Oh, so many jokes, so little time…
Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the sign of the feminine. This course in Critical Psychology follows the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and most recently, Avital Ronell, in a philosophical examination of those operations and technologies that we conduct in order to render ourselves uncomprehending. Stupidity, which has been evicted from the philosophical premises and dumbed down by psychometric psychology, has returned in the postmodern discourse against Nation, Self, and Truth and makes itself felt in political life ranging from the presidency to Beevis and Butthead. This course examines stupidity.
lots of class and conformity issues, but if you ever do take a class in psychometric measurements and happen to have a sister with an IQ of 100, you should come to think that the average person is pretty stupid. If not, then . . . . . . . “you know.”
But without smart, there would be no stupid, hence it gets measured and falls on a bell shaped curve.
The bottom half is stupid by comparison==but 60% of them are still “functional.”
Without stupid functionals, we wouldn’t have war, religion, or politics.
Stupid huh?
is Bush gonna be a guest speaker?
I’m trying to imagine the Report Card:
Psychology: C+
Algebra: C-
History: F
Geography: F
Stupidity: A
If you notice, the contestant had to use the Fifty-Fifty lifeline also to get last two answers. Maybe it was the her nerves?
#4…that image is a bad fake.
I agree with #4. I think the image is fake, look at the question box, something has been poorly erased…
Whoops! I meant #6
“Your Ass” was one of the answers that they removed for her.
a lot of facial hair for a “she”. probably more photoshop.
that STUPID scales up quite easily. Thats how we get religion, professional sports, gun clubs, talk radio, Faux Spews, and the Repuglican Party.
Stupid is “uniform” and moldable. Very little resistance except for what it is aimed against.
Stupid might even be the glue of society.
Most important concepts contain it own contradiction. Look how stupid smart acts on occasion?
* Saddam attacked us on 911!
* Saddam really DID have WMDs but snuck them out.
* Democrats hate the troops
* Raising the minimum wage will bring down the whole economy!
* Obama is secretly a Nigerian!
* Gays will ruin your marriage!
* Regulating business is the same as communism.
* “Islamofascism!!!!!”
* Liberals love illegal immigration
* John Kerry faked his wounds and stuff.
* Creationism is the same as science.
* Affordable healthcare is the beginning-of-the-end for free markets.
* Habeas Corpus is a “nicety” in a post-911 world.
… and this is the SHORT LIST of conservative stupidity.
How can a two-party democracy function when one party isn’t even TRYING to silence the stupid paranoid nutcases in their party? No, that understates the situation… they’ve made these nutcases their BASE.
Greg Allen said: “We’ll always have the hopelessly stupid among us, but how the hell did they get control of the whole GOP?”
Because they already had control over the Democrats and the Obama-bots…
bobbo,
While I tend to agree with your, I don’t like you lumping all religion together.
I’m sure you are aware that some hella-smart people are/were devoutly religious: Barak Obama, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandella, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dag Hammarskjold, Albert Schweitzer, Jimmy Carter, … come to mind. The full list would probably fill a book.
Of course, there are really really stupid religious people too… and they are stupid in uniquely religious ways.
But, you’d have to be kind of stupid not to notice that some of the smartest people the world has ever seen where religious.
About that article, the course is an attempt to explain “stupid” actions, as a rational, normal human’s natural response to an education in modern French Philosophy.
fake
# 13 Greg Allen
I think you missed one.
* pedro
# 16 pedro
“#11 Where the hell was Obama named in this post?”
You really don’t get it do you? The fact that you asked that question means you don’t even understand the argument. Figures!
Most stupid people can read but can’t comprehend. I think you are a shining example of that pedro.
#16 pedro
“…until the illegal take-over ends.”
OK, just to provoke a real, live demonstration of active stupidity, what illegal takeover would that be, Mr. Pedro?
I really want to be enlightened. Really.
>> BigBoyBC said, on August 25th, 2009 at 7:32 am
>> Greg Allen said: “We’ll always have the hopelessly stupid among us, but how the hell did they get control of the whole GOP?”
>> Because they already had control over the Democrats and the Obama-bots…
Of course, there are stupid Democrats BUT IT IS NOT THE SAME.
Look at my list — most of those glaring stupidities have been said BY THE GOP LEADERSHIP!
Your idiots are not on the fringe but are RUNNING YOUR PARTY.
For example, Sarah Palin — YOUR WILDLY POPULAR LEADER — stupidly accused Obama of “palin’ around with terrorists” and ran with the “death boards” nonsense.
And it isn’t just your GOP leaders, nearly 60% of rank-and-file Republicans are conspiracy nuts, believing this “birther” stupidity.
It goes on-and-on like that with the GOP and conservatives. Some ridiculously high amount of conservatives think Saddam really did have WMDs, weaponless and ready-to-roll as Bush claimed. To compound the problem, some of the GOP presidential candidates seemed to be desperately clinging to this stupidity.
Yes, there are stupid liberals but it is not the same. Not even close.
Was underwater Basket Weaving filled?
J,
I read the original blog but, honestly (and perhaps ironically!) it didn’t make much sense to me.
I know Friedrich Nietzsche pretty well but not Gilles Deleuze or Avital Ronell.
There are other people writing on the subject that make more sense to me… especially in reltionship to “faith based realities.”
This is where I actually agree with some of my religion-bashing friends here but I don’t link this to religion.
Even atheists make “faith-based reality” statements pretty often. For example, despite being well-aware of Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, they still claim that “religion has killed more people than anything else.”
Or it can be be purely political. It must hurt-like-hell to admit that you cheer-led a nation into a needless war, causing the needless death, maiming, homelessness, suffering and grieving of untold thousands of people including, perhaps, your neighbor.
So, despite even what THEIR OWN LEADERS SAY, they still believe that Saddam had WMDs and was an imminent threat to America. These people don’t have low-IQ, necessarily, but they make themselves stupid about Iraq.
Well. bye y’all. Be smart!
Greg==you are quite right and it has always been a vexing mystery to me==there are quite a few “smart” people who are religious.
Or are there?
Certainly the curve is slanted to the left IQ wise.
When you do a match of IQ to education level reached, or current job categories, or any other grouping you wish to name==you always wind up with the same thing–a bell shaped curve with the highest levels just about the same. Then the curves demonstrate different slopes and different low ends.
But still, yes, many smart people are religious. Gee, I wonder if that means there is more than just stupidity that explains religion? Like childhood teachings? Community Pressures and so forth?
There is also “the big lie.” Like Darwin and Einstein being religious. Thats ok only if you want to include being just about totally not religious as part of your religious definition.
Still, we all should be given leave to believe what we want as stupid as we can all be. Its only when you try to influence other people with your own stupidity that the stupidity is really revealed===like on the thread about Sex Education being twisted into Kiddie Porn. You just know religion is fully involved. Thats how it rolls.
#13 “Democrats hate the troops”
ok, well that one is true.
Not ALL democrats.
Just a small minority.
The problem with all discussions pertaining to stupidity is how much they are hindered by vanity and malice. More often than not, the definition of “stupid” is “someone who doesn’t agree with my brilliant ideas,” or “someone who didn’t react the way I would have in that particular circumstance” or, even more often, “someone I just picked today to mock and scorn to make me feel smarter than I really am.”
Well, vanity is pretty much everywhere anyway.
#27 pedro
“#20 Right, because 12 million illegals & counting is something that has no impact on a society.”
Interesting. Someone must be leading this takeover by illegals and it can’t be Obama because it’s been happening for many decades now.
Who’s leading this takeover, Mr. Pedro?
Stupid is the failure to learn.
No fault of their own, they just cannot grasp the facts/evidence.
Ignorance is the refusal to learn, regardless of understanding the facts/evidence presented, the ignorant refuse to accept them over their existing knowledge.
Religious folks are IGNORANT. Not stupid.
#39–weary== Hordes of below minimum wage slaves you could cheat endlessly was created and enforced by and for certain large American Employers/interests like Hospitality, Construction, Day Labor, Yard Maintenance, Agriculture, Meat Packing etc. Then there was talk it was encouraged by Dems assuming these illegals could illegally vote as the majority of legal mexicans don’t support illegals, and then this notion got balanced by claiming the Repugs wanted to favor the Spanish Vote. I never bought that last bit even though I am rabidly anti-repuglican.
And it all still continues TODAY.
# 27 pedro
Nope. Want to try again?
I was taught over and again that stupidity has nothing to do with the quantity of knowledge one possesses, but rather, the inability to act appropriately using that knowledge.
Hence, it is possible to be ignorant, and to act in a manner that is perceived to be stupid, yet simply be ignorant and not stupid.
The epithet “stupid” is reserved for those who have knowledge that should provide them with a better sense of how to act, yet fail to do so through some character flaw.
In this interpretation, I don’t think that you can necessarily condemn Republicans or Democrats stupid, in aggregate.
Rather, there are many individual cases of stupidity on both sides, the news tends to focus on those acts of stupidity that are related to inflammatory language or lascivious behavior.
Obama’s trying as we speak to bring her on board as a czar. Perfect fit.