People are constantly self-righteously bitching about how much they “hate stupid people” and how awful it is for them to have to deal with them. Of course usually the bitcher is at least as stupid as whomever is being bitched about, but naturally they are oblivious to their own idiocy. Regardless, others nod and chime in about the plague of stupidity that has infected everyone but them and the injustice that they too are forced to endure being surrounded by such morons.
Why is it socially acceptable to hold people responsible for their own intelligence? And why do people pretend to think that they think intelligence is such a desirable trait anyway? People like to feel like they themselves are intelligent, but it is obvious that as a society we value appearance, financial success, and athletic prowess far more than intelligence.
In keeping with the irrational contradictions, of course none of us have unintelligent children. They are all misunderstood geniuses with learning disabilities.
People don’t, in general, hate stupid people.
They hate the fucking stupid things that stupid people do.
I am sorry. I’ll try to be nicer if you try to be smarter :D.
This is my standard smart-ass response
I don’t hate people who are mentally slow or truly don’t know something. In fact, when someone is vulnerable enough to reveal to me they aren’t getting something, I tend to like that person.
Most times, I don’t even feel anything negative towards strangers who do dingus things, like errors/acts of thoughtlessness on the road. I think it’s because I am always cognizant of the fact that I–a major dingus–does dingus stuff too, and I always feel bad about it. If I want people to be compassionate towards me, I’ve got to have compassion too. Honking my horn and waving my fist not only is dangerous, but it spreads meanness and ill tempers.
What I hate is dealing with a person who isn’t even trying to be insightful about themselves. I asked someone if the street vendor lady had any good cookies today, and DumbAss spent five minutes telling me about the ugly fat women who were standing in line in front of him. This guy knows I don’t like talking mean about people, yet his loud-mouth bigotry lacks self-awareness or control. What makes this stupid in addition to mean is that this guy proclaims himself to be a Nice Guy. Yeah, he’s one of those douchebags. This is the kind of stupidity that I can’t tolerate. Mindless blathering is the height of stupidity.
This. Truly stupid behavior, to me, is not based on IQ. It’s based on repeatedly failing to recognize or outright denying your limitations.
My father had, I’m sure, a genius IQ. He was a computer whiz and very knowledgeable on many subjects. He was also an awful, awful driver. As he aged, his driving just got worse and worse. He refused to admit that there was a problem. He maintained that he was an excellent motorist. This was truly stupid behavior- especially considering the possible consequences.
Stupidity may annoy; but intelligence guarantees nothing else. Not even itself, if you regard the retrograde and harmful beliefs and actions of many undoubtedly highly intelligent people.
Besides which, I don’t feel that clever, compared with millions of people capable of things I can’t do; yet regarding their words, even if merely on the internet, and the triviality of their hopes and dreams, one may be left unimpressed at the end.
To sum: minus brutishness and treachery — which to be sure mark the stupid, but also the intelligent often enough — I would always rather be in the company of someone dumb with a good heart rather than someone with a high IQ who would put me in a gulag.
OP sounds stupid.
Agreed. I’d rather be intelligent than stupid.
Many people do proclaim to hate stupid people. I suppose I have no way of knowing whether they truly feel this way, and perhaps it is only posturing to cover insecurity with regard to their own intelligence.
The guy saying mean things about the “ugly fat women” instead of saying whether there were any good cookies may well be stupid, and his stupidity may be the cause of his lack of self-awareness, but isn’t the actual problem that he was acting like a jerk? Why focus on his stupidity when that isn’t what is objectionable about him?
And thanks for your clever observations, Chimera and John Mace. I suppose I did neglect to mention the obvious, that of course I enjoy and appreciate intelligence, and would not wish to lose one bit of it by any measure.
No, his problem is that he’s stupid about his meanness. If he used his wit to be mean, that would be somewhat redeeming. But instead, everything that comes out of his mouth is cringe-worthy. Not the least bit funny. And it’s loud too. Easily picked up by eavesdropping ears.
There are other people who are blathering, foot-in-mouth, walking disaster areas, but they aren’t mean. Yet they too are stupid. And I’m going to keep quietly hating these people, if that’s alright with you.
Perhaps you could get a mod to change the thread title then.
Intelligence may be overrated, but willful stupidity and/or ignorance ain’t nothing to brag about, neither.
Look at pop culture…who is more likely to be the main character of a TV series? The person who is intelligent, or the one who is so dumb that an idiot plot is almost believable? If a character is smart, that character is usually portrayed as being mean as a snake.
We are all free to hate whomever we wish, even for no reason at all, but is it different somehow than hating someone for being ugly? Or physically handicapped? Perhaps for stuttering? When I am conversing with someone who stutters, I do have a hard time, but it is the situation I hate, not the person. No one would choose to be stupid and it is surely hardest on the stupid person.
Being stupid takes a lot of the pressure off. Life wasn’t so bad until my 8th grade math teacher told my parents my IQ to nudge me to do better. From that point forward I got nothing but “You aren’t applying yourself,” and “Oh dear, what you could accomplish if you were only to work harder.” Yeah, and maybe if the teacher didn’t teach by writing the assignment on the board and leaving so he could play principal and construction superintendent, leaving us to fend for ourselves while learning from the book (no study groups allowed in the class) I could’ve had a breakthrough moment and Algebra wouldn’t still fuck me over. Maybe if he, like everybody when they tried to explain things, didn’t start sounding like the grownups in Charlie Brown specials after a few seconds I could’ve learned something. Maybe if the formulae didn’t swim before my eyes and inside my head I’d get the same answer twice. Maybe if Attention Deficit Disorder didn’t just mean a kid bouncing off the walls in 1967 I wouldn’t have had a desire to punctuate with a kick to his balls every word in “I. Don’t. Know. What’s. Going. On. In. Class. Or. In. My. Head.”
On the other hand, being smart gave me some tools to work around it. I’d’ve been even more lost if I were dumb, but at least I wouldn’t know it.
Not edited for self-indulgence. I considered it, but saw a shiny new website.
Why would I change the thread title?
Aw, you don’t know what “overrated” means, I guess. I’m not saying that intelligence is bad or that it’s worse than stupidity; I’m saying it’s not as great as it’s made out to be.
sMarts are beter then stupids. Jist axks me.
I don’t think I ever consider anyone stupid. But as others have pointed out, there are many people who are willfully ignorant and it’s certainly appropriate to try to call this to their attention in the hope of causing them to recognize this fact.
The important point to remember in doing this though is that you will virtually never see the fruits of your efforts. This type of behavior likely evolved over many years if not decades and any contribution you may make to changing someone will at best be one more snowflake on what will hopefully be an avalanche of realization that will one day come.
One thing that I do tend to notice in people though is a lack of intellectual curiosity. Even particularly bright people seem to lack this spark of childish wonder and curiosity. Similarly, I’ve never thought intelligence was a prerequisite for being curious. Yet this seems to be the rarest quality of all.
You might as well be asking why is it okay to hate serial killing rapists, but not deaf people. The minor inconvenience caused by accomodating someone with a handicap does not compare to the grief caused by someone who spreads harm into the world.
I don’t hate stupid people who are stupid about meaningless stuff that has zero affect on me. The problem is that rarely doesn’t stupidity stay in one place; there’s a butterfly effect. A parent that think McDonald’s is healthy dinner food isn’t just fucking up their own diet. They are fucking up their kids’ diets. The boss that has the bright idea to create a “tool” that will help make a particular process fairer and more objective, when in actuality this tool needlessly complicates what normally is a straightforward process AND make the process less fair and objective, is not just wasting their own time. They are wasting their employees’ time with this garbage.
It’s all explained in the documentary Ideocracy.
Intelligence is highly over rated. So is Windex, but I still use it to clean windows. Yet all in all I’d rather be stupid enough not to know how stupid I am, people like that seem to be the happiest.