Stupid is as stupid does

How stupid one is rarely seems to occur to the mainly stupid or. As Idries Shah pithily wrote, “The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying- what do you think I am, stupid or something?”

In other words, casting doubt on one’s own ‘smartness’ automatically bars one from the lowest rung of stupidity. Stupidity, then, carries the need for a lack of self-awareness. When someone, say a top barrister, makes a colossal error because their ego gets in the way, we don’t always call it stupid but of course it is. Or the super intelligent academic who cheats on his wife and is surprised she wants a divorce. ‘He thought he could get away with it,’ we opine, but of course he didn’t. He lacked foresight though some, overawed by his academic credentials may say he simply lost a gamble.

But stupidity seems to often accompany a serious lack of foresight. A man of low academic intelligence, perhaps illiterate, who manages a scrap metal yard and becomes a millionaire would rarely be called stupid, though in fact he could simply be energetic and cunning. In our culture money makers are considered ‘smart’. I was once at a dinner in Cairo and a long faced ex-pat said, “Well we can’t be that smart or we wouldn’t be here.” The assumption being that smartest people don’t have to work abroad they can rise to the top in their own country.

Realising one has done something stupid, head smackingly stupid, rarely leads to a conclusion that one ‘is stupid’ in totality. It is something we ascribe to actions rather than our identity. Though I worked with a secretary who told me because she went to a secondary modern school for people who failed the 11 plus exam (a SAT type intelligence test) she spent twenty years thinking she was ‘less intelligent’ than other people. By the time she was thirty and had worked alongside Cambridge Law graduates she had changed her mind. Being able to get things done in the real world seemed a reasonable enough definition of being not-stupid.

Children can be labelled stupid or thick by teachers. I’ve heard teachers refer to one class as ‘the thickies class’. And if people can’t read very well and show no interest in the subject they are certainly academically stupid. But again, once they start to have to actually do things the label of stupid sticks less well.

We are entitled to think of ourselves as stupid if we are unable to learn. If we repeatedly fail to learn something then we must be a bit stupid. To keep making the same mistakes seems stupid. It is said that providing the same inputs but expecting a different result is a sign of madness- surely it is more like the kind of wishful thinking that accompanies stupidity. 

The other day I saw someone accused of asking a stupid question, in fact the questioned man refused to ‘dignify it with an answer’. I think we react like that when the question is faux naïve and really is aimed at exposing an assumption of the person questioned. But it could also be the case that the questioned resents the kind of powertrip that asking naïve questions implies. The super rich ask childish questions because they know people will fear being rude and refusing to answer. The super smart- people like physicist Richard Feynman revelled in asking naïve sounding questions because they exposed assumptions. Once I was asked by a tech forecaster that maybe written materials had had their day. I told him, more or less, it was a stupid question. And the reason was the question – if I took it seriously – undermined my job and self-image as a writer. My goodness me- if he was right then I was wasting my time. But I was the one being stupid because I couldn’t detach and see that the question raised a lot of interesting points about the future of written materials in a video and audio obsessed world.

If people are used to being mocked and have grown to suspect it at every turn, then pointing out a stupid question is a way to retain a shred of dignity. If people are in a power position then saying a question is stupid reinforces their power. In cultures like Japan where people don’t question so much, preferring to learn by watching these kind of situations don’t seem to arise so often.

The odd thing is, being faux naïve, Colombo style, which is an English and American thing, is rejected by Europeans who prefer a more aristocratic notion of being intelligent. You don’t have to hide being smart in Europe so much. But then again, anyone who has spent time with the supremely intelligent in academic terms knows that playing high status leaves you spectacularly open to ego blindness.

Hold a coin in front of your eye and it will occlude the sun; ego makes us blind and it makes us deaf. How so? One way is when we divide people into those ‘worth listening to’ and ‘the little people, the ones who don’t count’. Just like in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes, the littles people may also be the most perspicacious. Everyone, including the ego blinded is nodding along with this; it is much harder to put it into practice.

The desire to teach others and the desire to ‘know best’, which are connected, lead one into ego competition with others. An interesting assertion is treated as an attack rather than what it really is. If intellectuals treat their ‘field’ as a kind of real estate (for some it really is how they make an income) then any trespassing will be stoutly punished. Are they being stupid to do so? Well they are deceived as to what they are doing- defending turf rather than advancing knowledge.

Any question which looks like a turf invasion will be called out as stupid if the one invaded stupidly assumes they are under real attack. But really, is asserting status stupid? Yes, if other, better things, are on offer.

Courageous people are often called ‘stupid’. They risk their lives to help others and if they fail it was a foolish attempt we are inclined to say. Those who do risky things like climb mountains are called stupid, even if they succeed and don’t fall off. But assessing risky ventures from a position of ignorance, from the outside is risky too. Often one is unaware of how careful a climber, say, is in reducing risk in a risky looking venture. For YOU it would be stupid, but not for him. ‘Stupidity’ here is a kind of insult levelled at the courageous, out of shame perhaps.

If you ‘own stupidity’ then it ceases to be stupid. One top cartoonist writes that ‘drawing stupid’ is how to make people laugh- and this formula has made him a good living for years. Films like ‘dumb and dumber’ portray idiotic behaviour that somehow leads to victory, of a sort. They tread similar ground to Don Quixote- who is profoundly out of touch with modernity and therefore appears either mad or stupid. The reason we are so sensitive to being called stupid is that village idiocy, exceptionally low learning ability, is termed both as stupidity and mental disability- linking the two. So by being called stupid we suspect we are being accused of something permanent.

We all do stupid things. When we rush in without thinking. When we make unwarranted assumptions. Over time we learn patience and the kind of informed scepticism called judgement. And it is verifiably certain that some people have better judgement than others.

One area of stupidity is in the kind of company one keeps. Often highly intelligent people imagine their intellect protects them from the real world contamination of hanging around people of dubious character. Everything in a salt mine becomes salt as the saying goes.

Can faux naivity, the kind we are used to in modern art, be considered a form of being stupid? Is deliberately doing a bad drawing and hoping people will think it is ‘art’ a kind of stupidity? Or is it really just a sort of hopeful gesture, a gamble?

Forest Gump plays the archetypal American dumbass village idiot (as Chauncy Gardener did in Being There) and memorably states ‘stupid is as stupid does’, implying the real test of stupidity is not the superficial one of what a man says or even thinks, but what he does. Someone endowed with considerable luck might therefore escape the dulling accusation of being terminally stupid.

For isn’t ‘bad luck’ a form of stupidity if it isn’t recognised?

Missed opportunities are often reviewed in later life and ascribed to youthful folly or stupidity. Growing up implies but does not guarantee a reduction in stupidity. The growth of ego, as I’ve already written, is one area where colossal blunders can occur in the years when one is most supposed to be wise.

The left brain, dry, logical, abstract notion of intelligence calls ‘stupid’ people who don’t ‘get it’, catch on fast, learn the detail. But being not-stupid is a more right brain engagement, a more holistic, more real-world, less abstract and rushed version of life. In the long run the right brain is less stupid.

Calling out stupidity which is caused by ego blindness is no doubt a worthwhile activity. But our main aim should surely be aimed at making ourselves less stupid, this means a cool appraisal of our real talents- as cool as one can make it. Imagine looking at yourself as if you were another person. As for becoming less stupid that must mean improving the way one learns from experience and from the experience of others. They say a fool learns from experience and a wise man learns from the experience of others. This must be another way to reduce stupidity.

We call politicians and world leaders stupid because we see them lying and posturing in order to stay in power. They are performing a kind of grotesque dance that we don’t know the half of. But can we call them stupid if their real aim is to stay in power rather than serve us? And as anyone who has studied politics in a democracy knows- the more centralised the system the more you spend time getting elected and hanging on to power than actually doing anything useful. Policies are simply tools for getting elected. But politicians fulfil other needs and roles, such as keeping the civil service accountable so we do need them and this aspect of the job is dull and unglamorous. Perhaps we are doomed to having ‘stupid’ leaders for as long as journalism provides our daily entertainment.

Which brings me to ‘the news’ which is also seen as stupid. Reporting things in a superficial way, making an event conform to the format of ‘a story’- all this is done to make the news watchable and sellable but surely we are the stupid ones if we believe it? The avalanche of doctored pictures and videos on facebook and Youtube is perhaps making us less credulous- which is a form of stupidity. A new way of being smart is the ability to spot fake news and doctored photos. 

Phineas T. Barnum claimed that the great American public liked to be hoodwinked, conned essentially. That they deep down admired a man- snake oil salesman or fairground barker- who could con them into parting with money for an experience which was less than they hoped for or imagined. I think he was confusing greed and pride for a real liking of being bilked. When a man has been conned he often remains quiet out of shame of being so easily taken. Or he enjoins others to experience the same thing, being conned in company isn’t quite as bad.

I wonder what a class in ‘stupidity’ would look like at school. Could we introduce the idea of ego and status to the young? Maybe when they were ten or so. The idea of ‘knowing thyself’ might be introduced alongside the idea of foresight, which of course also requires courage.

nutty folk, nuttiness and the future

We all predict the future all the time, for better or for worse. Mostly we use the tried and tested method of assuming the future will pretty much resemble the present. We might take note of a rising trend and extrapolate a little- and that looks like a cleverer thing to do than saying nothing will change. 

By ‘predict’ I don’t really mean in the Nostradamus sense, I mean ‘act as if such a prediction were made’. So when we plan our holidays in Croatia we are acting as if we have predicted Croatia will be trouble free and holiday friendly in six months or so. (I actually just visited that country and the flight was diverted by bad weather to Bulgaria...but only for a day.)

The greatest acts of prediction must be with relationships and property. When we get married we are predicting spending a lifetime with someone. Through thick and thin. When we buy a house on a mortgage we are predicting the house will still be worth something in thirty years time. And that we will be able to pay for it. Quite a prediction!

But what if we want to extend our predictive powers and try and compete with such master predicters as Marshall McLuhan and Herman Kahn (who, though nutty, was very spot on about many things). In fact both of them were nutty. In fact maybe being nutty is a precondition of being good at predicting.

Though I want to like everything McLuhan writes some of it- maybe 20% is plain unintelligible without very close reading and an investigation of his special use of homemade terminology. He coins or adopts words then uses them in telegraphic sentences to build a sweeping arcing projection of the future which sometimes is uncannily accurate and sometimes plain bonkers. His predictions in the Global Village of data harvesting and internet shopping were thirty years ahead of the game. If you can successfully predict 30 years on you must be doing something right.

Nuttiness. Which means in this context neither academically acceptable nor artistically licensed. A strange hinterland is occupied. A place where the mind can soar and no one will laugh, well they WILL laugh but that mustn’t put you off. The role of tribal seer is attractive to many- note the rise of this post in the postmodern age and the movement towards what McLuhan identified as the re-tribalising of the West. For him that explained the move from political leader to tribal chieftain figure (you know who they are), the rise of drum based music, pop festivals and the increasing influence of non-whitebread culture.

Tribal seer. Oracle. The consultant as witchdoctor- influence without responsibility. It is less about predicting the future than WANTING to be seen to be predicting the future. Is there any difference between a futurist and a man who says he knows when it will rain?

What other tribal roles are emerging in the re-tribalising West? The chieftain- as mentioned; the seer, the master of ceremonies or leader of revels perhaps? The purpose of the Tribe is to celebrate being in the tribe. Ritual wars, or more likely raids, are staged on neighboring tribes to diversify and entertain the youth. Also to supply young men with a rite of passage- which is itself a substitute for the very real knowledge needed to survive in a world of large and dangerous predators. Or more likely we have a conflation of two necessities- survival skills plus the secret knowledge of the tribe’s evolutionary path.

By which I mean, a gang or loose affiliation of angry young men can for a while coalesce around rites of passage but they can in no way sustain a community unless there is some defined path to enlightenment of various kinds. A knowledge path that sees only its barest parallel in the advanced degrees of the left-brain world. These degrees, which proliferate now in a desperate way to differentiate people in a world where the real is elsewhere, serve only to take us further from the invisible. The tribe, in contrast, provides men and women with ways to advance in the invisible world.

In a way you could say the whole problem of living is how we conceptualise, and make peace with, the invisible world. I think the haunting power of David Sylvian’s song Ghosts is a recognition that we in the developed West have but a paltry knowledge of how to manage the invisible, once mainstream religion was forced into massive retreat. 

Science of course, with its visual probing and measuring seeks to make the invisible visible – but that just extends the problem rather than solving it. The invisible, that which we cannot see and barely conceptualise, given its best though equally damaging metaphor in Freud’s notion of the unconscious, is something we can only approach through the tribal gateway. Notice the proliferation of gate forms in the ancient world- and in places like Japan with its Mon gates even today- the right way to approach is seen as almost the most important thing.

The tribal mindset or angle of approach starts from an assumption of wholeness and connection between all aspects of the situation. Progress is one of breaking and reforming existing and known relationships. The spiral rather than the arrow is the image of progress. Circling a situation, following the seasons and yet moving in and out to get a slightly different focus. The labyrinth, the cup and ring gravureare all variations on the spiral that also appears in carvings and ayahuasca and other shamanic dreams the world over. The holographic notion of progress, of adding intensity rather than detail, a thing known is known better. It is known in greater and greater significance. In the often analagous world of martial arts a top teacher can express something as simple as saying ‘you must attack with no thought of defence, defence will take care of itself’ and those words can have a huge significance to some owing to years of training and reflection but mean nothing to a new recruit- who will only learn to parrot them (with the fond hope they will later remember them and connect the dots). Many mystical traditions insist on learning things, informing oneself sufficiently well that when the time comes the true significance of a sentence or two in terms of its connections and importance will cause a synaptic circle to be joined.

Man moves towards hope and towards zones of greater meaning. If the extant official world rather excitingly denies these things owing to the speed of the current changes and disruptions in the orderly nature of living then we must dive off the highway and take to our all terrain vehicles, so to speak. There is some rough living ahead and yet perhaps by embracing the tribal perspective and letting go of orderly lettered and automated left brain man we have only our chains (of logical reasoning) to lose.

On Lending Books

People say you should never lend a book unless you are prepared to lose it. Mentally you have to convince yourself you are giving not lending, that has to be the way you frame it, though for reasons of etiquette and the odd dynamic of forcing books on people plus the off chance of actually maybe getting it back, you adopt the ‘lending’ rather than ‘giving’ approach. Lending a book that is old and knackered is also not as subtly insulting as giving an old book to someone. Giving a book seems to involve the exterior value of the book, its look and condition, its resale value, the cost it was to the giver; it is much more like a conventional gift than a lent book, which, like a library book, is all about the content and not the container. (This said, one never lends a kindle book or an ebook, probably because it is so easy to get a copy. But also because there is even less container, less ‘objectness’ about a kindle than a lent book. It is so depressingly stripped down it is like those spacemen nutrition pills which were supposed to replace real food by 2020- when actually we have simply moved in EXACTLY the opposite direction toward ever more elaborate and tasty dishes).

We live in times where books have never been cheaper. Often we have too many. I accumulate books very very easily. I am, despite my protestations to the people I share my house with- my wife and children- a bibliomane. More of a maniac than a philiac I’d say. I am not sure I really love books, I just seem to need them and I seem to be able to get a lot of them very easily. I get them from second hand shops, from the Co-op which has a scheme where books are given away and then sold back to people at 50p each. In the town where I live the quality of reader is high- lots of good books turn up at the co-op. I’ve ‘borrowed’ books from a telephone kiosk microlibrary in my street. A disused phone box, still a bit urinous and musty, has about five shelves of books- and I’ve found volumes of poetry (even Wallace Stevens- a bit of a triumph that). I have never returned any of these ‘borrowed’ items, I am not sure why. My standards are higher with the similar ‘library’ at the train station I visit each week. I have yet to borrow ‘The little world of Don Camillo’ from that library but it has been there for weeks. It is the BCA edition (book club associates) a style of jacket and inner cover that reminds me of holiday homes we stayed at when I was young. In such holiday homes I started reading Alastair Maclean novels and Hunting the Desert Whale- a travel book by Earle Stanley Gardner- a very underestimated crime writer these days, though huge in his day- I suspect he is every bit as good a writer as Simenon, though not dark and therefore not fashionable. So I resist some of the books. Others I took knowing they were ‘worth something’. I found a book about railway interiors which was worth £8 on the internet, so not a huge amount but enough to make me feel as if I had got one up on the day. I even thought of trying to sell it to the local bookshop I visit and often buy things from, usually when I am in a mood to buy- dangerous condition so I try not to spend more than £10-£15 when every book looks worth getting (that’s how you know the mania is upon you).

And of course I buy online: ebay, amazon, Abe. Maybe two or three a week. Always cheap. Well, almost always.

I get a few books from publishers and writer friends. Not that many. 

So I get books which means lending them is natural. But the ease of getting them means, I am sure, that books are not that scarce or sought after anymore. The internet and kindle have made reading almost free. Why would you lend anything except when you were travelling with someone and there were no shops? Well we still do.

I once leant “The Midnight Love Feast” by Michel Tournier to the daughter of a friend. Such was her initial enthusiasm about books and novels and me being a writer and all I gave away the book I was reading which was this one. But the title made it a little embarrassing. She gave it back as soon as she could, almost certainly without reading it, which I did not blame her for since this book falls into the category of works that start brilliantly, have a great idea behind them, are by boastworthy writers but actually you can’t be bothered to finish. Salman Rushdie- all his work falls into this category. So does Joyce. Lots of people. But not Italo Calvino or Borges, not them. And lots of other writers too I might add. But those boastworthy writers- I might include Robert Macfarlane here too, they pitch their writing so perfectly that you both want to praise it yet you don’t want to read it- so giving away their book is a perfect solution- you can get to do both. And you can pretend to have read it all, which you can’t if you just give it away (it is always a little soiling to admit you have read a book that was intended from the outset as a present).

Some people- I have one friend in mind- who manages to find very interesting books I often want to read. But I very rarely find books he wants to read. And since he has said no so often I no longer ever try and foist a book on him. But when he comes round to my house he might take a book off the shelf and I feel rather chuffed I have lived up to his exacting standards.

The foisting side of lending books is important. It is very easy to lend books to children and young people: you are standing in as a teacher though in my mind I recall lending books to friends too, where we were like co-researchers. Though it was always a bit more gratifying when they bought the book on your recommendation rather than simply borrowed it. But when people do that some kind of resistance builds up that doesn’t when you lend the book. They feel they have ‘invested’ and they don’t have to be so polite. They own it and like living in your own house you don’t need permission to knock the walls down.

It is said that your ‘imprint’ stays on a book you have read- and I believe that. Some books have a tired knackered feel and you just can’t be bothered with them. A crisp new unread book is like the first day of the holidays- full of promise. Knackered books are only OK when you are backpacking and have limited space and lots of time to fill.

So lending books is like lending your worldview, or the emotional weight of it. As if you are looking over someone’s shoulder as they read the lent book. The reading becomes a sort of three way conversation between you, the author and the person reading the book. That can get in the way sometimes. 

I won’t talk about borrowing books here- that is another subject entirely.

I think when I lend books I am trying to be someone’s teacher and mentor (the difference between these two being that a mentor has to accept more push back) and I realise this is slightly off-putting. My own father, who actually was a teacher, was very oblique about book lending. He’d nod at one on the shelf and say- “You may like this”. Nothing more was needed. But that lesson, like so many, passed me by. I am more like my father’s father who was didactic and pushy about promoting his interests. I think I know best when it comes to reading. I’ve spent so much of my life doing it- nothing to be especially proud of- I’ve watched just as much TV too I expect. But TV is nothing to me- despite a late onset box set habit- I’ve gone years, even a decade without watching it, but I’ve never gone a month without reading. And I am disdainful of TV despite seeing the odd good program; like a true child of Gutenberg I venerate books.

I have lent books that have never been returned. Often it was to people I wanted to be friends with, so not getting the book back (in one case it was two books) also signalled the friendship wasn’t going to happen, not in the way I wanted anyway. You can only ever be a mere acquaintance of someone who repeatedly fails to return books. Is it like going to dinner with people and never inviting them back? For some reason I accept there are some people who are inviters and some who are accepters. I have been both at different stages of my life. I never hold it against someone who eagerly comes to the ranch but never reciprocates. But many people do. Yet lending a book implies its imminent return. To only invite people with the expectation of ‘payback’ is ungenerous. Inviting people to dinner is like giving a book not lending it.

I lend books to some people who don’t really want them but accept out of politeness. The book usually comes back very quickly. Sometimes I lend a key book to someone (I have changed a bit actually, often, now, I give that book, just to propel it harder and more sincerely) and when they don’t like it I get disappointed. I’ve even put a friendship on hold or the back burner because they disliked my favourite book. Lending a book you really care about used to be for me like offering someone a chance to join my exclusive friendship club and when the book came back with their imprint on top of mine I never usually read that copy again, it had rejection stamped into it, too deep for me, too sad. When I give my favourite books away I still don’t like the rejection when they aren’t read (you always find out) but I don’t hold it against the gift getter as I would with a lent book. The act of lending, the contract of returning the book puts a time clock on the activity, intensifies it. Giving a book means you could read it anytime, even though the implication is you’ll read it ASAP. 

‘Neither a borrower or a lender be’ they say, and though I can get the parasitic side of borrowing being less than ideal, I can’t see the problem in lending. Lending books isn’t like usury, there’s no rising rate of interest- or is there? Maybe all lending has some subtle interest rate involved. And interest is the right word. We are asking people to be interested in us, in our ideas, or ideas we want to share or say we have a part share in. We are angling for interest, possibly a show of attention however we cover it up to ourselves by saying inwardly- ‘they’ll really get something out of this’, or ‘this book will help them grow up’.

Books I have lent that have never come back include those I left with people, using their homes as storage facilities. I’ve learned the hard way that this isn’t thought of as me lending them a nice library to read, in reality they think of it as a minor imposition and that after a certain period of time (perhaps linked to the legal notion of losing title after seven years have passed) they start to think of the books as their own. Often I have been reduced to sort of stealing them back one at a time.

Sometimes I am in a mood to give things away. But lending books is different. I have learnt my lesson. Now I never, almost never, lend a book that I cannot get again on amazon or Abe. If it is a rarity I keep it under lock and key. No friendship is worth sacrificing for a mere book.

Henry Miller speaks!

"America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still." The air conditioned nightmare.

most of philosophy

most of philosophy

mines the contradictions

in the fertile strip

between the ever changing dynamic reality of the world

and static representations of it.

driving through rain

The car plashes down and two buckets of water storm the windscreen

Sudden short sight, bright, as if iced up

An age for the wiper set top speed to clear

Drips scurry upwards, time reverses,

A road flood grabs the nearside wheel

Like a demented wraith, shakes it

Wow and beyond. There’s more:

Dunk down washboard hum gravel skank loud as fuck

The kick of the steering wheel, have faith, the auto system

Jerks me straight again 

Rev up faster for the next long lean lung of a puddle

Almost enjoying the zown and power trawd, 

bottom boarding out, skim and plane

In a loud skirt of unbelievable hum

A ribbing at high frequency

Lights pick up the errant flies

The messengers in zoom and

Thlunk wipe, thlunk wipe

Semi circle of doom peering frontwards, closer to the wheel 

Like an old man in a flat cap with a dog beside him doing 40

Rain on roads ages you.

I am racing to pick someone up

I always am.

my fave one star review on amazon

"I ordered this, then got distracted by other things going on at work and within family life. Therefore I forgot I had ordered it. It didn't arrive, and by the time I thought about it, it was far too late to do anything about it. So I didn't. Under these circumstances the best I can say is that it is my own fault for not keeping on top of things."

amazon verified purchase