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On people, and stupidity, and me....
Aug. 20th, 2005 12:04 am
This is one of my mother's favorite stories about me. I've told it before, so I'm going to cut it.
( Somebody carried a big stick, but he didn't walk softly )
I should explain that "it has a name, you know" was a catchphrase around the house my entire life. The word "thing" was Just Not Acceptable. (I sometimes wonder how my mom would've reacted to Latin, where the word "res" is bandied about like nobody's business, but that's a tangent.) So part of my reply has to do with the fact that I knew that everything has a name, and that that name is rarely, if ever, thing.
But the rest of it centers squarely on my belief, already firm as a child, that most of the world is stupid. Fortunately (or perhaps not), I'm not entirely certain of that belief anymore, but I find myself thinking that people are stupid all the time. And I always want to use those four words: "That's stupid. You're stupid." It's so often true, after all.
People are unbelievably stupid. They do stupid things. They say stupid things. And then they act like the stupid things they do aren't stupid, even though they can't explain why they do it.
They say things are fine when they clearly aren't fine, and get upset when you point that out, when all you want to do is know how to act better so that things will be fine again. The smart thing would be to tell people what's upsetting you, but instead they do the stupid thing and lie.
When confronted with the basic fact that many children are savage beasts, they conclude that they should teach the preychildren to be different, because... I don't know. Because there's less of them? But clearly the solution lies in making the other children gain some measure of decency, doesn't it? (I rather like children, tell the truth. There's something refreshingly honest about their general uncivilised ways.) The savagebeastchildren aren't going to stop attacking the others just because the others work themselves to death trying to change, they're too clever to be fooled that easily. And even if they are, they'll find somebody else to pick on. Every wolfpack has its scapegoat. Scapewolf? Point is, that's how people tend to be. Except we're not wolves, or lions, we're humans, and we can either admit we don't live up to our ideals, or stop doing that.
I'm tired. I've been getting to bed early. This post isn't very good. People are stupid, though. I'm sorry to say so, but it had to be done. Love you all dearly, you're clearly not people, because I don't think you're stupid. I'm going to bed now. This ending is also not very good, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't type until I wake up.
( Somebody carried a big stick, but he didn't walk softly )
I should explain that "it has a name, you know" was a catchphrase around the house my entire life. The word "thing" was Just Not Acceptable. (I sometimes wonder how my mom would've reacted to Latin, where the word "res" is bandied about like nobody's business, but that's a tangent.) So part of my reply has to do with the fact that I knew that everything has a name, and that that name is rarely, if ever, thing.
But the rest of it centers squarely on my belief, already firm as a child, that most of the world is stupid. Fortunately (or perhaps not), I'm not entirely certain of that belief anymore, but I find myself thinking that people are stupid all the time. And I always want to use those four words: "That's stupid. You're stupid." It's so often true, after all.
People are unbelievably stupid. They do stupid things. They say stupid things. And then they act like the stupid things they do aren't stupid, even though they can't explain why they do it.
They say things are fine when they clearly aren't fine, and get upset when you point that out, when all you want to do is know how to act better so that things will be fine again. The smart thing would be to tell people what's upsetting you, but instead they do the stupid thing and lie.
When confronted with the basic fact that many children are savage beasts, they conclude that they should teach the preychildren to be different, because... I don't know. Because there's less of them? But clearly the solution lies in making the other children gain some measure of decency, doesn't it? (I rather like children, tell the truth. There's something refreshingly honest about their general uncivilised ways.) The savagebeastchildren aren't going to stop attacking the others just because the others work themselves to death trying to change, they're too clever to be fooled that easily. And even if they are, they'll find somebody else to pick on. Every wolfpack has its scapegoat. Scapewolf? Point is, that's how people tend to be. Except we're not wolves, or lions, we're humans, and we can either admit we don't live up to our ideals, or stop doing that.
I'm tired. I've been getting to bed early. This post isn't very good. People are stupid, though. I'm sorry to say so, but it had to be done. Love you all dearly, you're clearly not people, because I don't think you're stupid. I'm going to bed now. This ending is also not very good, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't type until I wake up.
