{"id":1105,"date":"2009-08-31T10:46:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T08:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/filosofille.wordpress.com\/?p=222"},"modified":"2026-05-12T09:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:13:13","slug":"qa-17-august-09-the-path-of-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/qa-17-august-09-the-path-of-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"QA 17. (August 09) The path of stupidity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What a mess we make when a person\u2019s worth is measured by their perceived intelligence. The \u201csmart\u201d ones strive to distinguish themselves and the \u201cstupid\u201d ones struggle to get by. It\u2019s precisely a stupid<\/em> mess, both cruel and irrational. How could anything thrive in such bitter soil?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"cropped-stupid-is.jpg\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We have begun to realise that there is more to intelligence than was believed back in the glory days of phrenology, eugenics and IQ tests. Now we recognise different kinds of intelligence and tend to accept a more open-ended concept of human potential. This is well and good: our ability to appreciate others increases as our understanding of intelligence becomes more complex. But it doesn\u2019t go far enough to break the \u201csmart-is-good\/stupid-is-rubbish\u201d bind. While the fundamental mistake is to think that there is a quality by which some people can safely be deemed more worthwhile than others, I am here today to praise stupidity.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I became a philosopher because I\u2019m stupid. Really and truly. As a kid, I never had a clue and gobbled down books frantically just trying to figure things out. This resulted in schoolwork coming fairly easily to me and so I was mislabelled as \u201cbright\u201d. (One can only be grateful not to have been saddled with \u201cgifted\u201d.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m talking about a particular kind of stupidity, where there is something you should<\/em> know, but you don\u2019t<\/em>, and you want<\/em> to. Borrowing an image from the US philosopher John D Caputo, it\u2019s the stupidity of the guy who runs around in the middle of whatever\u2019s happening, shouting What\u2019s happening?<\/em> The Latin root of \u201cstupid\u201d is stupere<\/em>, to be stunned or amazed. It\u2019s like that. Not yet burdened by shame or despair, there\u2019s a sense of innocence to it. It can be difficult, but it\u2019s workable. It\u2019s good soil. Being stupid is nothing grand; it’s not the Christian mystic\u2019s \u201ccloud of unknowing\u201d. Nor is it technical, like the not-knowing found in Eastern philosophy or Greek scepticism. It isn\u2019t a question of suspending belief \u2013 one simply doesn\u2019t know what to believe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This path isn\u2019t for everyone. Some people really do know what\u2019s going on and what to do about it, and some of those who don\u2019t know aren\u2019t terribly fussed about it. That\u2019s all fine. Problems tend to crop up when we think we know and we don\u2019t, or when we respond to ignorance (our own and others\u2019) with fear and loathing. These are the roots of terrible stupidities, characterised by close-mindedness, rigidity, envy and arrogance, and fuelled precisely by the fear engendered when so much rides on being seen as \u201csmart\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was almost 40, I went back to university to study philosophy. The first course I signed up for \u2013 with great relief \u2013 was called \u201cLearning how to learn. On becoming less stupid\u201d. Sometimes, when it\u2019s given its due and neither denied nor clung to, stupidity is the gift by which we can become a little less stupid. And sometimes a pit can become a well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a mess we make when a person\u2019s worth is measured by their perceived intelligence. The \u201csmart\u201d ones strive to distinguish themselves and the \u201cstupid\u201d ones struggle to get by. It\u2019s precisely a stupid mess, both cruel and irrational. How…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[211,110,212,213,214],"class_list":["post-1105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-everyday-philosophy","tag-ignorance","tag-intelligence","tag-john-d-caputo","tag-not-knowing","tag-stupidity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2369,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions\/2369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.further.co.za\/helen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}