Is there such thing as the ultimate stupidity?!? Or, someone who’s STUPID for matter?
Someone’s made a mistake is considered stupid, but that mistakes could be based upon many things – biological factor like lack of sleep, lack of proper nutrition, stress, etc. How calling someone stupid, yet the cause of that so-called stupidity was merely lack of experience?
What if the habit of informally calling someone or yourself “stupid” or any mental degrading word to label one’s mistake, were to be discarded and instead produce the habit of explicitly finding the problem of an error. Would society function better?
Take for example, you are given a lot of tasks to do but can’t compete. So you call yourself “stupid.” But then you say to yourself, you just lack managment skills and need to sort out your priority? (Of course, your not saying the words in your head but just mentally think of it.)
Or, maybe I’m not thinking that clearly now? (Ok, you can call me stupid. )
What if the habit of informally calling someone or yourself “stupid” or any mental degrading word to label one’s mistake, were to be discarded and instead produce the habit of explicitly finding the problem of an error. Would society function better?
Yes society would function better. Reinforcing the notion that one is stupid by calling onself stupid doesn’t help, it hurts and makes one (at very least) distracted from solution building.
There is a difference between stupidity and ignorance, just as there is a difference between a mistake and intent.
Ignorance is simply not knowing something, which can be easily corrected.
Stupidity is intentional disregard of knowledge.
A mistake can happen to anyone, and can be caused by a myriad of factors. An act is stupid if the person intentionally ignored the risks, and charged ahead, anyway, preceeded aware that they did not have all of the knowledge needed in the situation but did not care, or acted completely contrary to common sense.
Name-calling after the fact helps no one. It is much better to examine the situation and find out what led to the problem, and make the correction so it does not happen again. Lables only encourage the person to stop trying, and to BECOME what they are called out of a sense of hopelessness.
The merriam webster definition of stupid does include an entry which includes carelessness and lack of reason in the description–possibly inolving the fault of the person described. However, I think intentional disregard is more of a possible cause for stupidity.
But I agree, it is damaging and unhelpful to use the word most of the time.
Let’s not forget book smarts and street smarts. One might call someone stupid for not understanding a math problem but another might call someone stupid for not doing something different in a fight. Stupidity isn’t about IQ’s in my opinion it is about experience and what a person knows about something is due to past experience. For example if I’m fighting a guy who likes to throw right hooks all the time and I knew this ahead of time I would try to defend my left cheek more than my right one. But if I did not know this can you call me stupid for defending my right cheek more?
A comic (perhaps George Carlin? I wish I remember who it was) had a routine a while back in which he advised people to answer, “Yes” whenever they did something & someone else asked them, “What’s the matter with you? Are you stupid?”
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