I Do Not Suffer Fools Gladly

OK, this is the first time, but it by Goddess won't be the last time, you see me write this: I hate stupid people. I mean the willfully ignorant. The people who are dumb and proud of it. Those folks who sneer at people carrying books or people who have a reading level higher than the average US newspaper (average newspaper grade reading level - 8th). Anyone who avoids knowledge or learning like the plague (FYI, I'm talking bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, the Black Death here) and then goes out and blithely passes on their ignorance like a mental STD, making life for the rest of us that much more annoying.

What do I mean by stupid? In short, people who have an opinion about everything, but know nothing. Sharing, ad nauseam, oodles of information that is just wrong, wrong, wrong. And then cheer and encourage as all the other stupid people pick up on it and believe it and spread it around like herpes.

Let me state for the record, for example: Just because you read something in a book or a newspaper or the National Enquirer, doesn't make it so. Period. Writers make mistakes just like, say, politicians (don't worry, they'll get their own Rant). Sometimes they even, GASP, LIE outright. You might have to read a few of them (horrors!) in order to get the full poop. You might have to reason. Deliberate. Weigh the information. Certainly it could be tough, but the grey matter between your ears (I'm being generous and assuming you have some) will atrophy if you don't give it a workout. But in point of fact books can be a really big help in learning stuff. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, stuff like that. (For example, you might learn the difference between lying prostrate on the floor and your prostate lying on the floor. Ouch!)

But if you have no desire to learn, no willingness to clutter up your consciousness with intelligence and knowledge (versus the names of every season's winner of Survivor or American Idol), please, do me a favor. Zip it. Don't share your ignorance with me, or with the dozens of cerebral sponges in my immediate vicinity. Particularly because several of them will be just like you and they'll take what you say as the gospel and then they'll repeat it to ten of their dumb ass friends and so on and so on. Before you know it we're awash in a sea of idiocy and given the cumulative national IQ probably in a rowboat with only one oar. (Average US IQ is 98, giving the country a ranking of 46th in the world. Source - IQ and the Wealth of Nations,Lynn/Vanhanen 2002)

You can help stamp out stupidity. Consider it like a charity that doesn't cost you anything. If someone asks you a question, say, does the planet Earth revolve around the sun or vice versa? You don't know, but figure, hey, I've got a 50-50 shot of being right, right? DON'T ANSWER. Just change the conversation. Say something like, "Hey how about those Yankees?" or "Did you hear what Imus said this morning?" But if, when confronted with this question, you suddenly find yourself overwhelmed with curiousity, why not stop by your local public library - I'm sure they love to see mental virgins, I mean, the intellectually pure, wander in - and look it the fuck up. Don't just cruelly vomit out your ignorance, awing those poor tabula rasa masses with your blatantly false "knowledge". (According to Ben Smith's Politico blog, 18 % of Americans do, in fact, think that the big old yellow blob revolves around us.)

I value knowledge. I like people who like to learn new things. I take nothing away from someone who tries to improve themselves. That very desire is what separates the merely untutored from the massively stupid.

So the next time you are thinking of holding forth on how the internal combustion engine works, or the chemical makeup of plutonium, or the complexity of the symbolism in Dante's Inferno, do the world a favor. Stop. Stifle that impulse. Even be courageous and admit you don't know. And then pick up a book, go to the library, watch the Discovery channel. Learn something. Learn anything. Who knows, you may find out you really like knowing stuff.

THEN speak up. You'll make the world a smarter place.