A German general said that people are lazy or hard-working, and also clever or stupid. According to him the combination of ‘hard-working’ and ‘stupid’ is a lethal one.
I agree.
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Ms. Ace is very clever and very hard-working. In fact, she is one of the smartest and most hardworking people I have ever met.
Mr. Shiny is clever and is becoming more and more hard-working as he matures into a young adult.
Miss Sunshine is clever and sometimes very lazy. She can get away with it because she is very cute and creative.
I have been told I am clever -which sometimes baffles me. I have been told I am both lazy and hardworking.
I have a profound dislike for stupid people, and we live in the Age of Stupid.
I am fucked.
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Stupidity comes from the Latin stupere: which means ‘to amaze’, ‘to stupefy’, ‘to numb’ and has been in constant use in Europe for the last couple of millennia.
Being stupid is nothing new. It has always been a human weakness.
I do not consider lack of formal education to be the root cause of stupidity. Human history is full of very well-learned and cosmopolitan characters that are, in essence, very stupid people.
George Bush Jr., Hugo Chavez, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Scott Morrison, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leaders of Iran, Hamas and thousands of others -past and present- are stupid people.
They have squandered opportunities, disregarded peace and wasted goodwill on the back of politics, grandstanding and rhetoric. They dismiss experience, scientific evidence and common sense; and seek refuge in numerologists, wonder weapons, ideologies, xenophobia, occult practices, urban legends and conspiracies.
Just like in July 1914, the world is now treading on eggshells because of a stupid people on all sides of the argument.
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The captains of the Internet -with very few exceptions- are all extraordinarily stupid. They have created a worse present out of a promising past, and singlehandedly destroyed the magic of the Internet.
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Those trapped into theories and beliefs that run contrary to the human spirit; the flat-earthers, the dogmatists, the global warming deniers, the preachers of religions that harm, subjugate and destroy, the ones who kill on the belief that it will restore their families’ ‘honor’, the ones who put women down because they can, the ones who punch and bully those who are different, the ones who get wild at football games or at political gatherings; the ones who call for the blood of migrants, those are the worst kinds of stupid.
They forget the societal rules of sensibility, empathy and decorum because their stupid idols reject those rules. And when you follow a stupid idol, stupidity follows you.
I don’t think poverty or lack of access to higher education is a barrier to be ‘clever’ – again, hundreds, thousands, millions of people have become ‘clever’ on the back of sagacious decisions, experience, patience, hard-work, empathy and understanding.
It’s called ‘being street-wise’.
Abuela was one very smart lady. She had to leave schooling at the end of Primary Year 6, but she managed to get over that barrier and live to a ripe old age as a wise, successful and clever woman.
“Dummheit muß bestraft werden”: Stupidity must be punished.
Every night before going to bed I wish to be a little bit less stupid the next day.