The Difference Between Being Stupid & Just Doing Stupid Stuff

I used to be one of those people who thought everybody was stupid. But I have outgrown that. I know that just a small percentage of people are stupid.

This is much less than everybody. But it is still a significant number. Enough to fuck up a lot of stuff. And enough to make normal people who have been made cynical by seeing too much stupidity over a protracted period of time, believe that the number of stupid people is much higher than it actually is.

The people who aren’t stupid, which is basically the rest of us, contribute to this perception of rampant stupidity, by doing things that are stupid from time to time. And since there are so many of us, that is a lot.

I am guilty of this myself. Just last night I left the fireplace on in the basement. That wasn’t just stupid, but a waste of natural gas and served no practical purpose.

When my wife told me that, I immediately went to stupid in my head. When really the cause was just that I was tired, or forgot or even just assumed that she had turned it off and didn’t think about it.

That makes me any of the above but it doesn’t make make me stupid, despite the fact that, in retrospect, it was a kind of stupid thing to do.

Stupid People In Cars

The most common place that people either prove their stupidity or do something stupid is in their cars.

Cars are relatively easy to drive, which means there are a lot of stupid people out there driving, and there are a lot of not-stupid people out there doing stupid driving stuff.

Most of the time a car accident will happen because people simply weren’t paying attention. Every accident is somebody’s fault, and we are well within our rights to call someone stupid when they are at fault.

Usually these accidents happen because people are distracted somehow. And let’s face it, there’s a lot to distract you when you are driving. There’s music, other people, your state of mind, the amount of traffic you are in, how tired, or inebriated you might be, how much you’re trying to do beside focusing on your driving, like eating, drinking, talking on the phone or, for the abjectly stupid, texting.

But again, when you think about it statistically, the number of accidents is actually quite miniscule when you consider the number of cars on the road.

The only thing that is not miniscule is the perception that every accident involves at least one stupid person or one regular person doing a stupid thing.

I Don’t Really Know A Lot Of Stupid People & You Probably Don't Either

I don’t think that many of us do. We may have met people we thought were stupid. But it’s not like you go out of your way to make friends with people like that.

Which leads me to believe that stupid people, you know the genuinely stupid ones, must be quite lonely. Maybe this is why you see a lot of them performing stunts, that are nothing more than epic fails, on social media.

How many times have you seen some idiot somersault off a trampoline. Or try to dive into a pool off the roof of a house. Or even try a back flip and land on his head. Or do a belly flop onto a frozen pond.

You can be reasonably, but never 100%, sure that these are genuinely stupid people. And frankly, very few of us would want anything to do with these morons, unless we had the misfortune to be related to them.

To me, the main characteristic of the stupid people you see on social media is that they are willing to try, or be goaded into trying, something they know they are not good at, and that might even cause them physical harm, but they do it anyway.

What Do Do About Stupid People

I believe that stupidity is a choice. Because stupid people have pretty much the same brain power as the rest of the people. They simply choose to be that way. Maybe because it’s easier. Maybe because they are too lazy to learn. Or maybe because they feel that is some sort of uniqueness that they can own.

Whatever the case, even though there are not enough stupid people to constitute a significant percentage, there are more than enough to fuck you up if you get too close.

So my advice is to use always be mindful of any stupidity you see.

Generally speaking, if you see someone do something you consider stupid, and they laugh or chuckle about it, well, get your ass away from them pronto.

Because the one thing that stupid people know is that stupid may be weird to others but it is always a hoot to them.

jim out