Anatomy of Stupidity

(A Work in Progress)

by

Chuck Merrill

“Die Dummen werden nie alle.” [We’ll never run out of dummies.]

- Old German Proverb -

            Life presents us with many perplexities. Oddly troubling is what, on the face of it, ought to be one of the least obscure facts of human nature: stupidity. What could possibly be hard about that? Nearly any schoolchild can, without hesitation, sling an unequivocal ‘stoopid’ at this or that—and sometimes hit the target squarely.

            Most adults, however, are socialized enough to exercise caution with such a label. At any rate, they are less likely to throw it around with the same abandon. And we can probably all sympathize. Other people might take umbrage…and fire back, maybe even cause damage of some sort. Parents, spouses, bosses, cops…. Needless needling, in such cases, would be fairly ‘stupid.’

            Nevertheless, it seems undeniable to me that stupidity is on the increase. We verge upon being inundated with it. Of course, it may be that I am merely older and crustier: at a certain point, mature types are prone to intemperate outbursts. Unkind souls might even speak here of ‘dementia’ or ‘childishness.’ Such conditions surely don’t apply to me as yet.

            At any rate, the perceived proliferation of stupid stuff has led me, for the first time, to question my actual understanding of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, first attempts to puzzle it out convince me that a detailed examination will prove a long odyssey. Stupidity, it turns out, is an unplumbed abyss.

About stupidity in general

            My first discovery in the way of general truths about stupidity is its ubiquity. Sooner or later, it pops up wherever humans congregate. It seems to have no central locus in any particular country or geographic locale on earth. There are stupid Americans, just as there are stupid Europeans, Africans, Asians, islanders, maybe Eskimos too (though I admit to little experience with the populaces of the remoter places). Nor, I think it safe to say, are any given peoples immune to this affliction. Indeed, given its universality, one wonders if it might not in fact be a hitherto unknown viral or prion-based infection. This would be a source of mild comfort, lending hope of an eventual vaccine or other straightforward remedy. One does require hope, from time to time.

            Ultimately, this isn’t a likely avenue for concerted study. Instead, I fear it is something innate in the species, no more to be rooted out than, say, stereoptic vision, bipedal locomotion, or heterosexual propagation (though some, I hear, are at work on the last little problem). No, barring clear evidence to the contrary, I have to conclude that stupidity is just one of the less admirable parts of the human package.

            It gets worse. And more interesting. For, in addition to being pretty much everywhere, stupidity is, quite amazingly, something that can be elicited in persons of (a) either gender, (b) every age, (c) any economic status, and, most astonishingly, (d) every definable level of intelligence. It should surprise no one that women can act as stupidly as men—though males are widely thought to be far more susceptible. Likewise, children (and, as mentioned, some older folks) are capable of remarkable catalogs of stupid stuff. Of them, however, that is natural and to be expected. They either don’t yet know any better—or have advanced so far in pursuit of higher wisdom as to appear foolish. (Wisdom, it should be noted, has long been confused with silliness. And they are perhaps variations on the same thing. For myself, I haven’t yet attained to the former—and hope therefore to have avoided the latter. But I digress.)

            I have proposed that, contrary to the dictates of ordinary logic, intelligence and stupidity are in no way mutually exclusive. Understandably, it is natural to equate mental deficiencies with our subject. True enough: very low intelligence just about defines ‘not smart.’ But this does not automatically mean that the ‘unsmart’ are incapable of, say, occasional flashes of extraordinary brilliance, or of a lifetime of kind, generous, empathetic and generally ‘appropriate’ behavior—or of acts of great courage and audacity. One sees such people now and then. Some even make it into the pages of history, religion and literature. And I am not thinking merely of the “rain-men” and other so-called ‘idiot savants.’  (What the heck…this country elected a person of demonstrably low intellect to its highest office—twice in a row. What this says about the real valuation of intelligence in the US probably deserves a book itself.) Indeed, in medieval Germany, the slow of wit sometimes enjoyed a special category. They were called ‘selig..’ This word evolves into the English word ‘silly.’ Then, in Germany, it meant both ‘foolish’ or ‘idiotic,’ but also ‘blessed.’ There is surely a measure of truth in this double-entendre.—And I digress again. Plainly, this subject has its pitfalls.

            The really counter-intuitive fact is that, all too often, it is the very bright who pull some of the most egregious boners. Regularly. Proudly. This almost certainly means that stupidity can easily coexist with high intelligence. The one does not rule out the other.

            Another common misapprehension is that education, especially the sort leading to advanced degrees, more or less precludes stupidity. This seems self-evident: it stands to reason that the very dumb cannot survive that much schooling. I beg to differ. Some of the dimmest lights I have ever known boast multiple university degrees. Quite likely you have met a couple of them yourself. For a certainty: there is no great dearth of hard-core dumbasses readily on display in both public and private sectors.

            In the present context, it is truly remarkable what the combination of intelligence and advanced education can produce. I met a professional person, successful and well-regarded, who bought a popular hybrid sedan…to save money…on gas. Sensible. This person’s previous car was quite solid, about 4 years old, with about 40K on the meter—so, roughly 10K/year. This car managed ca. 29 city/35 highway mpg, on regular. Having been well maintained, it had easily another 4-5 years of similar service left in it before major trouble might show up. The hybrid averaged 7-9 mpg better, driven gently. The price differential between the used value of the old car and the new was nearly $14,000. Figure it out: how many years at 10K/year would the hybrid have to go to recoup 14 large in fuel savings? No doubt the owner felt environmentally virtuous enough not to notice that fuel savings weren’t so colossal.

            Another example, closer to home. There once was a young professor, idealistically enthusiastic about the possibilities in his profession’s future, though less happy about its present state. He tried to unionize his campus so as to pressure a system indifferent to the plight of ill-paid staff. Our hero overlooked an ancient truism: entrenched power has a long, unforgiving memory. The system, very well entrenched and determined, prevailed. (And, to tell the truth, he fought them to the end. Having already paid the price, he saw no good in knuckling under for unlikely crumbs.)

            Clearly, smart and stupid are quite comfortable with each other.

            Counter-intuitive also is the discovery that affluence is no bar to stupidity. I learned this, like many other strange things, while trying to just get by. Owing to tight budgets, we always drove used cars. Hence, over the years, I checked out many of them—and talked with their sellers. Bad luck on car lots turned me to owner-sellers. Some of these were as dishonest as the Honest Johns. Some weren’t—my salvation. For a time, it seemed logical to go first to addresses in the better neighborhoods. I was amazed to find that, though these sellers were marketing quality brand names, I wasn’t seeing better cars. A remarkable number of originally fine European and Japanese autos, for sale at understandable prices, were in terrible mechanical shape. This made no sense. People had paid big money for quality machinery—and had evidently ignored necessary service/maintenance since then.

            An extreme case was a 10 year old BMW I rather hungered for…at first. It looked great, had the equipment I wanted, and was within my price range. Following the checkout routine I had established over the years, I began under the hood. First up: fluid levels and condition. At the bottom of the engine dipstick…about 1/8^th inch of dense black tar. No oil. Bad sign. Bad. I inquired. The owner huffed: “It’s a BMW, a very fine car.” Well, yes, but, what happened to the engine oil? How often had it been serviced? “This kind of car doesn’t need as much service as (looking askance at my tarnished Ford) yours.” Maybe not. (I knew different, but…) Still, how many times did he estimate he’d had the oil and filter changed? I just about fell to the ground when he proudly declared, “this car never needed more than 3 oil changes.” There were some 130K on the odometer. I could only shake my head and walk away, the owner shouting imprecations all the way to my car.

            Thankfully, no other car-hunting experience matched this one. But many didn’t miss it by far. I found, by actual count, in several places, a disproportionately high percentage of well-heeled owners who had systematically driven their excellent autos right into the ground. One guy explained…sort of. “I figure, I paid top dollar for a car that wouldn’t give me any trouble.” ‘Trouble,’ I guess, included normal upkeep and service.

            Was my experience with these fellows atypical? Could be. I’m inclined to conclude that Money leads many people to irrational and unrealistic notions. At minimum, money and stupidity are comfortable in the same bed.

Stupidity defined

            Since I postulate that stupidity appears to be on the rise, I’d better produce a working definition. This hasn’t been easy. No big surprise here. Intelligence itself is also hard to pin down. Conventional sources speak of ‘dullness,’ ‘slow-wittedness’ and the like—in essence, deficient intelligence. I think it goes a bit farther—and of course takes several forms. In the main, I’d define it (provisionally) as follows.

            Stupidity: (a) the single-minded pursuit of objectives or goals in the absence of empirical or rational support for the possibility of genuine success; (b) dogged adherence to views or perspectives having little to no congruence with demonstrable reality; (c) inability to accept that failed policies or practices are ones that fail because they do not work.

            Another approach is to recall that most important lessons come by trial-and-error. One burnt finger is usually an adequate demonstration of fire. Practically everyone catches on right away. But there are other experiences not hugely more complex that just don’t quite get through to some people. To be sure: the professor above learned a lesson—at least, he was sadder but wiser. And we must surely give everyone a little leeway for mistakes: we all make them—usually more than we admit. After all, that’s what mistakes are for: to learn from.

But alas, there are loads of bright, educated souls (and others) who persist in revisiting the same mistake, again and again, the same way each time. I once knew a man who married, five times in a row, virtually identical copies of the same woman—and went through a painful divorce soon after…because he was constitutionally unsuited to such a person. He never quite caught on. It was sad. He was sad. But it was avoidable. Friends tried to clue him in. He would have none of it.

It is this sort of dogged blundering that, by implication, begins to define the real dimensions of stupidity. Of course, in the most extreme expression, it does verge upon madness. But that is another subject. I hope.

Now, when I started this exercise, I had vague hopes of producing a sort of typology of stupidity. Sorry. Not this time. The subject turns out to be less straightforward than I initially supposed. One difficulty: it manifests itself in an almost endless number of ways. Another: like some of the nastier micro-organisms, it morphs into altered forms with great ease. Cataloging and categorizing these would be an encyclopedic effort—and stupid…unless someone were to fund it.

     In fact, seen from however many angles, stupidity begins to look more and more like one of the dominant definers of human existence. It is visible and active in practically any sphere of human involvement worth naming. It is never far from politics and government—and often central to them. The presidential campaign season is upon us: in its wake, a tsunami of stupidity. The public media (to say nothing of more private kinds) are always chockablock with it—far more so now. The TV schedule would always be thin indeed if stupidity were rigorously excised: a year’s worth of programming could probably fit neatly on 1-2 newsprint pages…3, if one is generous. Radio, with rare (though occasionally wonderful) exceptions, is a festival of stupidity. ‘Talk shows,’ especially on radio, bereft of stupidity, would be exquisite islands of eloquent silence. Numerous cathedrals, tabernacles, temples and chapels—by their very nature homes, one would hope, to some of the most edifying truth and good sense—are, depressingly, not. Places of higher education, which in part do house the accumulated answers to many essential questions, are as often wellsprings of some of the most exultant expressions of organized stupidity. In the world of commerce, one can, at any given point in time, summarily drown himself in stupidity of the most glorious grandiosity. The realm of science…not even there is one entirely safe. Literature and the arts…well, authentic literature, art, music, drama, some film, odd bits of other creative forms—these are at the farthest reach from stupidity. Still, the larger body of what purports to belong here is of a sadder order indeed. Wherever one wanders, whatever one does: if humans are present, there also is stupidity.

Should you doubt the prevalence of stupidity, listen closely to children. If they are at all alert and articulate (and many are), they will happily tell you what’s dumb. They don’t know it all. But they often know when it’s there. Many children—for a few years, at least—have what Ernest Hemingway once labeled a cardinal essential for a good writer: a ‘built-in shit detector.’ What a shame that this vital capability is so quickly blunted. Yeah, sure, they have to learn from us; they have no choice. But we could also re-learn from them. I do recommend listening to children—not what they think we want to hear, but what they themselves want to say.

If stupidity is really that common, shouldn’t we just suck it up and exercise a little Christian forgiveness about it? Most manifestations are mundane, largely harmless, and probably forgivable. I’m not that sanguine about others. Several of stupidity’s larger manifestations are genuinely pernicious. Each regularly produces real harm. Taken together, they generate massive trouble. These should be known for what they are and, where possible, battled. I shall thus try to identify a few.

A word about thinking

            But: before dipping into the pool of unthought, we may benefit from looking at its opposite. As a long-time friend of thinking, I regularly forget it isn’t automatically in everyone’s basic configuration—a mistake that has brought me up short at times. Here too is something counter-intuitive in the extreme. Thinking, one might think, is something that goes on all the time—because humans have human brains. The fore-part of the brain is there mainly for thinking…isn’t it? Indeed. But that doesn’t mean it gets much exercise. I don’t mean to call my fellow humans brain-dead. On the other hand: there are ample indications that, left to their own devices, many people are uncomfortable with thinking. Still, it does happen, and it has many guises. Some of the main ones are these.

1. Critical thinking

            This is at once the hardest and easiest kind of all. What’s easy: it can be learned, as a fairly systematic skill, by anyone who wants it. Yes, that takes a little time and some mental labor. But it is doable—even at home, without classes. The hard part: it challenges you to deal with logic, truth and falsehood, and above all the fact that people lie and cheat one another. A lot. Which is why critical thinking is one of the finest life-skills one can acquire—probably also why few of us pick it up.

            What it is: a skeptical, systematic, dispassionate way of examining a claim or assertion. Its basic premise: people use language (and images) to hide or disguise the truth so as to ‘sell us’ something—a product, service, or viewpoint (the ‘hidden agenda’). Its aim: to dissect that claim and discover how logical it is, and especially what ‘truth value’ it holds (expose the hidden agenda). Is this a good thing? I do take it on faith that only a total moron wishes to be hoodwinked, so, yes.

            Not all, but a great many assertions can appear logical (and, one might naively suppose, therefore ‘true’)—but still be horribly false. This arises from the artful use of trick words and phrases and the omission of facts or truths. Such assertions are the bread-and-butter of most advertising, salesmanship, and above all politics. Hence, the next question: when is critical thinking needed? Answer: whenever you are asked to buy or buy into something—particularly by someone who stands to gain if you do, lose if you don’t. If you can’t look critically at the claims he makes, you stand a better than even chance of getting stung—or worse, becoming part of something harmful to others. Both happen all day, every day. If everyone (a BIG if) utilized critical thinking even some of the time, the world would be vastly better.

            Most adults realize there are liars and cheats. A widespread simplistic reaction is universal suspicion. This won’t do the job. It just makes one cramped and afraid. In fact, suspicious people are often even better ‘marks.’ A skillful con man (or salesperson) can usually ‘play’ a person’s suspicions to his advantage. This is their stock-in-trade. Better by far is skepticism and critical examination—which usually bring at least enough results to permit an informed decision. If, by skeptical inquiry, you can’t get solid proof of a claim, leave it alone. This is a no-loss situation.

            How critical thinking works is best shown by looking at a case in point. Let’s try a package of claims just now being vigorously thrown at us. (It is political high-season, and there are lots of guns looking for turkeys.) Here’s the package.

·         Government is just wasteful bureaucracy.

·         The ‘free market’ can best police its products and services for you.

·         Therefore, less government means less needless regulation means better service for all.

This is a widely held set of beliefs. Obviously, they contain a lot of assumptions. Each one could contain truth. Likewise, each could be completely false. That makes for a lot of variables—and much room for untruth and deception. Your options: either accept the package as ‘the facts’—or look more closely. The former choice is, sorry, stupid. So, let’s try to pick things apart a bit.

a)      Government is just wasteful bureaucracy. This claim has three assumptions, all of which happen to be full of holes. Let’s be sure.

·         Bureaucracy is wasteful. Most adults can agree: bureaucracies are often inefficient, more trouble than one wants, and annoying as hell. Nobody wants to wait in lines, answer dumb questions and pay money just to be legal and safe (much bureaucracy deals with those factors). The purveyors of our little package above are counting on your residue of annoyance to make their case for them. If you’re annoyed enough, you can ‘see’ the ‘truth’ of ‘wasteful bureaucracy.’ But wait: is it only wasteful? More importantly: is it ever needed? Honestly, it nearly always does involve some waste. All human activities of all sorts do. A certain amount of waste is inescapable. On the other hand, not all of what the standard bureaucracies do is ‘just waste.’ Put aside your annoyance and you must agree: they do some good—and much of that is necessary. Bureaucracies are essential to the functioning of any organization, business or governmental. Big Business is absolutely as ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘wasteful’ as any government agency. Don’t believe me? Just try to get satisfaction by phoning Customer Service with any large firm. Good luck. What happened to the pharmacy benefit on your health policy? Hahaha. We should keep trying to reduce waste. But we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

·         Government is just bureaucracy. This is patently false. Government is or does all the things we can’t do for ourselves (some, at least). It includes: law-making/changing, peace-keeping here and elsewhere, courts and prisons, roads and waterways, and watchdogging over lots of outfits that, left alone, could and would do us harm. Plus a lot more. Do you seriously want to take on all that by yourself? Get real. You can’t. Government is necessary. And bureaucracy is what keeps the wheels rolling. We have to have the one and must tolerate the other.

·         Government is wasteful. By now, we can probably see that this is partly true, but hardly a useful point, since waste is a human byproduct (no pun intended).

b)      The ‘free market’ can best police its products and services for you. This is a very complex statement with several variables. We won’t need to look at all of them.

·         ‘Free market.’ This is a whole library’s worth, thus too broad to cover fully here. Crudely put, it usually means: the ‘marketplace’ (buying, selling, producing, marketing, R&D, financing—the world of for-profit business, in short) without outside scrutiny or regulation. People who tout the virtues of a completely free market essentially want a free hand to do whatever they want, with no risk of retribution, and maximal profit. Whoever would want that? That’s not indicated in our package. But they must want it badly, since lots of money is going into making this pitch. They must stand to gain, big time. How? Just look at the mortgage market that just collapsed. Till a couple of years ago, it was heavily regulated—and solid. Then it wasn’t. It became ‘free market’—that is, unregulated. Somebody gained, somebody lost. That’s the free market. The Romans knew all about such things 2000 years ago. Their advice? Caveat emptor: “Let the buyer be wary.” Translation: exercise critical thinking.

·         Can the free market police (itself) for you? Within limits, individual companies in the market could—and sometimes do…always within limits. Small, local firms, for instance, suffer free-market consequences frequently. If they can’t deliver, or don’t have what you want, they fail. Big business is different—because of its size. Its aims are different. Though its products and services might be better than those of a little outfit, they are just as easily no more than prettier and more plentiful, perhaps also cheaper. Consider the large drug firms. They want you to buy their drugs. Maybe you need such drugs. But with most of them, how do you know they are safe and effective? They aren’t cheap. There is a clear risk to you. Should you trust BigPharma Inc. to ‘police’ that for you? Remember: they stand to derive major profits from these pills. Would you be safer if an outside, independent agency with no profit in sight were to check your drug out? Good sense says, ‘Yes.’ But wait: doesn’t that mean a tax-funded government agency…and bureaucracy? You bet. Well, don’t drug firms have scientists and labs? Sure. But they also have Bosses and Shareholders—whose main interest is simple: Profits now! If income from a drug is enough, there are always lawyers to deal with lawsuits down the road. Money first, worry later. Are they all this way? Probably not. But enough. This is the real fly in the free market soup. Will the fly be in your bowl?

c)      Less government = less regulation = better service. By now, you can probably see through this argument. The only truth here is the first equation: less government generally does bring less regulation. If you accept that this genuinely is a good thing for the country and its citizens, well, I haven’t been very persuasive here. If you decide it’s good for some of the citizens, but probably not in general: you just found the argument’s “hidden agenda.” If that’s still fine with you, you perhaps have reason to feel you’re one of those who will profit.  If enough people do, we’ll all have less regulation…but not necessarily less waste, less bureaucracy, or less government. Like it or not: less regulation is guaranteed to bring more episodes with, say, toys with high lead content. Or worse. The likelihood that it will bring a better world is tiny.

            The bottom line. The overall intent (hidden agenda) in this package of assertions is to enlist your help in disabling government—the only body big and strong enough to balance out the ‘market’ (which equates to the biggest companies as a collective). The real question: is ‘less government’ truly better for us all? Or only for those able to profit most easily from a weak government? Before you choose, remember this: Avarice has always been a stronger motivation than Honesty. If given free rein (by less regulation), it will eventually do us harm. Despite all its flaws, government at least provides a few checks and balances—thus, a measure of protection. Government exists in the first place primarily because we need to protect ourselves from our worst nature (or, if you’d rather, from ourselves). Don’t believe it? Look really hard at the many, many countries with really weak governments. Do you really want to live like that? The Wild West, of which we are still quite fond, was pretty much like that. Life was brutal. And generally short.

            The raw notion of ‘free market economy’ is at first appealing, mainly because it seems so uncomplicated. You have a thing and want to sell it. You offer it for sale. Someone either buys it or not. End of deal. If it were all that easy, there’d be zero problems. But it isn’t. Scarcely 0.01% of all business conducted in a country like ours is that cut-and-dried. The vast bulk of goods and services up for sale are from Really Big Business. With these guys, there’s much more to the ‘free market’ picture. Sure, most cars today, for instance, are pretty solid and safe. They are also heavily regulated. What would they be like otherwise? Don’t take my word for it. Please.

            In case of doubt, be prudent. Exercise a little critical thinking. You can scarcely go wrong.

Besides, it’s a lot of fun. That I promise. My whole aim here is to urge people to think—think for themselves, for their own benefit. Even if you make mistakes (you will): mistakes in thinking can be learned from—and often are. Enough mistakes and thinking gets more acute. This cannot be anything but good. Choose not to think for yourself—that’s where Stupidity starts.

1. Concerted thought

            Disciplined, ‘hard-focus’ thought of the kind that yields new developments, books, symphonies, medical or technical advances, Nobel prizes—this is hard work, requiring organization, rigorous application, deep commitment, love of the task and tolerance for failure. (For failure often is the outcome.) Few of these are common attributes. In even the very best, motivation must be powerful for these endeavors to proceed. Additionally, one must have moderately conducive working conditions—time free from other demands, whatever physical tools may be needed, a supportive environment. Hence, thinking of this order happens infrequently. Moreover, those who do this work for a living will confess: often, the results are piffling. Hence, the need for a thick skin: failure is never fun. And in the real world, it always has to be, as the phrase goes, ‘an option.’ A complete history of mankind would be maybe 9/10 a record of failures. (Frankly, it’s a shame someone doesn’t tackle the subject. Failures, upon scrutiny, are highly instructive.)

            To be sure: not all thought of this type is conducted at think tanks and laboratories. Much goes on in occasional, ad hoc spurts in the privacy of someone’s den, or garage—even under a tree in the woods. At times, the results are phenomenal. Remember, for instance, the birth of Microsoft or the Macintosh PC. That Newton learned about gravity by a bonk from an apple is probably just a story. Still, funnier things have happened—and still do. Wherever, however they transpire, these are among man’s crowning achievements always—even the ones that don’t make headlines.

1. Situational thought

            Thinking of a more ordinary sort, the kind that spontaneously comes over a person as he muddles along in his daily routine—this is sometimes equally valuable ‘work.’ Innumerable significant insights occur this way. I call this (for lack of better terms) ‘situational thinking,’ because it mostly arises as a response to something ‘pinching’ the person at the time. One feels pressured by the situation to ‘do something.’ Mostly, this is problem-solving thought. The unpleasant situation eventually comes into focus as a problem requiring a solution.

            At this point, if the answer isn’t readily obvious, the matter drops into the ‘back of the mind.’ Here, an amazing thing can happen: the subconscious mind (which is never wholly at rest) takes up the problem and wrestles with it. Precisely how it does so is scarcely understood, even by those who have examined it for decades. But happen it does—and it can happen for almost anyone. A solution is far from guaranteed. The uncomfortable situation could just go away, thus removing the problem. Someone else could provide an answer. Often as not, the problem just isn’t solved and the person is left wanting.

            Occasionally, however, something does click. The back of the mind is busily looking; and a chance encounter with some coincidental, only marginally pertinent something triggers a ‘connection.’ From then on, it is only a question of time before the person ‘has an idea.’ This is typically just a revealing ‘clue’ that, followed with care, can produce the needed solution. Most of us have had such an experience. They are standard elements in the better detective stories—you know, when the sleuth picks up on a tiny detail and thinks, “Aha!” And the annals of science are definitely  full of such serendipities. They are sometimes called ‘epiphanies.’

            But this kind of thinking is most often evident in people already in the habit of tackling knotty things. Most people lack the habit. Nearly anyone with nominal intelligence can get caught up in a puzzle, and the mind could go to work in this way, sometimes successfully.

            This is good. The satisfaction that comes from knowing you solved or fixed something is unique. It can lead to going after other problems…and so into the habit of thought. This is better. It is confidence-inspiring and exciting to resolve one’s own problems. This is probably how most thinkers are made. It is also why children need parents and teachers able to steer them into and through such exercises. Without this, they may never get ‘turned on.’

            Even so, there are always instances when folks who never ‘thought much about it’ do get jolted into doing so. Generally, this comes about if they are unexpectedly caught in a dangerous, even life-threatening bind. They must think and act, or else. The brain, ever a wondrous organ, sometimes comes through for them.

            To summarize: successful thought most often derives from a habit of thinking. The proclivity for this is probably inborn in some, to be activated early and easily. In others, it must be coaxed and stimulated, whether by good teaching and example or conducive conditions—coupled with the sense that one needs to think. For if one is too pampered, never invited to think, one doesn’t need to, and probably won’t. Or, if surroundings actively discourage thought (as in some homes and repressive communities), mindless conformity is the likely consequence.

            Active thinking is not automatically to be considered a universal human activity. Loads of people escape it all the time.

1. ‘Hidden’ modes of thought

            There are at least three additional varieties of mental activity that qualify peripherally as thinking—or perhaps as adjuncts to thought. All are quite valuable. I mention them here only in passing, because, however important to us, they are essentially products of the subconscious mind and therefore semi-autonomous operations. We can wonder at them, enjoy them, but seldom control them. To the contrary: they are occasionally in control of us…partly.

1.  
   1. Dreaming. Everyone dreams part of every normal sleep period. Dreaming seems generally to aid in tidying up the mind’s contents and to hint at helpful options when we are troubled. Now and then, dreams point us to solutions to our problems…in highly indirect, fanciful ways, to be sure. Some people believe dreams are prophetic. Could be, but I hope not. They are sometimes downright frightening. Dreams are hugely important. Without them, we would soon be quite mad. But we have virtually no control over them. At best, we can welcome them, and try to be receptive to what they show us.
   2. Hunches. Also called ‘intuition,’ hunches are a fascinating mental activity that, without apparent reason or cause, spontaneously ‘reveal’ things we may have vital need of knowing. Intuition has also been called ‘thinking around corners’—seeing, if you will, things that either haven’t come about yet, or are physically beyond our normal powers of apprehension. Some people are more acutely intuitive than others, but everyone has the occasional hunch. One hears about them regularly: “On a hunch, I tried X, and gee, it worked!” Intuition is extremely valuable to us. It is also absolutely unpredictable. What a shame. If only we could call it up as needed!
   3. Daydreams. We all daydream as well. This is the back of the mind freewheeling, moving about pretty much at random, focusing on everything and nothing. They are also part of the mind’s efforts to preserve its health and sanity. They sometimes are ‘directed,’ in a manner of speaking—primarily by the wishes and fantasies that populate our subconscious mind. If we take steps to record our daydreams (on tape, say, or with more difficulty, by writing), we can glimpse how the subconscious does its thing—and come to understand the substance of what we fantasize about. This can sometimes be extremely helpful. Or, just funny. It’s also difficult.

            Doubtless I have neglected to identify all kinds of thought or thought-like mental activity. The above lists only the forms I am familiar with.

1. Natural ‘blocks’ to thinking

            Many perfectly capable people with good IQ’s just don’t take well to thinking a lot. In these cases, it is not necessarily laziness or perversity, but because something in their makeup (or in the present situation) steers them in other directions. I am aware of a few such ‘blocking’ mechanisms.

1.  
   1. Passion. Everybody has emotions—which can escalate into passions. The latter are well-known obstacles to clear-headedness. In the grip of any of them—love, hate, strong fear, revenge, envy, etc.—one needs must be whacked resoundingly with a stout object to get free of it. It takes over and becomes a dictator. Now and then, this is good. Passionate behavior can be the salvation of a clumsy situation—even save lives. About as often, it makes things messier. Passions are a mixed blessing.
   2. Emotions. Ordinary emotions can also get in the way. A sudden angry outburst, laughter at inappropriate moments, sadness, gloom—all kinds of perfectly normal emotions can and do block thought. Fortunately, this is usually both normal and short-lived. We all have emotions and derive as much benefit as harm thereby.
   3. Emotionality. A few people, however, are almost constantly locked in the grip of veritable floods of emotionality. The slightest thing sets them off—a cute kitten, a pretty flower, a charming child walking by—or the mere thought of something delightful or distressing. These poor souls are captive to a world of endless emotion. For them, thought is bloody hard.
   4. “Body blocks.” There are also people—a lot of them—who just naturally have to be physically active. They only feel alive when exerting themselves—at sport, work, or just rattling about. If they can channel this physical energy, they are often quite successful. Usually, this is in athletics of some kind, a life in the military, or by immersion in ordinary physical labor. They are generally quite happy—at times even supremely so. They are living in tune with the dominant side of their nature.  For them, the ideal state is to live completely, absolutely in the thrall of the moment. And that is fine. For them, thinking is generally reserved for situations required in their chosen activity…at least until the body ages enough that action-directedness no longer works for them. Then, sometimes, things change within. Not always.
   5. Worry. Universally, I expect, hard-core worry, far from producing good thought, is likely to obstruct it. Worrying easily turns into a ‘negative feedback loop.’ This is circular in nature, leading, not to solutions, but back to the difficulties that started it and for which one sees no release. Worse, the more one worries, the more helpless one feels. Remedies are few: interference from ‘outside,’ sleeping it off, or giving oneself a tough talking-to.
   6. Panic. This is the worst. It utterly locks up the whole person. It comes when ‘fight’ and ‘flight’ compete with equal force for dominance. Neither thought nor action ensues—until an outside influence or a near-superhuman effort from within breaks things loose. Panic is ugly. Fortunately, it is rare and short-lived.

Some fundamental forms of stupidity

1.      Stupidity in everyday life: the role of ignorance

            A good deal of what passes for run-of-the-mill stupidity is perhaps more fairly ascribed to ignorance of one sort or another. For there are varieties of ignorance, just as there are degrees of unknowing. Lack of formal education is, of course, not (or not always) a prerequisite to ignorance. Loads of unschooled people, now and always, manage to become very well informed, often only about the  few matters most critically important to the person’s immediate needs, but sometimes also about many of those things traditionally associated with Being Educated. As a rule, self-education is achieved with difficulty—which suggests that dedication to learning and knowing is hard at work. I have the highest respect for such individuals. They are frequently among the best that humankind can muster. By the same token, I do not disrespect those who are ignorant merely because circumstances prevented learning—which, unfortunately, still happens.

            Nevertheless: ignorance does play a strong hand in bringing about piles of everyday stupidity. How can it not? If you don’t know about a thing, you have limited options for smart choices. Obviously, this is where we all get into the troubles people do have. With luck, we learn from our muck-ups and try to do better next time. Probably this is the main way we dispel ignorance—a mistake at a time. Though it also produces pains and bruises, this is an honorable process. We could not do without it.

            There are also less honorable modes of ignorance. In my view, these contribute mightily to the stinking Heap of Great Stupidity that assaults us every day of our lives. This is sad, because they are avoidable.

A.     Willful ignorance

            For reasons that remain unclear to me, there are people who actively and persistently elect to avoid knowledge. As the phrase goes, ‘they walk among us.’ I know such people, and so do you.

         In some cases, this ‘avoidance mechanism’ takes hold only in the presence of what for the individual are what might be called ‘trigger subjects.’ Bring one of these up in conversation, and you are likely to hear, “Oh, I just don’t know, that’s just too complicated for me…” Or some other clear sign of discomfort, maybe annoyance. Politeness tells you to change the subject—and you probably do. If you don’t, you may wind up with an awkward discussion. Nor will you much contribute to the person’s store of knowledge. There is a block in place there, resistance to that subject entirely. Something is being protected. You don’t know quite what or why. The other person may not either. This kind of ‘reactive’ ignorance is probably harmless…even if I don’t understand it.

         There is another, on the surface identical sort of willful ignorance that isn’t so benign. It involves subjects about which ignorance is inexcusable. There are many such subjects. Some pertain only (or chiefly) to you and those closest to you. Others are of broader importance—to your community, or your country, or the state of our society, or the economy, or ethics—or critical choices to be made about whatever…to cite but a few. These are matters that affect, potentially, many, many people. About them, one does in fact have an obligation not to resist becoming informed. To reject this obligation is not just stupid. It also has potential for danger—to the individual in question, and to others by extension.

         People who turn aside from knowledge in such instances are really not protecting themselves. They very often bring harm thereby. In many ways, this comes under the heading of what used to be called “civic responsibility.” One hears this phrase but infrequently nowadays. Sad indeed. Civic responsibility is an ancient concept, dating at least from the earliest forms of democratic society in Greece and honored in all the better governments since. It basically asks that, as a citizen, you owe it to your fellow citizens to know what’s at stake, to share the load, and to be an active, informed participant in the business and issues that need attention. To shirk this responsibility is tantamount to withdrawing from citizenship. This is not a trivial thing. If you doubt this, consider what happened in, to take a glaring example, Germany about 80 years ago. In a very real way, Hitler came to power when large numbers of ordinary, god-fearing, law-abiding citizens abdicated their constitutional civic responsibility…by saying, in effect, “Oh, I don’t know, it’s too complicated for me, let’s leave it to the Führer.” When you elect to give up thinking, asking, deciding for yourself, you damned well better pray you aren’t held to account for that choice. From the beginning of the Nazi experiment till long after its end, most Germans paid dearly for their choice. Rejecting civic responsibility is willful ignorance of a terribly risky sort. Making oneself informed when important issues are at hand is really not such a dreadful piece of work. Nearly anyone, educated and intelligent or not, can have a go at it. What’s more, the payoff is huge, far outweighing the minimal cost—which is no more than opening the mind a bit. How can being less ignorant be harmful? I’ll never understand that. Knowledge, not ignorance, is power. Ignorance—especially if you choose it yourself—not only invites powerlessness, but also makes you a first-class sucker. How could one choose that? Incomprehensible! But…droves of people make just that choice all the time. That’s stupidity with a capital S.

         Seen from another perspective, it also bears the name “intellectual laziness.” The words speak to the kind of devoted ignorance every teacher encounters as a matter of course…particularly when the ‘course’ (pun intended) is ‘required.’ Such courses always get enrollees who find it an imposition that they must be there. Miffed, they reject what is being taught, merely because somebody made them be there. OK. That’s childish, but understandable. And good teaching, plus engaging material, can negate that resistance. Not always. There are regularly some whose determination to avoid change or growth is too strong.

         This isn’t ‘laziness,’ intellectual or otherwise. Laziness is a passive thing. Employing one’s mind actually is ‘work.’ It takes effort. Most people have some degree of negative affinity for work. Thinking is either something one takes to naturally, in which case it isn’t ‘work’ at all, but something like ‘fun’—or something one has somehow ‘learned’ to do, maybe even to enjoy.

         The ordinary mild sort of ‘intellectual laziness’ comes when you just can’t get motivated to bother about something. Everyone suffers such moments, some more often than others. Willful ignorance goes beyond this. It is aggressive antipathy to facts or ideas that aren’t already ‘in’ one’s head. Speaking merely for myself, it is an insult to one’s own humanity. And, pretty obviously, I don’t like it. It’s really stupid.

         A more troublesome variety shows its vacuous face when people who have access to enough information to at least make a tentative judgment about an issue just throw up their hands and whine, “I don’t know what I should think.” Or worse, “Nobody told me what to think about that.” How pathetic. What kind of adult human has to wait to be told what to think—or what ‘should’ be thought? This is classic intellectual laziness. And it is endemic among some segments of our populace. Examples surface all over the place just about now, in the period leading up to the presidential election. It is literally appalling: delegates to the national convention, revealing to millions of viewers that they are lost without being told what to think or do. If this is not stupidity, what else could it be?

         For those ready to admit they can’t think for themselves, heed my advice. Vote for someone with some signs of wit. True, intelligence, as has been seen, is not a guarantee of intelligent action. Likewise, the smarter guy might be better able to hoodwink you. But, being smarter, he might just have his eye on higher objectives. The clueless, on the other hand, usually don’t provide one another much help. They just spread more confusion.

         In this connection, consider the lowly cow. One can learn from cows. Though valuable, necessary beasts, they could never be called smart. One thing they do well: recognize on the spot any creature of divergent nature of any kind—including relative IQ (or whatever passes for that in cows). The Not-like-us are forcibly rejected. This is called “herd mentality.” (For those who observe such things, this is a real oxymoron.) Of course, one can derive a warm, albeit smelly, sort of comfort from inclusion in the herd. This must be appealing to people. Why else seek to emulate bovinity?

         Naturally, there is a down-side to herds. They are easily provoked into stampeding—which frequently leads to mass extinction. Presumably, even then, there is comfort in the knowledge of being ‘in this together.’

         A word about emulation. It is surely not intrinsically bad to emulate someone else. A good deal of man’s best achievement started off this way. But one needs to exercise care in choosing whom to follow. I have found, despite my own caveats, that intelligent persons are likely either to become good models for emulation themselves, or at least to pick others who are better than they. Foolish people, on the other hand, tend to distrust intelligence and to gravitate toward demonstrably solid imbecility. For proof of this, look only to the joint actions of our body politic in the past 8 years. This record of rewarding dullness is almost unrivaled in recorded history.

B. The “opiates”

            Much resistance to learning stems from adherence to one of many available brands of dogmatic belief system. These include, but are not unique to, a number of the more rigid formal religions (and the ever burgeoning crop of ad hoc ones)—as well as a large variety of secular belief systems. As may be recalled, Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses.” In his day, referring to the churches dominant in 19^th century Europe, he had a partly valid point. Catholicism and the major competing reform denominations were far more inflexible and intolerant than at present. Each demanded, and tended to get, unquestioning acceptance of and obedience to its particular set of perspectives. In all, independent thought and action were frowned upon. Severely. Ordinary people (recall that a viable middle class scarcely existed yet in most of Europe) simply had to ‘go along to get along.’ The Church, in short, very much as it had in the Middle Ages, functioned as an adjunct to the political/economic power brokers—which in general wanted, above all, an ignorant, unquestioning, permanently cowed populace. Religion’s assigned role in this was to assure the peons that, in spite of it all, God did care for them and would right today’s wrongs in the Hereafter. Most folks needed those crumbs of comfort. Life was still hard for all but the most privileged few. (And they, of course, quashed all threats to the status quo—as such people have always done.) In a very real sense, then, Marx was right.

         Marx, of course, wanted to substitute a secular, this-worldly belief system…Communism. I’m fairly sure he would’ve turned to strong drink if he could have foreseen that the movement he fathered would become more rigid and repressive than the religions he opposed. He really did hope to ‘set people free’—intellectually, spiritually and especially economically. His ‘child’ failed, in large part because he took the framework of a monolithic religion (Catholicism) and substituted rigid economic/political dogma for rigid theology, with no provision for flexibility of thought and action or tolerance for variances from the ‘party line.’ He goofed badly. Though a brilliant and caring man, he created an ultimately monstrous stupidity.

            Communism, though not dead, is no longer the dreadful dragon it once was—thank goodness. There does, however, still exist a plethora of “opiates”…not exactly of the “masses,” but certainly of their adherents. The purpose of all opiates, pharmacological or otherwise, is to produce numbness…of body, or of mind. When a belief system is inflexible and intolerant, it represses independence of thought and inquiry. It practices ‘thought control.’ Whoever buys in also commits to willful ignorance. He is taught not to think for himself, and he shies away from situations that call for thought and questioning.

         Americans do not need to look abroad for their opiates. They have several home-grown seductively simplistic life-dialectics with which they can, and do—insistently and rigorously—stupefy themselves. Probably the most easily recognizable of these is what I sometimes call “Gilded Age Worship.” The Gilded Age, of course, was the period of unfettered, gone-wild Capitalism, when the fabled Robber Barons amassed and flaunted their huge fortunes. For many, even today, those 19^th century scalawags are the Life Models against which ‘success’ need be measured. Accordingly, one dare not consider himself (or others) a success in life unless the net result is a no-holds-barred rapid climb to serious wealth. He who dies with the most things has succeeded best—regardless of how he got them.

         This is, of course, a perversion of the traditional “American Dream.” In its classic formulation: “Every citizen should have the chance to maximize his potential, to better himself and his family’s fortune by determination and honorable hard work, and to give his children a better life than he enjoyed.” I have added the word ‘honorable,’ because it is often forgotten. But it is part of the equation. Would-be Gilded Agers prefer to ignore it: wealth is more easily acquired ruthlessly. After all, isn’t that how the Oil Barons and the other Big CEO’s work? No doubt. But that’s not properly the American dream: it’s a reversion to Old World aristocratic belief patterns—more accurately, to those of the Middle Ages. For these people would generally be happiest with a two-class society: the very few Obscenely Rich…and all the rest…the Pretty Well F**ed. How do you know for sure this is how they think? Ask. A discouraging number will indicate they honestly believe they deserve their wealth…because they are “better” than the unwealthy. The poor are poor precisely because they aren’t deserving. God loves the Rich. Incredibly enough, most of these types are regular church-goers. Even more incredible is the number of churches that preach this gospel…in the name of Jesus. If there was ever a proof that God takes no hand in human affairs, it would be the fact that such “churches” are not blistered with lightning bolts every Sunday.

         Is this stupid? I can tell you from experience: at least some very affluent people are pretty darned dumb. Are they all? No, of course not. Do they all feel this way? Some appear to still have a soul. But I don’t know them personally, so I’m really just guessing.

         The real stupidity here is the fact that droves of ordinary struggling Americans accept this world-view as the Way Things Should Be. They believe that, if they can just work the system the right “trick” way (which they haven’t found yet), they too can be super-rich. The almost inevitable corollary is a conviction that the Haves really are better people. This is scary, that so many Have-nots have bought into this vicious myth. It definitely is not the great American dream. If anything, it is profoundly anti-American. And it is one of the greatest stupidities.

         Life is a perpetual amazement. One must only remember to keep laughing.

         I shall return to this material below.

C.     Ignorance of how to think

This is both a common condition and a sad one—because it mostly stems from a constitutional failure of our educational systems.

            Here’s the thing about thinking. Even if you natively like thinking, you do it much better when you’ve learned to do it well. Without that, you do a lot of stumbling about in the dark. You explore many blind alleys. You can get lost—sometimes terminally. With good training, you have reasonable chances of seeing light—maybe not The Light, but light of some kind at least. This is good—maybe even the best.

            Schools, one would naively suppose, have such training as one of their natural goals. A few do. Most simply presume it will somehow ‘happen.’ The curriculum, however, does not explicitly address it. A great shame, because, with little extra investment and planning, such training could be built in. I’m not saying that any school can teach everyone ‘how to think.’ Some would say that is a logical contradiction. What is entirely possible, however, is a body of coursework concentrating upon the tactics and strategies of disciplined, focused, effective thought processes—especially ‘critical thinking.’ The basics can be taught well before college. ‘Logical fallacies,’ a classic part of formal logic analyzing the illogical discourse in everyday life, is a natural in high school—and as entertaining as it is useful. How to pick apart a snake-oil saleman’s pitch ought to be in everyone’s arsenal. Alas, most college grads don’t know how to do it. If this skill is a rarity, is it any wonder we are so often sucker-punched on more critical matters?

            To be sure, there is such a thing as ‘folk wisdom’—traditional proverbs and sayings that came about when earlier generations tried to teach their kids how to get past the tight spots in life. Some of this material does focus on how to think straight—especially, how to see through bogus arguments. But this is catch-as-catch-can stuff. And by now, it isn’t often part of what one gets from one’s elders. The fabric of the information age is woven of different threads. All the more reason why formal ‘thought-training’ ought to be in every school curriculum. But it isn’t. This is a great stupidity.

2.      Stupidity in politics.

            In perhaps no other field yet cultivated by man does stupidity flourish so handily or so cheaply. It takes root in any corner, any season, any weather—and easily overwhelms practically every other sort of growth. It is truly amazing. If one could package its seeds and label it “prime lawn,” one could reap wealth beyond imagination. Oh, but I forget: it isn’t grass, and it is packaged and sold all the time.

            I am not one to paint all members of a group the same color. Still, politicians do pull so many dumb stunts so often, it is hardly possible to identify, much less categorize them. I’ll settle for commenting on some of the more obvious activity in this arena.

A.     Seductive things: “Causism”

[“Causism” isn’t (yet) a word. I made it up to tag something for which I have no better word. It is further not a necessary aspect of politics. However, since most causes either are overtly political in some way, or at least have political fringes, I include it here.]

            A good cause sometimes really is just that: an issue well worth our time, effort and resources. Indeed, there are many of them—at least as many now as at any time in recent memory. I do not speak against them. I merely wish to point out what is so often forgotten: that there is a dark side to all causes—just as there are also evil causes (that, for their friends, are also “good”).  “An assault rifle in every home” is almost certainly one of the latter. In my humble view, it is little shy of unbridled insanity. But I hope everyone reading this can figure that out for himself. Here, I’m more concerned about the risks of causes per se—pretty much any.

            The preeminent danger in a cause is precisely that about it that yells “Important!” This atmosphere of urgency, even of emergency, is what grabs us up and moves us along, both with the ‘movement’ (for causes strive to become movements) and into the heart of the cause. Once at this point, one is at risk. That risk is: every cause seeks to become all-consuming and absolute. This is virtually never a good thing. Admittedly, there have been some who were elevated to sainthood by virtue of their total devotion to a single cause. Such individuals are rare, as too are causes so supremely worthy of such sacrifice. On the whole, however, nature—and humans too, as creatures of nature—cannot for long flourish on a steady diet of an absolute, no matter how exalted. Not even Good (which, one way or another, is the presumed end of any halfway decent cause), once made unremitting, begins to pall. Absolute good may work well in Heaven. Most of us don’t live there, however.

            Saints are the shining side of a cause. Remember, however—please!—that not all who made complete commitments to however good a cause wound up in the ranks of the saintly. Quite a few, every bit as committed, became fiends of the highest order. The masters of the Inquisition were all wholeheartedly convinced of their cause, that of service to God by way of cleansing humanity’s soul—for instance, by torturing it to death. In pursuit of advancing God’s presumed will, they divested themselves of the last shreds of their own humanity. All were inhuman monsters. All were, not coincidentally, absolutely true believers. Their cause consumed them (and a lot of innocent bystanders)…utterly.

            Let me say this again: unswerving devotion to an absolute is risky. It seldom turns out well.

            Monsters no less were the main participants in more recent inquisitions—Nazism, most notably. The “best” Nazis consecrated body and soul at the altar of the cause—and forsook any semblance of humanity. They told themselves the result would be the creation of the “next” evolution of Mankind, the Übermensch (loosely, superman). Instead, they merely (!) slaughtered humans by the million, devalued the name and meaning of “human,” and set the cause of human progress back by unknowable measures. (Oops, there’s that tricky word ‘cause’ again. But remember, I never said causes are intrinsically bad, just risky.)

            I know it is still (lamentably) fashionable in some circles to glorify Nazism. With a good deal of effort, this is semi-comprehensible. At some level, we probably all stand wonder at people who have broken all the known bounds of the ordinary and done the utterly unthinkable. This sort of ‘extreme sport’ (to cop a phrase) seems, somehow or other, worthy of something akin to respect.  Should this apply also to extreme evil? I think so. The most extravagant excursions into evil have always held a powerful, if morbid, fascination for many.

            How could this possibly work? I’ve puzzled over this a long time, and believe I have a rough notion of the process. If I’m right, it goes like this. The absolute extremes of human possibility are well outside the limits of the ordinary imagination…despite our penchant for demonstrating them now and then. Even so: few men seriously see themselves doing Great Good. Greatness of any kind just isn’t in an ordinary person’s stars. Likewise, Great Evil must be even more unimaginable. That it truly happened, at the hands of mere mortals, is immensely difficult to grasp. Some part of us prefers to believe humans incapable of such. Naked ugliness is less unpalatable with nice clothes on. So we dress it up a bit.

            Suppose you do get so far as to suppose the worst of Nazism was, well, something only a handful of bad guys did, but surely not a widespread thing, surely not? From this point on, it takes little effort to bracket out the genuine evil of that cause…and wallow around, like any barn dog, in the mere shit of the rest of Nazism. The animal part of us must derive something like fun from such a game, it appears. For it does keep right on being played. Humans really don’t like to confront the inconvenient facts of their own nature. Many of us will work quite hard to prevent that. Trivializing an awful truth is one of the most popular games we play. It is a dangerous game. But we play it anyway.

            Of course, there is a more sinister explanation for this fascination with Nazism. Doubtless it applies to an extent. That is: Nazism still attracts the same people it always did, those with a burning hatred of certain other folks—whether they can precisely identify these others or not. A cause that sanctions participatory violence against such others is a welcome umbrella. It sanctifies one’s dark private feelings, provides an avenue for acting them out, and promises rewards besides. Such people are around at all times. They blame others for their own difficulties, real or imagined, and are only too happy to exact revenge, especially if they can do so openly. This is a much uglier game.

            We need to get over these games. Have no doubts: the Grand Inquisitors were deeply evil, as were not only the top-dog Nazis. They were evil not simply because a few were genuinely bad eggs to start with, but because causes unquestionably have the capacity to affect mind and soul in profoundly destructive ways. As every religious text of consequence ever written stresses, evil is always possible in any of us. It can be triggered when conditions are right. And one of the main conditions is subordination of one’s normal self to the insidious demands of the absolute at the heart of your cause. And certainly, another condition is when your cause validates your own vicious desires. Causes can eat you alive..

B.     Seductive things: the simple solution

[This is a manifestation thought of primarily in political terms. The best known examples are political. But the principle operates just as well in many other modes of human interaction—“on the street,” as it were. But since so many of these also border upon the political world, I locate the discussion here. Additionally: the entire preceding topic is intimately related to the following.]

Life is by nature cluttered and hard to comprehend…obviously. Many of the greatest minds at all times have devoted their best energies to figuring it out. Not many had memorable success. Little wonder, then, that most of us experience frequent bouts of deep confusion and uncertainty. It goes with the territory: we’re all merely human, after all.

            Under these circumstances, it is hard not to take refuge in the nearest pre-packaged oversimplification that falls to hand, accept it as a world-view, and let it ease one’s mind. One  thus moves into the territory of what Eric Hoffer calls the ‘true believer.’ Hoffer’s term intends to define the followers of the classic ideologies—the ‘-isms,’ if you will: fascism, communism, and others. These are, in essence, careful reductions of all the most obvious complexities of life into a short list of inflexibly absolute articles of faith that, once accepted, explain all things and resolve all questions. The entire world is magically transformed, on the spot, from a morass of worry, doubt and insecurity into a sunny bubble of clarity and certainty. The true believer has an answer for everything. This is an appealing state of mind. The price is so small: just accept, cease all thought, and live free. One’s universe is resolved into two categories: what fits (and is therefore good and true) and everything else (which is easily rejected because it is, by definition, false and evil). Authentic true believers actually enjoy an odd sort of serenity, one not entirely dissimilar to that evidenced in persons with Down syndrome.

            The trouble with this is, they have voluntarily elected to inhabit a pseudo-world. The world-view against which they measure the things of life only has “reality” within its own narrow confines. It excludes categorically all that will not conform to those terms. Life just doesn’t work that way. Life is inherently messy. It is a beast. It will not for long tolerate strangulation. When it retaliates, it reestablishes its own kind of balance, like as not in unpleasant ways. Things get damaged, people get hurt, and life gets even messier for a while. The worst consequence is, it is not just the true believer who gets to suffer.

            Letting oneself be seduced by oversimplifications of life, however alluring, is a particularly vicious variety of stupidity. It is also one of the most common manifestations. Nearly all the major chapters of 20^th century history were initiated and driven preeminently by such ideologies. The 21^st carries on this tradition, thus far, in grand fashion. This doesn’t speak well for mankind. When this kind of Grand Mistake repeats itself ad infinitum—particularly when recent history so resoundingly demonstrates its complete inefficacy, then stupidity becomes elevated to the status of something like a Graven Image. I don’t know what God might think of this. But I seriously doubt the earth can easily tolerate such idolatry on an indefinite scale. Humans have no guarantee of longevity—as they keep proving to themselves. Over and over again.

            I have spoken of ‘causes’ above. They relate here in that all the major oversimplifications of life—the “-Isms”—have also played out as causes of one kind or another. The main—perhaps only—difference is that garden-variety causes are nearly all single-issue oriented (“Save the old growth trees”). Ideologies, on the other hand, are inclusive belief-systems that pretty much tell people how to live their lives—the overriding proviso being, do it this way and no other…or else. This is why they are so seductive—and so dangerous. They do make provision for many of the most common difficulties most people have to face, by supplying a pat answer or approach, universally applicable to all (presumably). Vast numbers of good people want just that. They don’t want life to be as it is; they want things to be simpler. Especially they want this during times of obvious widespread crisis—which is exactly when the purveyors of an –Ism offer it up. For a certainty, some people will bite. The more neatly the ideology seems to speak to the crisis at hand, the more suckers it will find. Every time.

            At the present moment, most of us have an uneasy sense of crisis. Some of us have a fair grasp of at least some of the elements contributing to this unease. Rather more, I suspect, are just uneasy. As I write, the 2008 Democratic convention has just closed. 38+ millions watched the candidate’s acceptance speech, all 40-odd minutes of it—more viewers than of the Olympic Games opening extravaganza. This fact in itself speaks volumes…though nobody is yet quite sure what is in those volumes. One thing seems certain: a lot of Americans are worried…most likely, about all the obvious sources of distress and uncertainty, all cluttered together in a messy blob.

            One thing that worries me (and I’m sure I’m not alone): a time such as this is just when a devastating ideology tries to take hold. What will it be this time? I am not concerned that the Democrats will be the source. Democrats are traditionally not –Ism-oriented. They may be many other things (typically, not so well organized), but not that. The risk for the Democrats, as I see it, is that the best and most passionate among them will conceive the tasks before them as a Grand Cause—which then brings to the forefront the essential danger of any cause, as mentioned above. To be sure: to go out and fight the good fight (and much, much effort will be required to bring about any of the many laudable objectives this group of Democrats has laid before us), people will have to marshal their energies and work hard, hard, hard. It is always easiest to do this under the banner of a cause. I hope that, this time, these efforts do not devolve into nothing better than a mere cause. If so, what is necessary has far less chance at success. And that will be a shame. For as causes go, this is a good one—almost certainly, a necessary one.

            At the same time, the opposition forces are also out and about. In the main, these are the known groups devoted to an unchanging status quo. The line they are most likely to promote is of a decidedly conservative, reactionary tenor. As such, it has better chances at ideological guise. If as I anticipate, it won’t be an –Ism that’ll get us down any road we ought to be on. Drill now everywhere, bluster and talk tough, more payola, family values (which means anything and nothing), AK-47s forever, to hell with the middle-class, up the Fortune 500, single-source health care for all over my dead body!…these seem probable components. They are known quantities, empty answers to questions that may never have had much real meaning. If we are even mildly lucky, enough people are not just uneasy, but also uneasy about trying worn-out patterns yet again.

            But: lest I forget, my overarching subject here is Stupidity. It is something no one should ever underestimate. And it will rear its head in the next weeks.

C. Some familiar home-grown -Isms

1) Creationism.

[The following is a bit of a digression, since it is mostly not an overtly political phenomenon. I include it here for convenience’ sake—also, however, because its adherents keep trying to make it a political implement. Most –Isms are a mix of politics and something else.]

            Up the road a bit lies a cultural monument of sorts: the ‘Creation Museum.’ This is a well-funded ‘museum’ dedicated to the proposition that the history of the earth—indeed, of the universe—is a Disneyesque fairy tale: the Creationists’ image of how everything came to be. Contrary to the evidence of every historically oriented science whatsoever, things happened essentially according to the lovely tale in Genesis…with a few neat additions. The Bible never mentioned dinosaurs, smilodons, volcanic cataclysms, or cavemen. Neither did Bishop Usher’s imaginative calculation of the earth’s age take much note of them. Yet such things plainly were a part of terrestrial history. Proofs are all over the place—even, literally, in many a back-yard. Creationists are, well, creative with regard to uncomfortable facts. To wit: this museum displays Neolithic man coexisting handily with Jurassic flora and gargantuan fauna—a great big historical impossibility…to say nothing of Biblical improbability. No matter. Creationists believe God can do any damn thing He wants, with or without the aid of established natural order. If God wanted the world to begin just a few thousand years ago, instead of 4+ billions, that’s what happened. Yes, T. rex and all the saurian rest of them are awkward supplements to Genesis. But God can do anything, so there.

            Creationists have cobbled together this little script in large part, it appears, because they are constitutionally opposed to Darwin and his nasty ole theory. The Bible says nothing about man’s evolutionary climb to his present exalted state. Therefore, it never happened that way. Man just popped into existence as he stands before us now, dirtier and less well dressed, but clearly appealing and rather sexy, withal. And, by the by, with never a hint of Neanderthals: all nicely Cro-Magnon, as befits a good North European Christian image of generic Man. The museum’s displays are quite spectacular. The scientific underpinnings are…well, let’s say they leave me speechless.

            If this pimple on the ass of civilization were merely a uniquely, albeit sadly American anomaly, OK. We have a long and extremely colorful history with freak shows. We kind of like them. They undeniably do have a bizarre sort of morbidly fascinating effect upon us. And they are, like it or not, part of our scene. But the Creation Museum is intended to be taken seriously, not merely as an imaginative alternative view of the way things were, but as God’s Own Truth. Accordingly, science and palpable fact only need to be acknowledged if they are congruent with a narrow, pre-packaged, fundamentalist comic-book. Creationists really would like it if this view of things were the only one taught in all our schools. They’d be very happy to have evolution, and any empirical evidences in aid of it, eradicated—or, barring that, utterly ignored.

            This is not merely wrong-headed and silly. It is pernicious. And to speak against it is, I beg your pardon, not blasphemy. Creationism, as soon as it becomes insistent, is an –Ism with the same potential for evil as many of the worst of the older –Isms. Why? It substitutes a monolithic simplistic solution for the messiness of fact and reality—and would like to command you to bow down to it. Disagreement is apostasy. All because these people find evolution unflattering. I remind you: Darwin didn’t posit a cut-and-dried belief system, just a theory. Evolution is still, in many regards, a theory. Our understanding of how it works/has worked is not complete—may never be so. But the Creationists’ picture of things is so far from complete that it cannot even rise to the level of a plausible hypothesis, much less a theory. But, for its adherents, it doesn’t have to meet that criterion. It’s God’s Truth. Period.

            The good side to this is, as with any –Ism, Creationism only dumbs down its own adherents. People do have the right to choose stupidity over sense—as they just love to prove day after day. The bad side: the more dummies floating around, the less chance humanity has of reaching its best potential…whatever that might ultimately be. Dummies muck up the works royally.

            My advice to those who don’t believe evolution is at work in the real world: talk with a virologist or epidemiologist. If evolution didn’t work, the first generations of antibiotics would have been able to eradicate virtually all bacterial diseases period. At minimum, they would never have become ineffective—as they nearly all now are. Why? The bacteria would have remained fixed, permanently in the same forms as existed a few decades ago. But alas, they mutated. Fast. They followed evolutionary patterns pretty much as Darwin discussed them. They found new threats to their well-being (penicillin, etc.), mutated to adapt to them, and negated the threat. All this in about 2/3 of my lifetime. Evolution works, whether you want it to or not.

            Did God do all this? Maybe. If so, He accomplished it via the natural order—which He must have created as a labor-saving device for Himself—to take care of the mechanics of life while He busied Himself with bigger things. Evolution? Just another tool, His wonders to perform. Why is it so hard to accept what is so plainly demonstrable? Life is hard enough when one does accept and try to work with reality, rather than against it. But some people cannot resist trying to make reality fit into a matchbox. Oh, I forgot: some people are dummies.

            I’m probably not going to tackle other –Isms. Creationism so marvelously illustrates the core intent and the weaknesses of all. Every –Ism is a (sometimes fairly imaginative) simplistic reduction of life’s complexities into a seductively uncomplicated caricature. It asks one to forego thought and inquiry and merely believe. It offers freedom from doubt and uncertainty. It makes one dumber than one natively is. It is therefore, in degree depending upon the particular –Ism, evil.

            To put it more pithily: if God had wanted Man to be stupid, He would’ve given us smaller, more defective brains than most of us received. [Note: the fossil record plainly shows that some of our forebears did have such brains. Some of them were dead-ends: they died out. Some, however, evolved…into us.] The stupidity with which we are nonetheless assailed almost constantly—that is not God’s work. We did that for and to ourselves. He gave us that choice—to pick good sense or idiocy. That’s free will. Once you make the choice—that’s where responsibility comes in. We live and die with the choices we make…or choose not to make. I’m quite sure that’s how God planned things. I’m also pretty confident that’s what the Bible teaches.

            My favorite footnote to the Creation Museum: shortly after it opened, it came to light that the actor chosen to play Adam in the movie that coordinates the exhibits was, during filming of this monument to the Glorification of God, prolifically active as a porn star out west. Somehow, this seems incongruous, yet not entirely surprising.

D. “The Big Lie.”

This is an ancient ploy, most infamously practiced in the mid-20^th century by the Hitler and Stalinist regimes. In principle, it works this way. Whatever you want to achieve politically (generally, power and influence): identify an ‘enemy,’ no matter how implausible (in fact, the more implausible, the better); designate your bunch as the only guys who can and will ‘protect’ against The Enemy; demonize everyone else as abettors of The Enemy; then subsume all  governmental and political activities under the monolithic purpose of Conquering the Enemy. Along the way, you will elevate The Enemy to gargantuan, grotesquely inhuman dimensions, so as to mobilize the forces of Good in this cosmic struggle. Make your lie big enough and keep banging on it (while suppressing all alternative voices and views), and you are likely to succeed. For a time. It worked for Hitler and Stalin, likewise numerous lesser Wannabes all over the place. The approach is well documented.

            The trouble is, it’s ultimately a dead end—because Big Lies can’t go unchallenged forever…thus far. Really Big Lies are also the ones motivated by, and feeding upon, hard-core malice. You may be able to fool all the people some of the time, and some of them all the time, but…. That big ol’ But eventually makes itself felt. Nevertheless: you can wreak an awful lot of havoc and misery until it does, if that’s your real intention. And that, apparently, is what’s at the bottom of all Big Lies.

            This is therefore a major category of stupidity. The biggest liars do, in time, meet unpleasant ends. This little fact is always lost upon would-be Big Liars. They always imagine their particular lie is imbued with unconquerable magic. It isn’t. It’s A LIE! Hence, the catastrophic stupidity of such an enterprise. Justice may, as we imagine it, be illusory. But there is, over time, a sort of balance in nature that tends to repay Big Lies—usually, in like kind. History really does demonstrate such lessons. Sadly, however, Big Liars lie just as fluently to themselves, especially as regards what history actually teaches. And, far more regrettably, the rest of us always share the costs of all Big Lies.

            These costs come in many forms. The obvious ones can be bloody and ugly. One of the worst payments exacted in the name of Big Lies, however, is the hidden damage to the soul, wrought by our own complicity in enabling whatever Big Liars happen to be presently active.   

Conclusions: about stupidity…

            True stupidity is adamantine. To any and every manner of rational argument, as well as to the blandishments of empirical proof, it is impervious. It really is bovine: it acknowledges and accepts only itself. The temptation was strong to label it ‘porcine.’ But some pigs are reckoned to possess something akin to intelligence. Cows do not. I suspect the only practical remedies to stupidity are quarantine (Dummy Camps?) or obliteration—which may be extreme. ‘Final solutions,’ after all, do have a bad name. One must also assess whether a given outbreak is also malignant. Some stupidity just sits there, feeding upon itself, content to be left alone. Coupled with a zeal for missionary outreach, however, as it very often is: well, the threat level is elevated. Vigilance is always prudent.

…and thinking

            Though thinking sometimes proves awkward (especially in certain intimate moments), it is otherwise to be recommended. It has gotten me and mine out of many tight spots, dispelled many dark shadows. Thinking is good—even about ‘unimportant’ matters. Surprisingly often, a close look at some trivial thing will take you to a good place. It’s a bit like digging in the earth, or lifting rocks. No telling what’s buried there. With thinking, there is no end of stones to turn over. Many of the best answers still wait to be discovered. Without thinking, they are likely to remain hidden.

            Clearly, I like thinking. I do it when I can. A great thinker I am not. Neither am I ashamed. Thinking is a good friend: always there for me. I can think most anywhere—though not during dangerous operations, such as driving. Otherwise, fine. Mowing the grass, sanding a piece of wood, standing in line, taking a walk—or sitting out inclement weather, waiting for sleep to come, relishing the first cup of coffee: all good times for thought. What do I think about? Sometimes, dumb stuff like this. Dumb or not, I generally enjoy it. Once in awhile, it produces pleasant rewards.

            Enjoy. And think.

Chuck Merrill

Georgetown, KY

August/September, 2008

“Same old same old.” Sometimes, no ‘new’ solutions to long-standing problems may be evident or even possible.

I.                     

II.                  

[Incidentally, I am aware that the same definers occasionally apply neatly to genius. Should I have success in the present enterprise, I’ll gladly accept that accolade.] If such a construction holds water, it suggests ways of developing a tentative typology of stupidity.

            . A research scientist had a grant to study why a certain endangered plant species no longer seemed to thrive. This required planting and growing the few available seeds in a natural setting. They were duly potted in nice planters and distributed atop a building where they would get plenty of sun and rain. Birds also frequented the place. The planters had no protection against avian depredations. Nature did its job: birds got fed, few plants survived, science went hungry.

There are various reasons. I’ve thus far deciphered only a few.

 We like to think

we’ve got things sorted out.

Most major problems lie in logic bound.

Our world makes sense. All is ruled by laws

which in the main our boys by now have found.

Technology does buy security.

Time we keep in check with solar clocks.

We’ve universal life against gross chance,

on every door forged patent deadbolt locks.

These are, we think, fair guarantees.

Sufficient grams of fiber neutralize

the crab. We’ll not catch death. The car’s foolproof.

The kids look straight. Church holds no surprise.

All of this, and more, we like to think–

and better yet, to unthink what we know:

that things won’t keep’s the only absolute,

and thinking otherwise won’t make it so.

Reality remains a potent brute,

uncircumcised, unused to subtle tactic.

What will he do, when he unzips, to find

he’s stoppered with our high-tech prophylactic?

10. Jan. 80

I.          Turtles

live

where you would expect

turtles

to live:

beneath

slow bubbles

and patchy surfaces.

Turtles

have always

lived that way.

They prefer it.

The breakneck heron however

on excited southwind days

goes stilting along

across the waves

and far away.

Where herons stop

turtles brink

in the sun

and blink.

II.         Serene

beneath his

leafy parasol

the rough husked

musk melon

ripens

thinking

round

thoughts.

            Chuck Merrill

            (revised) 10.Mar.05

Aphorisms

Chuck Merrill

No. 1

Our frequent claims of greatness would resound less hollowly if we spent less energy on trying to make heroes of idiots.

No. 2

In public life: the more determinedly one proclaim his Republicanness, the more rapidly he takes on the lineaments of the consummate asshole.

No. 3

We would have better luck in getting leaders if we rewarded the actual exercise of leadership rather than the pursuit of incumbency. But we don’t, so we don’t.

No. 4

Likewise, we should reexamine our perverse insistence upon equating self-aggrandizement with administrative or managerial excellence. The former is, always has been, and will remain greed pure and simple. The latter is a wholly different subject which, in reality, is evidenced in ways entirely unrelated to salary, benefits or the perquisites of power.

No. 5

A rigid and vociferous moral stance is assuredly no more than a cheap substitute for comprehension of the issue.

No. 6

Good motivations elevated to the level of “cause” are soon perverted.

No. 7

It is a depressing fact everywhere in evidence that, as soon as the phrase “in pursuit of excellence” is voiced, one may be certain that mediocrity is the real intent.

No .8

Both the poor and the wealthy regularly confuse “quality” with “quantity.” The very affluent take as an article of faith that, because they have, they are more deserving—and conversely, that those who have been poorly rewarded are deservedly lacking. The poor, unfortunately, are generally possessed of a similar delusion. Those who find themselves in between these extremes seldom perceive this. Hence, they are perhaps to be excused for their confusion regarding the foundations of economic science.

No. 9

The real problems of our age are in the main not new ones. They continue to be real problems over considerable periods of time—for a very simple reason. That is: for any problem worth naming, too many of those individuals or groups who could make a serious dent in it are also those who can profit more from the continued existence of the conditions that give rise to this problem.

No. 10

Be wary of an institution when it decides it is time to declare its greatness. Be especially leery when the same institution changes the dominant pronoun from “we” to “I”.

No. 11

One of the more illuminating chapters in an architectural history of civilization is the one devoted to a survey of imposing buildings commissioned by institutions which have collapsed soon thereafter. Of particular interest here are several related questions of causality.

No. 12

The ego is a parasite with insatiable appetites and omnivorous tastes. Even before cannibalizing the last remains of its owner’s psyche, it has made great inroads upon those of the individuals closest to him.

No. 13

It would be nice to suppose that, outside of TV commercials, noone over 18 or so worries overmuch about such things as “feeling good about what I’m wearing”. One would like to think that.

No. 14

Higher Education has numerous profound and far-reaching responsibilities. But until there is universal agreement on what they all are, it will keep on attending to its own priorities.

No. 15

Professors are indeed vulnerable creatures and do need to be afforded a modicum of protection from their enemies…excepting, perhaps, themselves.

No. 16

The pursuit of knowledge is a fine and noble thing, much to be recommended. The great trick, however, lies in figuring out what to do if you catch up with it.

No. 17

Now here is a thing to give permanent definition to the phrase “cruel and bitter irony.” In an age to which has been revealed the utter bankruptcy of history’s most elaborately developed and encompassing ideologies, one yet discovers large numbers of that age’s best (and most expensively) educated intellectuals openly embracing a considerable panoply of lesser, less well thought out, narrower focus and essentially trivial ideologies. A fair proportion of these souls occupy professorial chairs in such presumably unlikely fields as literature, languages, and the social sciences.

   The student of such matters may learn several salutory things from this.

a.So long as the word “critical” is appended to an ideology, there will be takers for it, happy to feel absolved of the need to examine it critically themselves before buying into it.

b.      The mind, so long as it remains in the splendid isolation it prefers to accord itself, has a near infinite tolerance for self-delusion.

c.Such minds are fertile ground for ideologies. They are disinclined to perceive that “ideology” is in itself a fatally flawed phenomenon, precisely because it is an intellectual construct. The mind likes representations of itself: they are, to it, the perfect embodiment of beauty—self- contained, self-defining, self-delimiting, therefore hermetically neat and efficient. The trouble here is that reality (which is what every ideology attempts to model) is far more inclusive and incomprehensibly more complex. Reality is not neat, nor is it a mirror-image of the mind.

d.       It is such considerations as this which define the real dangers of the so-called “ivory tower” mode of existence. Socrates, of course, would not have been suckered by an ideology. But it is easy to imagine that many of his students, lacking his age, his subtlety, and the corrective influence of harsher experience, would have been. The inveiglements of a pure idea are seductive indeed.

No. 18

All those media people who work so hard to keep certain “stories” before us—O.J. Simpson’s perpetual tawdry circus, (earlier) the loving buffoonery of the Bobbitts, Limbaugh’s latest rush of retch-edness—or, more recently, the infantile antics of miscellaneous Hiltons and their pet monkeys—and so endlessly on. Is it that (a) these media folk indeed do have so disappearingly little on their minds, (b) they believe we are similarly handicapped, or (c) they hope to distract us from what they so rigorously neglect to report?

   Whatever their intent, the consequence is the same: without our quite being aware of it, they bring about a gradual, inexorable trivialization of public life.

Why would they desire something this sinister? Perhaps because a populace weaned to such a thin diet is no longer quite able to notice, much less to resist, the insinuation of a definition of existence based upon infinite tolerance for being swindled at every conceivable level…indefinitely.

   An even less agreeable but quite plausible possibility: universal stupefaction is destined to be the ultimate stage of human evolution

No. 19

On The Self, and How to Endure It.

Contrary to much popular opinion (not to forget: opinions  are generally products of the subject in question), the Self is not a Delicate Flower. The extraordinary persistence of this quaint notion, in spite of voluminous evidences to the contrary, is almost certainly proof that the Self, far from being fragile, is indeed a highly adaptable entity of great elasticity.

This is, however, not to say that the Self is without its peculiar sensitivities. It is in fact an exquisitely discriminating organ, capable of registering—and reacting to—even the faintest intimations of the remotest possible danger to the integrity of its preferred state. As a rule, anything it construes to be threatening brings about an immediate toughening of its outer membranes. By this means, it preserves, largely intact, the composition of its innermost sanctum.

   Withal, it is true that the Self, like so many of Nature’s products, seeks to practice a sort of “economy of effort”: though it can change—and can be changed—it would prefer not to. Change requires work, and is moreover fraught with possibilities (for instance, of unpleasantness). Therefore, better to hold on to what is, and let things and beings all around endure the change.

And this is the way the Self works. Its prime directive (no surprise here) is self-preservation. Usually, at all costs. This being the case, the Self, once stimulated to act on its own behalf, is capable of wreaking no end of havoc upon other Selves in the vicinity—to say nothing of the rest of the organism in which the Self is housed.

   All other things being equal, a good rule of thumb is to treat the Self with caution, respect and a goodly measure of healthy suspicion. However indispensable it may ultimately be to its home organism, it is, nonetheless, a tricky, unpredictable, even treacherous entity. One is well advised to take pains at some point to acquire some familiarity with the Self’s complex nature—or, at the very least, to make its acquaintance. Though at some basic level it does seem to prefer to remain anonymous, it doesn’t respond well to being actually ignored.

One should, after all, be on nodding terms with one’s closest neighbors.

No. 20

On Assholes: their Ubiquitousness and Possible Etiology

The Good Person (and, it may comfort you to know, there are still some good people around, the members of my own family being exemplary representatives of this class) is regularly confounded by the astonishing plenitude of assholes in his particular circle of everyday contacts.

   Being a good person, he may be especially troubled to discover, for instance, that an “old friend”—an individual whom he has known and thus shared valuable experiences with for years or decades—has turned out, when next met, to be distressingly different from the sweet natured, agreeable, charming and witty soul ensconced in memory. Instead, the old friend behaves in a determinedly abominable way—with rudeness, unkindness, pettiness, arrogance approaching global self absorption, sovereign condescension, a nasty tongue, and general-purpose shittiness. In a word, he betrays himself to be, after all, an asshole.

   Ordinary not-quite-so-good people like you and me would not be overly perturbed by this revelation. We tend to anticipate the presence of assholes in the most unlikely places, times and guises. We take their prevalence more or less for granted. Assholes come with the territory, are part of the bargain somebody or other struck long ago in the original contract.

   The good person, on the other hand, is in part who he is just because he doesn’t automatically partake of our somewhat more jaded view of what is to be expected. He natively assumes, upon entering a room full of his fellow bipeds, that here, too, as in other rooms and other times, he will meet up with a preponderance of more or less equally good people. The good person has a wonderfully sanguine view of mankind.

   One of the more unfortunate conclusions the good person is likely to draw upon confronting an asshole just emerging from the closet is that he, somehow or other, has unknowingly done something to actually provoke assholedness in the other. In the noble Science of Logic, we call this “False Cause.” The uncomplicated truth, and the whole explanation of the thing, is this (and we may consider it part of a Law): “Assholes choose to be assholes.” There it is, beautiful in its self-generative simplicity. The asshole posturing in front of you behaves as he does, is as he is, for no better reason than that he likes himself that way. People are, after all, like that: at some essential level, they do elect their personal nature. Practically never does an asshole become so because of some trivial, long forgotten omission of any other individual on the entire face of the earth, especially not one committed by your average good person.

   We are perhaps now ready to state the Law of Assholedness in its entirety. It has two parts.

   a) Assholes choose to be assholes.

   b) In any random sampling, a certain number of the individuals present will be assholes. This number may be expressed as the square of the inverse of the absolute number of individuals one has ever spoken more than 200 words with. This number may be called “the Asshole Constant.” ¹

¹   Warning: actual results may vary! [This means: the above mathematics may in fact not work out to be terribly accurate in real life. I only insert them here because many people, for mysterious reasons, believe a thing to be true in direct proportion to the number of numbers used to express it.]

No. 21

Some of the almost numberless amazements lying readily to hand about us:

a.That highly articulate, well-read, very well educated and generally pretty famous persons of note can so fluently and confidently pour forth such substantial streams of words, underlying which there is not a single perceptible speck of light or warmth (to say nothing of actual sense). Such emissions might aptly be called “Grey Noise.”

b.       At least equally astonishing are the numbers of ostensibly not less well-informed people who consume, yea, even yearn for such stuff with an avidity which borders on mystic ecstasy.

c.The most thoroughly incredible aspect of this phenomenon is that these consumers (as we shall call them, for lack of apter terms) give every appearance of somehow deriving a manner of sustenance from this substanceless verbal porridge!

   An excellent question indeed would be: what could it possibly be in them which is sustained by a complete absence of nourishment?

   Another would be: how can the consumption of nothing produce a steady and growing hunger for even more nothing?

   Unfortunately, these are questions which I cannot answer as yet. We are perhaps dealing with as yet imperfectly understood aberrations in what some, I believe, call “the lines of Chi forces.” (Or, um…is the term more properly Chia? Not sure. I myself have always found such forces to be a bit on the fuzzy side to begin with.) At any rate, one dares to hope that a cure can one day be found.

No. 22

On Ambiguity

Among all those things we like to think of as being “true,” one of the most unambiguously true things for me has always been this: that the ability to live with ambiguity is one of the surest guarantees of success in life. By “success in life” I do not mean necessarily wealth, professional good fortune, happiness, or other similar conventional touchstones of the Successful Life. Rather, I mean something much more rudimentary—and yet more advanced: the capacity for getting through life without being swamped by it. If you can do that much, you almost certainly have succeeded. All the rest is either gravy or dessert…or perhaps just bits of rind or gristle that got in by mistake.

   What is ambiguity, you might ask. I might answer thusly: “the existence simultaneously within a common frame of reference of two or more radically different, if not diametrically opposed, and equally valid ‘facts’ or ‘truths’. I might answer so. Or I might not. And that might be a good definition. Or not. In both cases, both are equally likely. Ambiguity’s fun, isn’t it?

   Whatever it is and isn’t, life’s full of it. Indeed, one might do worse than to define life itself as a continuing state of unremitting ambiguity. And if this is so, it must follow that it ought surely to be one of the best studied subjects in all our schools, even the mediocre ones. Especially there.

   But it is not. In your average run-of-the-mill college curriculum—even for the so-called Doctorate—one may search all day and find not one mention of ambiguity. I do not know why. Doubtless this is merely another (though especially telling) demonstration of the inability of Education to deal helpfully with life.

   Some of my favorite ambiguities:

a.        Without the ability to deal with ambiguity, one is almost certainly condemned to a life of triviality, brutishness, calamity even (though probably not actual tragedy, since genuine tragedy is itself a high and solemn form of ambiguity). Such people are also likely to be accounted SuccessfulPersonages in the public eye.

b.       Those in whom life has inculcated an especially acute consciousness of ambiguity are seldom known to more than a handful or two of students or aficionados of poetry, music and art.

c.        The ‘Good Life’ is usually at the expense of the goodness of others, whose lives are almost certainly disproportionately short and unpleasant.

d.       The only thing truly guaranteed about life is its ultimate cessation. This is probably what most makes it worth the trouble—the certainty that even the most heroic and noble of efforts will in the realest sense “come to naught.”

e.        Knowledge is power, and you can never get enough of it. By peculiar coincidence, it is also true that the more knowledge you have, the less likely you are of ever attaining to “power” in any useful sense of the word.

No. 23

…at some point…

Beginning sometime in probably each person’s life, there awakens, somehow, a little nexus of want, which is mostly quiet, voiceless, almost only a latent possibility, but now and then driving, insistent, raging even, a voracious hunger even. What is its objective, what does it want?

                As much as anything, it seems to be looking for what might be called a moment of ultimate clarity, a point (or perhaps better, a hole) in time at which one is no longer consumed by doubt, uncertainty, cerebral ambivalency and emotional fog, is rather caught up, swathed in (what one presupposes might be) a kind of light-bath of certainty.

                When this might happen, then would one be filled with a cosmic confidence—which, even though not articulatable in plain words, terms or conditions, would all the same infuse heart and spirit with the quality of comfort and security that is said to come with Faith.

                Whatever that is, we are all privately on the lookout for it—even those of us who, others might imagine, have long been in possession of this ineffable experience. It is (I think) a necessary part of healthy adult life, further that life would not be entirely “life” if we were to actually encounter this moment. That is, (I suspect) we are supposed to keep this strange, nameless little hunger alive in us, never wholly satisfied, yet every now and then, in exceedingly small, ambiguous maybe-moments, almost (perhaps) brought to reality.

                For: if it ever were to materialize entirely, how would we be able to keep on living the lives we all do have to keep on living, lives which, by comparison, would prove to be ever so much paler, more insubstantial, less, somehow, meaningful. Or…

                Or: maybe this is merely what the word “hope” means?

Could be. Surely, we do have to have that.

History of Religion

In the beginning

            time had no measure.

            There were no gods.

            Nor yet had apes come down

            to press their toes into the mud.

Then came a day

            when man stood up

            and went abroad.

Then was the world no longer womb.

            Among plenteous plants

            and endless beasts,

            man found himself

and knew he was small and few.

And lo, there were gods in the earth,

            gods beyond number,

governing all and each.

            And as the need was great,

            so was there all about

            a great communing.

But man desired more.

            Through pain and loss he learned

device and artifice:

to lengthen the arm beyond its span,

to muscle the hand to wrest and burst,

to amplify voice and sharpen the eye.

In time his seed spread across the land.

And as forests thinned

            and species dwindled,

            the gods of manyness

            found themselves retired

            to restive homes

            in ever higher places.

Or, supernova-like, they

            collapsed in upon themselves,

            and fell together,

            a distant, brooding, dwarf

            inscrutable One,

scarce seen or heard again.

                        Chuck Merrill

                        Nov. 85/2.Mar.08

The Second Coming

He came in

looked around

as he took off his coat

hung it on a chair

said why

are you sitting here

sad like this

what is the matter

don’t you know

it is written

he will return

at least once

one day?

Why we replied

you just did.

Oh dear

he said

fingered

his collar button

which came off

rolled into

the middle of the room

round and round

in narrowing

circles. 

                        Chuck Merrill

                        (revised)10.Mar.05

   The Seasons

Spring: blossoms

            In a sudden burst,

                        effortless perfections

                        beyond accounting

                        perfuse the air.

Autumn: woodsmoke

            Sharp flavors,

                        exact balance of

                        bite and balm,

                        prickle the nose.

Summer: fireflies

            Aswarm in the night,

                        tiny lanterns strive

                        to light the way

                        home from work.

Winter: snowflakes

            Springing from nowhere,

                        splashes of ice

                        scrub the face,

                        quicken the heart.

While time is, every season

            yields unique glories

            to delight the sense,

soothe the spirit.

All these, intact and whole,

come forth for you as well.

            Only let pass the useless

                        ghosts of the mind:

            be not unquiet

                        and all is free.

                        Chuck Merrill

                        6.Jan.04/10.Mar.05/11.Mar.08

Talkin’ Cliches Blues

1. Well, the chicken crossed the road

And he made it, all right—

But at the end of the tunnel,

Did he really see a light?

1. Does it matter, I wonder,

About lights in the tunnel:

Did we have a lot of choice

When we were jammed down the funnel?

1. At the other end,

When that time hit,

Did we see a smiling face

Or get dumped in the shit?

1. Sure, you think this stuff’s crazy—

But you oughta take a look

At the stuff in the world

That’s not in any book.

1. There’re things out there

That you wouldn’t believe,

And a good part of ‘em

Makes you cry and grieve.

1. It’s generally agreed

That life’s a big crap-shoot:

If you don’t get good odds,

The table-boss don’t give a hoot.

1. Does it get any better,

As your life continues,

Or does the craziness go on,

Just in new and different venues?

1. To these really big questions

I don’t have a solution:

Things will come as they will—

Just go on with resolution.

1. On life’s interstate,

Good traffic cops are rare;

When you have a breakdown,

Hope for someone who’ll share.

1. As for me, thus far,

It’s been a pretty good run:

Had a lot of stress and strain—

But in between, damned good fun.

1. What has made, all in all,

All the difference in my life,

Is the luck that I had

When you chose to be my wife.

1. You’ve been the best part of me

For more years than I’d have guessed;

And so long as we’re together,

I can handle all the rest.

Sometimes one wonders…

If God is indeed both good and omnipotent, how is it that…

1.       the tastiest foods are generally the least healthy?

2.       most “fast food” is mostly neither?

3.       church is seldom either meaningful or uplifting?

4.       the truest believers, in all major religions, are the most reliable source of man’s most grandiose inhumanities?

5.       the most generously insufferable souls have the earliest guarantees of acreage in Heaven?

6.       God is always on the side of the home team…in every town?

7.       offenders of the most absurdly trivial statutes earn the full force of the law, whereas irredeemable monsters of every stripe are regularly out on bail while committing their latest senseless slaughter?

8.       refinery breakdowns and similar “accidents” unfailingly coincide with any period of consumer need?

9.       “liberal” is a tainted appellation, even though “liberals” have been responsible for disproportionate numbers of man’s most noteworthy achievements?

10.   the “core economy” is routinely pronounced “healthy,” even as energy, health care and food costs continue to exceed record limits?

11.   in any calamity at least partly owing to human causation, it is the innocent who suffer earlier, longer and more completely than the ones with real culpability?

12.   one can buy TV channels till the numbers run out, but still wind up with a couple hours/week maximum of desirable programming?

13.   the good weather is everywhere but where it’s really needed?

14.   the smaller the family actually needing living space, the larger the house being erected for them?

15.   the more gargantuan the SUV currently forcing you off the road, the smaller the brain of its operator?

16.   the “greatest,” “most advanced” of all developed nations is

a)      dead last in average mpg in its total vehicle fleet,

b)      least willing to deliver affordable health care to its neediest citizens,

c)      least troubled by increasing numbers of sub-poverty-level citizens,

but also

d)      world leader in lethal weapons production and distribution, and

e)      absolute tops in cranking out man’s deadliest mass-media drivel?

17.   no “reality show” has even the remotest contact with reality?

18.   in any lengthier hospital stay, the patient is assured of at least one night of dire misery because the nurse’s “belief system” precludes attending either to the patient’s comfort or the doctor’s explicit orders?

19.   age sometimes does bring wisdom…approximately concurrent with the realization that one is too old to capitalize on it?

20.   bullies, definitely not to be counted among the Meek, quite often do inherit the earth?

21.   many will stand in long lines to pay all they have for what the know to be empty promises, all the while never doubting that the things of the highest lasting value should automatically come to them gratis?

22.   the DNA of exceedingly simple creatures is frequently capable of registering very complex and important information, whereas that of humans has never figured out how to record quite simple data strings? How else explain bacteria able to learn resistance to the most recent antibiotics, but man’s enduring inability to cope with so ancient and basic a notion as the Golden Rule?

23.   the surest measure of a statement’s “wisdom quotient” is its relative ineffectuality in affecting human actions?

To be sure: I don’t actually call God to account for these things. After all: if the stories are credible, He did make man in His own image. And it might take a long time yet to live that one down.