If you ask me, Stupidity is a problem only to those who acknowledge it. The moment I wrote that sentence, I knew that such a great quote must belong to one of the great minds of our collective past. But it wasn’t. It was mine. Shows you…
Just think about it. Is a stupid person ever unhappy? I would dare say that they are rarely anything than success stories, in the sense that they accomplish much more than what their seeming potential had indicated to the rest of us fools.
Precisely why we should worry when we deem anyone stupid, or ‘mildly intellectually incapable’ as we put our good manners on. Careful there. That’s Forrest Gump for you, and if you have seen the movie, you know he did rather well, considering everything… even considering You perhaps.
The moment any individual concludes that the person across from them is ‘less capable’, a mistake, a crime, and hubris have been committed simultaneously. A mistake, because you surely must have missed the inherent wisdom of the situation. A crime, not against the supposed incapable victim of your criticism, but against you, as you clip your chances for learning something valuable by someone who cut through the corners and arrived at some sort of truth that you missed.
And don’t forget hubris. You thought of yourself as superior compared to another human being. Based on what grounds? Your reading list since sixth grade? Or because of your Ph.D. title from a prestigious university? Or your unique life path bringing a kid of humble beginnings to social acceptance and lucrative jobs?
So what? How can you be certain you did not miss something vital that someone less capable (by your false standards) didn’t realize? A rather tragic condition this, when you give it some serious thought…
The only mistake in this thought process is that we focus too much on the loser (the smart critic) and less on the winner (the supposed idiot). What you might call ‘stupidity’, simply works. And it is saving lives every day, some of them turning more prosperous than the lives of Nobel-Prize winners.
Says something about our standards…