We are all ignorant of some things in our life. And sometimes we are stupid as well. Stupidity is embracing ignorance as superior to knowledge.
A reader writes, confounded as to why people support Trump - a man who goes on long confused rants about toilets and lightbulbs, and more recently, "slates." The guy is off his rocker - why would anyone support him? The reader cites an article about how the media is trying to "understand" Trump supporters, when in fact, there is nothing to understand.
I digress, but I was taking the camper to Jacksonville to have a window replaced under a recall. I turned the radio on to NPR and they have a new speech-impediment announcer (everyone gets a participation award at NPR!) who speaks in a high-pitched, almost feathery voice with a slight British accent. She pronounced "New Hampshire" as "New Hamp-SHIRE" as if it was part of the downs or something. Not as bad as my favorite YouTubers (Ocean Liner Designs) who mangled "Schenectady" New York, as well, "SHEN-NES-TADY." Oh, well, it was just the home of General Electric, nothing major. But in his defense, it is an odd spelling and he is foreign.
Anyway, they had a "political commentator" on there gushing about Trump's "30-point landslide victory!" where he won 51% of the "voters" in the caucuses. Of course, you could also look at this as him squeaking by with a 1% margin of victory, against 49% of the caucus-goers who wanted someone else (and the other choices were not so hot, either!). As the weaker candidates drop out, you may see these "victory" margins get slimmer. I was shocked that NPR of all people was sort of cheer-leading for Trump. But then again, one reason I stopped listening to NPR was that, like rabid Trump supporters, they could be ignorant as well as stupid.
Stupidity - it's the new "in" thing to do!
What is stupidity? And why is it different from ignorance? Well, ignorance is just not knowing something. We are all ignorant about something - in fact, most things. I know nothing about heart surgery other than one procedure I endured and what I read in the papers. I am ignorant of the process, the technique, the skills, and the experience needed to do that complicated task. On the other hand, most heart surgeons don't know much about Patent Law (which admittedly is a lot simpler and easier - I never had a client die on the table while prosecuting his Patent). But it illustrates how we are all ignorant of some subject or another. The heart surgeon might not know how to fix the fuel injection on his new Porsche, either.
And this is not abnormal. As a species, we all have to specialize in one field or another and learn certain skills and knowledge as well as get experience. Once we have that knowledge, our value to society is greater and in most cases, we end up getting paid more. Now granted, in addition to all that is talent - the natural ability to be able to do certain things well, such as throwing a football or playing a musical instrument or baking a cake or whatever. But without knowledge and skills and experience (practice) even the most talented person fails.
Stupidity, on the other hand is embracing ignorance as superior to knowledge. And we see a lot of stupidity around these days - and have for decades. Stupidity is a form of laziness and often the two are conflated - as in, "He's lazy and stupid!" It is a lot easier to be stupid than to actually try to learn. So a lot of lazy people embrace stupidity as an alternative lifestyle, because it is the easy thing to do. Why waste time with all that "book larnin" when you can just declare ignorance as truth and call it a day? This way, you win!
And it is all about "winning" - at least in the minds of the Stupid. Like I said, we are all ignorant about some things in our lives - that is normal. But if you are intelligent, you respect those who have knowledge you don't have, rather than just write it off as dumb stuff that no one needs to know. I may not know anything about heart surgery, but I respect the level of knowledge and skill involved. Just because I don't know something doesn't mean I think it isn't worth knowing - even if I will never know it.
You hear this all the time with the MAGA set - they are obsessed with "winning" at things. "We owned the libs!" they say, "We made them cry!" or something along those lines. They don't understand much, so they posit that not knowing is better than knowing and thus they "win." And that is why they fall down these rabbit-holes of Qanonsense and other conspiracy-theory crap. Yea, it is hard to understand astrophysics, so it is a lot easier to make-up "science" that the Earth is flat. You are never wrong because it is made-up nonsense that cannot be verified or refuted. And the best part is, you can always make up more nonsense if someone calls you out on the nonsense you are spewing.
Like I said, this sort of thing has been around a long time. "Poverty stories" I called them, twice. People sit around the cracker-barrel at the old country store and tell these tales that those smart city-folk don't know. You always end up "winning" when all your personal problems can be laid at the feet of the "big oil companies" or the trilateral commission or whatever. It is, in fact, a form of externalization, which is why MAGA-think is marked by a lot of grievance-airing. Life would be so sweet, if not for all those transgender people! (or whatever outgroup is being pilloried this week).
(Lest you think I am picking only on the far-right, as I noted above, the left does this as well, with its own versions of Qanon. "Guaranteed Basic Income" for example, ignores the reality that it would triple the national budget and cut Social Security benefits by 2/3rds for most people. Building houses for the homeless sounds like a "solution" to the problem, but if you give away free houses, even if you could afford to do so, to mentally ill and drug-addicted people, they would either trash them or sell them in short order. Both the far-left and far-right have a lot of pie-in-the-sky simple solutions to complex problems, because, let's face it, it is a lot more "fun" to believe in fantasies!).
I see this all the time with so-called "car buffs" who piss and moan about how great the old days were when you could buy a car with a 350 cubic inch engine, which on a good day might make 300 HP. Drum brakes, bias-ply tires, steel dashboards, no seatbelts, and an AM radio with one speaker! Life was so much better back then! Meanwhile, one of my neighbors bought a Hellcat, which makes 700+ horsepower, although I am not sure why. The dude is nearly 80 and we live on an island with a speed limit of 35 mph (max!). You can hear when he cranks that thing up, though!
But of course, it has that "fancy" electronic fuel injection, variable valve timing, and so on and so forth. You can't repair it with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. The good news is, you don't have to. Unlike cars of the "glory days" which were junk before 100,000 miles and needed major service every 20,000 miles, cars today routinely go a hundred thousand miles before needing major fluid changes. And things like valve jobs or ring jobs are rarely done - if ever. Lube job? Other than oil changes, they largely don't exist. The zerk fitting is dead. Back in the day, cars would have a dozen or more lube points. Times have changed - for the better!
But then again, one needs to learn a new skill set and acquire new tools to work on modern cars. A simple code reader can be had for under $20 though. And one has to understand how computers work (and how they malfunction) as well as have a basic understanding of modern fuel injection and engine control systems. It isn't "harder" than learning how to tune a carburetor - in fact it is easier! But it is different and a lot of people, as they get older, just refuse to learn new things. I know this as I am one of those people - why can't we leave well enough alone?
When we were in New York, there was a local mechanic who simply refused to learn about anything new. If it didn't have a carburetor on it, he didn't want to work on it. Needless to say, this meant that his customer base shrank with each passing year. He did State emissions inspections and his way of "fixing" cars out of spec was to put his wife's Buick through the machine (it was new and would pass) and use that to pass the "test" for Uncle Earl's old Chevy which has a check engine light on and is throwing several codes. Needless to say, the State caught wind of this and shut him down and he decided to retire.
Sad, too, as he could have brought in some younger person who was getting into the business - someone who wanted to learn the new technology - and he could have brought him along and sold him the business eventually and retired. But it is a pattern I've seen before. In Arlington, Virginia, I went to a BMW "specialist" who would not work on any BMW newer than 1993 (OBD-II) as he felt they were "too electronic." Ironic to me as that was 30 years ago and since then, cars have gotten more complex, not less. I suspect he is long out of business.
I guess it is a natural instinct - we see something that requires effort and knowledge to learn and instead of trying to learn it - or at least respect the fact of our ignorance - we shout it down and call it stupid and worthless. And we all do this on occasion - we are all stupid about some things. There is so much of modern culture and social media that I don't like - and don't want to bother to learn. So I just call it dumb and myself smart for not bothering to know. That is far easier and more comfortable.
The world is a scary place - it always has been. And change is hard to deal with, particularly rapid changes. Today, we see a lot of change going on - moves toward renewable energy that are actually viable, electric cars being routinely sold at dealerships, people questioning the very foundations of our growth-based economic system, as well as people exploring the limits of gender identity and sexuality. There are valid criticisms of some of these things, as well as valid reasons for some of these changes. But nuanced discussion requires intellect and it is far easier to just shout down change with a slogan or two.
That is why you see Trump deriding LED light-bulbs and low-flush toilets. Anything "newfangled" has to be bad for America - right? And I have to say, it is challenging to learn, particularly as we get older. I have had to learn hard lessons about LEDs and am still learning (more on that, later). And the results are not always as promised - true they use less electricity, false they last 10 years or more. The same is true for new battery technology. I am installing a Lithium-Ion battery pack in the buggy and boy is it a steep learning curve! Run the battery too low, it disables itself! You either have to hit it with a higher voltage charge to "unlock" it, or buy the bluetooth version of the battery so you can unlock it with your phone (and monitor battery status in real-time!). Oh, brave new world!
Ignorance is bliss they used to say, but I am not sure what that really meant. Maybe it means that embracing ignorance is bliss, as you don't have to put any energy into learning things. But in the long run, ignorance costs us money, as consumers as well as citizens. Being stupid is no Swiss Picnic.
The above image is of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump, which took an obscure novel and turned it into the ultimate feel-good boomer movie (well, next to American Graffiti). The book was a little darker and not so sunshine optimistic. In the movie, Gump says, "Momma says life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get!" which Americans embraced for its optimism. In the book, however, the quote is, being an idiot is no box of chocolates, which has a much different meaning.
Of course, in this context, "Idiot" is used as a slur against someone with a low IQ - someone for whom ignorance is not a lifestyle choice. Stupid people are smart enough to learn, but embrace ignorance as being superior to knowledge. Someone with a low IQ doesn't make that conscious choice - but often have respect for those who have knowledge.
"Stupid is as stupid does" is another quote from the movie, and like "box of chocolates" makes little sense but sounds thoughtful (spoiler alert - most boxes of chocolates have a little map in the lid telling you exactly what you gonna get!). But maybe it makes more sense than the bastardized chocolate quote. Gump was not stupid but merely mentally retarded (and no, "retarded" is not a slur - take that PC crap elsewhere, please!). He may have been ignorant of much, but not by choice. Stupid people, on the other hand, have a choice, but prefer to wallow in ignorance - and claim it is superior to actually knowing things.
Therein lies the difference.
