of their children? That’s pretty bad. But change the recipe of a soft drink? That’s an abomination and a call to action. At least it is for stupid folk.
ALLOWING EMOTION TO OVERRIDE INFORMATION
Generally speaking, this should be allowing emotion to override anything. But there are tense moments in life and anyone might succumb to this temptation. Which means anyone can be temporarily stupid. In fact, this happens quite often. But for stupid people, it’s like a plateau they live on.
THE DECISION TO APPEAR STUPID
Many people have either seen or heard of Chet Hanks’ farcical video rant about vaccinations. He begins the video by explaining how he decided to get vaccinated and he believes everyone should do the same. After a few moments, he yells, “Psych!, then launches into his real rant about how vaccines are stupid, yo. Here’s a partial transcript: "With the amount of people that I know recently that have got COVID and with the numbers rising, I think it's important for me to say that I got the vaccine." The thing that sticks here is that Hanks is speaking intelligently. This shows that he understands how to calmly explain a position based on personal experience. Therefore, what follows is a deliberate channeling of stupidity: “Psych! If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I never had COVID. Ya ain't stickin’ me with that motherfuckin’ needle,” “If you're sick, stay inside. I'm tired of workin’ around y'all. If you're in danger, stay your ass inside. I'm tired of wearing the motherfuckin’ mask!” So, he was just putting us on. He psyched our gullible butts then laid it down motherfuckers!
It’s bad enough that this is a white guy trying to sound like a black guy. But he chooses the stereotype of a black “gangsta”. Being the son of two famous and wealthy actors, I doubt that the “hood” someone like Chet Hanks hails from has anything to do with the rough side of life. But here’s something we can relate to; we want to be part of that grit and danger so we talk the way we think a tough guy from the hood would talk. But, in doing so, he mocks what he idolizes. He can never be what he wants the world to think he is so he pretends this tone is just a part of his persona; he somehow happens to be “gangsta”. Now, that’s stupid. He believes that stupid is a more direct channel to truth; the speaker is not hiding behind articulate statements (like I am right now). He may even think that black men will say something like, “Right on, brother!” Of course, plenty of black men would probably just shake their heads in disgust and pity. Why? Because Chet chose to be stupid and anyone who sees the video knows it.
And that’s a good starter’s list. It might grow because I’m always amazed at how stupid morphs itself like a virus and returns in a form we don’t at first recognize. Again, January 6, 2021, comes to mind.
Something that all these items have in common is fear; for stupid people, fear is the decision-maker. Fear is their go-to emotion. Many of the criteria listed are grounded first in fear: mostly fear of what they don’t understand. Fear itself does not reveal stupidity, but stupidity often—not always—has fear at its base.
And a final morsel: studies show (don’t ask) that there is no link between intelligence and the ability to spell well. Just in case you noticed errors here. And I don’t have a copy editor so I can’t guarantee that I didn’t step on the toes of grammatical literacy. That’s my disclaimer (because I don’t want to end up in the Stupid Club).
Having said that, though, if you’re white and find the need to take the word “dog” and spell it “dawg”, you do deserve to be slapped.
This is why my favorite insult is “moron”. People may wear “asshole” like it’s a badge of honor, but no one likes to be called stupid.