September 27, 2007

• Internet Island Topic Post #29

  Stupidity vs. Intelligence

  I always say I don’t like stupidity. A few months ago, the Island had a challenge about “mistakes”. We all make them. But we aren’t all stupid, are we? I consider myself intelligent, but I’ve made some “stupid” decisions. In fact, I made a real stupid move just last week. (Which inspired this post!) This time out, the subject for discussion is “Stupidity/Intelligence”. From the sublime to the ridiculous, we will be offering up our ideas, observations, and recollections of the best and the worst our minds have dictated to us.

  29.1: “What a stupid thing I did!” Have you ever done anything “stupid” ? Blog about the absolutely “stupidest” act you’ve performed, words you’ve blurted out, or anything else that proves you aren’t as smart as you thought you were.

  hmmm… I try not to do stupid things. Stupidity is a huge pet peeve of mine. Stupid mistakes, I’ve made a few. Call them temporary lapses in judgement. I’m happy that I rarely make truly stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes are the ones that make you look at yourself like an alien. Like what the h*** was I just thinking… oh yeah, I wasn’t. I think that the less “in the moment” you are, the easier it is to make stupid mistakes, but only people who are never in the moment, never paying attention to what is going on around them, are stupid in my book.

  The last truly stupid thing I did was on vacation a couple years ago. As I was driving home on a highway which was having construction issues (as in there was evidence of construction, but no evidence of any workers), I ran my car over a huge boulder in the road. Granted I was surrounded by cars and two semi-trucks, and there was no shoulder to swerve around the rock, but I still feel that there must have been a way to avoid the “collision” that I did not take into account. If I had only had the presence of mind to slow down, I might have been able to force the other cars on the road to give me room to avoid the rock that cost me a couple thousand dollars in repair and a higher interest rate on my insurance.

  29.2: “Stupid is as Stupid Does”. Are there degrees of “stupidity”? Can one be “less stupid” than another and still be stupid?

  Well, judging in a stupid contest would be like trying to split hairs. If were were talking about hares, it might be possible, but unless we’re comparing President Bush to the common man on the street… well, there’s just no comparison. It may be that the only way to say someone is dumber than the next guy is by looking at how much attention they receive because of their stupidity. The more people think you’re stupid, the more stupid you must be. When we look at stupidity, we are most often seeing not only their IQ , but their EQ as well. If a person is stupid, it’s okay… they’re just not the brightest bulb in the box. But if someone is socially inept as well, then they are REALLY stupid, and the world throws up its hands in disgust.

  29.3: “I’m With Stupid” Remember that old Tee Shirt declaration? There was usually an arrow pointing to the person standing next to the person wearing the Tee. Here’s a chance to write a real deep rant about the stupidest person in your life.

  Funny you should mention this. I just saw the cover of Mad magazine the other day and the cover had Alfred E. Neuman with one of those shirts on, standing next to George Bush. I think George Bush is the stupidest person in all of our lives. I’ve never met the man, and I never hope to. But there is no denying he influences us all. What a loathsome specimen of humanity he is. It’s scarcely conceivable that he is human. Sometimes I think he’s channeling his inner ape and will start flinging poo at the nearest camera lens. And what’s really scary is, sometimes I wonder if maybe it’s all an act. Can anyone really be as stupid as he appears to be and still hold such an important job? Sometimes I think he is really politically savvy and just morally stupid. Maybe he is a kind of idiot savant or has barely functional autism… gotta go to Iraq, definitely, definitely, BOOM! BOOM! gotta save the heathens, gotta go to heaven….

  There are really no words to adequately describe how much I loathe (p)resident (evil) Bush, the first zombie-American in the White House.

  29.4: I recently saw a film called “Idiocracy”  (2006) starring Luke Wilson and directed by Mike Judge (who created cartoon characters Beavis and Butthead). The movie takes place in a future where the President of the U.S. is a professional wrestler, and the IQ’s of everyone in the nation have sunk to an incredible low. I read that we live in an “age of information”. But is America, or the world in general, gaining knowledge, or in fact getting stupider?

  This sounds like a really good movie, and by good, I mean entertaining. The idea of having a professional wrestler in the house is imminently scary. Did you ever see the cartoon the Oblongs? Their mayor was a professional wrestler too. The show made fun of stupidity as well as social conformity and a host of other societal illnesses.

  There was supposedly a study done that shows internet usage causes a decrease in intelligence. I don’t know if I can fully get behind the findings, BUT it is possible that the computer is the new “boob-tube.” Aside from those of us who blog or make extensive, well edited, grammatically correct postings online, the internet really is full of idiocy. From net-speak and willful misspellings to general ignorance, the internet might well be dumbing-down its users. Sadly, America seems to value ignorance over intelligence, stupid belligerence over well-reasoned action. There is no effort put forward by most Americans, and those of us who do aspire to intellectual greatness are looked down upon as crackpots and weirdos. There is no reward for great thinkers. Quite the opposite. It seems to be a national pastime to keep your head down, your mouth shut, and your hands where everyone can see them. Don’t even attempt to nudge people into a thinking mood unless you want to be publicly ridiculed.

  It’s sad how our nation, founded on religious and intellectual freedoms, has come full circle. We are now free to criticize everyone and be as dumb as we like. In fact, the more you conform to intellectual mediocrity, the more socially acceptable your peers will find you. People at the top of the intellectual bell curve are as rare as supermodels. Both are freaks of nature when compared to what is “normal.” While I don’t think we need more rail-thin supermodels, I wouldn’t mind a few more finely honed intellectuals.

  29.5: The opposite of “stupidity” is “intelligence.” If you don’t wish to remark about how stupid you are or someone you know is, then let’s hear about your intelligence, or the intelligence of someone you know.

  I consider myself intelligent because I try to be intelligent. I don’t sit back on the things I’ve done, well satisfied that I accomplished something in the past and therefore do not need to try in the future. I want to continue to accomplish things. They speak of people creating their opus. I don’t want to reach a pinnacle and stop. Stopping is like saying that you give up. You’re settling for mediocrity even if you’re only comparing yourself to yourself. I’m proud of my intelligence. If not for my intelligence, I would never have been able to pull myself out of the pit of low self-esteem that adolescence dug for me. Beyond my intelligence, I don’t feel that I have much going for me. Throughout my childhood, my so-called peers harassed me mercilessly. I even considered killing myself at one point. It was only when I got angry and realized where my strengths lay, that I was able to find the strength to go on. Why should I kill myself when I am better than most people. I may not be gorgeous. I may not be supermodel thin. In all ways but my intelligence, I am average. But it is my intelligence that sets me apart. It is my ability to reason and think that makes me a better person than the people who tormented me in school. Looks fade, labors are washed away by the auspices of time, but intellectual ramblings in the form of print or other expressions of intellect are recorded for posterity. Even if something I say or think only becomes a meme, it will never die. It will percolate and procreate in people’s minds for generation, the viral progeny of my mind, if not my body.

  29.6: Here’s the ‘serious’ subtopic. There is a lot of debate among proponents of “Intelligent Design” and “Evolution”. The concept of Intelligent Design is based on the Biblical recounting of God creating the world in six days, with man appearing late in the week to start messing things up. (last part of the sentence is my own observation). Evolution is a scientific theory proposed first by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book “Origin of the Species”. The evolutionists decry “creationism” and the creationists maintain that evolution has never been scientifically proven, which is a fact. I’d like to hear from you about which “theory” you believe is true. The reason why I’m including this in a topic about stupidity is because there is an actual museum you can visit which shows dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark. For some reason, this seems stupid to me. What about you?

  Yes, dinosaurs on the ark is completely stupid to me too. There have been scientific studies which show how the “primordial goop” could have been sparked into a semblance of life through electrical discharge. Inorganic compounds are formed in nature all the time. In the dim recesses of our planet’s past, electrical storms and electrical discharge from volcanic activity could have caused these compounds to form organic organisms. Or bacteria and virus could have been brought to earth via meteorites in ice. Extremophile organisms surrounding volcanic vents in the depths of the ocean or in the icy reaches of our north and south poles make this a strong possibility too. Whether or not you believe that single celled organisms evolved to form the complex life you see today, there’s no denying that inorganic compounds can form life-like “organism” under the proper conditions. If scientists can create “life” in a lab, what is so strange about the idea of evolution? The Bible is all propaganda anyway. If you’ve read it, it has a couple genesis stories, not just one. It’s a compilation of folktales and dogma, nothing more. People who stick to what they’re told will never be anything more than robots.

  29.7: This next question/topic comes from a blog entry I read on Islander  Emily’s (BoureeMusique) site: What do YOU think is the purpose of education in America… or wherever you call home? Also I’d like to know if “Education” is broken and needs fixing (see 29.4) or are we riding down the educational path to enlightenment?

  In theory, the purpose of education in America has always been to create an informed populace to support the idea of democracy. Without an informed, intelligent populace, there can be no democracy. A populace which has no idea what is going on and can only do what it is told is more apt to be a republic or a dictatorship.

  OOPS! We are a republic and some might argue that we are currently under the control of a dictatorship (whether they mean Pres. Bush by that or the bureaucracy which leads our governmental branches around by their respective noses). The true purpose of education in America has become indoctrination. Those children most successful in school are the ones who can turn off their ability to think for themselves. Those children who buck the system are also the losers. Because they reject everything, they don’t get the education necessary to fight the system when they grow up. Most of them drop out. Many of them end up on drugs or in trouble with the law. They were so busy rebeling against a system which supports lies and propaganda that they didn’t avail themselves of the actual benefits of free schooling.

  I won’t say that the only way for children to get a good education in our school system is to take their education into their own hands, but without self-motivated interest in education or parents who take the time to get involved in the education of their child, most children lose out in our system. It is not designed for excellence. It is designed for mediocrity. Children are not inspired to excel or even rewarded for it, unless it is in the venues which meet with the approval of the administrators. Any child which is even the least bit original or different is severely sanctioned by their peers and mostly ignored by their teachers. Our system is not one designed to create excellence in our citizenry. It is one designed only to churn out little robots for the continuation and support of a system of self-serving bureaucrats and bloodsuckers.

  A fix for the public education system would require more money than our government currently dedicates to it. If you ask me, our military spending and our education spending should be swapped. In addition, they should revamp the “IQ” test to take into account the various types of learning styles. Much is made of IQ tests pigeonholing children, but if the test was used to assess personality and styles of learning over finding a person’s overall learning quotient, the benefits to children would be untold. Instead of pigeonholing a child’s potential, it would give educators some idea of how to teach specific children. On the one hand, it would make education much more complex than it is now, but on the other hand, it would allow children to reach their full potential by catering to their strengths rather than penalizing them for their limitations. I think that it would be worth it.

  • 11:38 am
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