You can get all 5 stupidity napkins on Coffee Cups and you should!
When you think about it, well-mannered stupid people do tend to make it to the top and rule the world. But I plan a coup soon of well-mannered smart people and will need your help! Are you with me?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Voltaire. If you don’t know who he is, you aren’t paying attention!
Buy this as a Coffee Cup for your friend trapped in a stupid company!
If it’s not via an obvious organization, look to see if the individual doing that incredibly stupid act hasn’t been pulled this way and that by a committee of well-meaning fools.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Jon Bentley, 1953 – not dead yet, Computer science researcher
There have been birds falling out of the sky this week. First in Arkansas, USA, then in Mississippi, USA, now I hear it’s happened in Finland.
Of course we can draw the conclusion that the end of the world is upon us. Then again, it’s most likely to be fireworks. Or maybe pollution. It could be a virus. It could be God. It could be aliens.
So, this quote gets to the heart of a certain type of stupidity. It’s not the process of finding answers that makes people stupid. It’s the DESIRE for conclusions without being willing to do the intelligent work to find a logical, reasonable and likely answer. As a result we take the easiest road. We take the road of superstition, whether religious or secular. We take the road that the bandwagon is on. We take the obvious road. AND THAT IS STUPID AND DANGEROUS.
The other aspect of stupidity that is shown in this quote is so many people’s inability to just allow that we may not know the answer. It doesn’t mean we should work towards finding answers and solutions, but if one’s inability to live with unknowing causes them to reach stupid conclusions then they are being, well, stupid.
One of my pet peeves is the deliberate bragging about one’s own flaws or shortcomings. You know, the ‘I am terrible at math’ type comments. They can imprison you in an identity you don’t want or need.
As a drawing instructor I often had new students sheepishly come into the first day of class with head bowed and voice low. The student would say ‘I am not sure you can help me, I can’t even draw a good stick figure’.
My response was: ‘OF COURSE YOU SUCK AT DRAWING, YOU HAVEN’T LEARNED HOW YET!’ You wouldn’t go into a piano lesson with that attitude, would you? You don’t assume you should know how to play a piano. It’s a big honkin’ mess of wires, wood and metal and well, DUH, why would you think you should know how to master that thing without some training. How is drawing any different? You have an instrument you have to master in drawing as well.’
At that point I would stop and raise my closed fist. I would slowly poke my finger into the bottom of the fist and out of the top would come a very small pencil for all to see.
‘THAT is your instrument to master if you are learning to draw.’ I would say to them. Then I would proceed to teach them about that pencil.
What are you consciously or unconsciously cultivating to keep yourself ignorant? No offense, but whatever it is, it’s stupid.
Welcome to Stupidity, my first series of 2011! In honor of all you returning to work after the holidays, I thought you might need some classic quote therapy to help you navigate among your co-workers.
Over the holidays our extended family took a long walk along the Arkansas River. We took our 2 dogs with us. We passed a jungle gym play area with a curvy slide and I thought it would be fun to slide wiggle dog down it. I attempted said maneuver but wiggle dog wasn’t happy with this idea and instead of going down the curvy slide, jumped over the edge of it down to the sand below. Wiggle dog got up, favoring one paw. I was worried she had broken something. But she was alright.
My wife and daughter (and others) saw stupidity in action. They weren’t happy to see it. I apologized to wiggle dog. I apologized to my wife and daughter. I went over to the men in the group and said ‘men sometimes do stupid things’. They all nodded.
Moral of the story, don’t do stupid things, especially to someone else!
One of my pet peeves is conspiracy theories. This quote is why. The vast majority of things that happen in the world are not controlled by nefarious, evil-doers bent on world destruction (though some are).
Most are a result of a guy falling asleep at the wheel, a woman leaving a pot on to boil and then taking a nap, a government official signing the wrong thing in the wrong place, or the engineer transposing a number after an all-nighter trying to finish a project.
So, remember, the store return clerk is not out to get you, they are just not very good at their job, at least today. The wedding coordinator is not working to make yours a disaster, she just forget to write something down on her ‘to do’ list.
Give people the benefit of the doubt about their motives, but don’t hesitate to demand competence. The incompetent person doesn’t really want to be that way, they may not know how to do the job right, or might just be lazy and not have the ideals or vision for themselves they really would like to have. Be kind about your demand, but demand it nonetheless.
“By dint of railing against idiots you run the risk of becoming idiotic yourself.” – Gustave Flaubert
Notice it says ‘runs the risk’. Railing against something doesn’t always make you idiotic, but for it not to, you must keep your cool. Not for every single moment, but for the overall picture.
I remember my unwife use to get perturbed at me for ‘railing’ at times. She would say ‘but what does your anger accomplish?’. I would say in response ‘I am not trying to accomplish anything, I am simply expressing my feelings about something’. But I think she had a valid point in some ways. It is ok to simply express your feelings of anger or frustration at stupidity and idiocy. But it is also good to train yourself to have a larger reason for your expression.
Maybe you plan it, like when your child has continually not obeyed you and you know that it is now time for ‘the fear of god’ to be put into them. So, you let that ‘fear of god’ out. Not in violence and not in mean, hurtful ways. But you express your anger with the knowledge that you have a particular outcome you are hoping for. It is sometimes called ‘righteous indignation’ and it can stop people in their tracks.
The key is to stop and think, evaluate, be willing to think it through with this thought, ‘If I COULD affect something postively with my anger, what would it look like?’
“Edukashun iz importend cuz without it you is stuppid.” – me
I wrote this one so my daughters would realize that going to High School was worth it! haha…truth be told it is always easy to talk in generalities about smart vs stupid, but not very nice to get specific about it. However, it is true that many people, even those with degrees, really aren’t very well educated. They paid attention to only their narrowly focused interest and thought other areas weren’t worth paying attention to. They didn’t apply to their lives, in other words.
What really is happening in that case is the person is unknowingly setting themselves up to be ‘stupid’. ‘Stupid’ in this case I think of as being unaware of the larger world, whether it be history, geography, religion, science, art, politics, ideas or a thousand other topics. However, it is also obvious that none of us can know all there is to know, or even the surface of, all the topics available.
That isn’t the sin of ‘stupidity’. The sin is when you don’t attempt to learn anything, when you think you know it already, when you have no curiosity or interest in the world. That is the sin of ‘stupidity’ and it has consequences just as traditional ‘sins’ do.
One of my pet peeves is conspiracy theories. This quote is why. The vast majority of things that happen in the world are not controlled by nefarious, evil-doers bent on world destruction (though some are).
