WHY CAN'T WE FIX STUPID?????

Notice anything wrong with her name?

 

I have no idea what made me think of this. I was ironing my hair. And no, it doesn't relax me like real ironing does.

Anyhow, I got to thinking about stupid.  We hear that word daily. We see more jokes on Facebook about stupidity than most things, and, many comics build their routines around it.

The expression, "you can't fix stupid" came to mind. I wondered, how in the age we live in, with all the knowledge and technology we have, we can fix and or replace, people's joint's, blood; send people to outer space, talk to people around the world on a phone that fits in our hand, and also see them if we want to. Take pictures and videos with our phones. Play games online with people we'll never meet.

We can find and buy almost anything we might want online and you know, the list goes on. And yet, something so simple as "stupid", no one can figure out how to eradicate?

I'm going for my dictionaries. I want more than one for this definition.
Ancient days first.  My 1927 Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English.
  American edition. ( I wonder if they dumbed it down for us?)

Woe.  Hold on to your hats. Unintelligent or Uninteresting. Uninteresting? Well, that changes a lot for me because boy, are there a lot of things and people I find uninteresting.  Later on that.

Looking at a somewhat more current book, Webster's New World Dictionary. Did that mean us instead of England? Am I stupid for not knowing? Yeah, actually I am. The bottom of the book states "of the American Language".  Oops. I didn't know I was speaking American.  Thought it was just me accent mate.

This edition is from 1979. Okay, not quite new, but you don't need a hard cover dictionary anymore. You could look it up on line. Sue me. I don't have room for any more books!


The definition has broadened, yet remained the same.

1.  Dazed, stunned, stupefied.
2.  Lacking NORMAL intelligence; slow witted; dull
3.  Showing or resulting from a lack of intelligence; foolish (wasn't that  
    redundant?)
4.  Dull and boring.

 

So, how does one know one is stupid?  I do believe that if you ask someone if they are stupid, they will say they are not and then hit you for asking.

 From observing (which, if you read the research post you'll know it's scientific)  you catch it from other people telling you that you are stupid.

   This usually occurs when you are quite young and do not know any better.  Not because you are actually stupid, you are too young to know what it is. By the tone of voice, and look on the person's face, you know that it is a bad thing. And if you want to get approval from your parents, friends relatives and teachers, you learn that stupid, is not a good thing to be. Or to be called.

 Developmentally we move from calling each other doody heads to stupid head.

If you don't get enough praise to overpower the amount of stupid you've heard, you may deep down, believe you are stupid. That's really sad, because it's not true.

I shall point to Intelligence Tests to illustrate some facts. Damn. Back to statistics.

Anyway,  we'll use a scale from 0 to 160. Zero, being able to breathe possibly on your own, and 160 as high as you can get. On this scale. No, I'm not referring to weight or a really good head.

We're weighing your grey matter.

You've heard of the word average, right?  If you're average, you're okay, you're normal and you're in the middle of the scale. Let's say between 90 and 109.

If you fall between 80 and 89, you're a little below average, but that's not so bad.  If you're above 110 to 160 you shoot from high average to genius in a heartbeat.

Where does that leave the people with numbers of 70 to 79?  At this point in time, they are referred to borderline. They should be learning, just at a slower rate than the other groups.

 

Funny thing about this group. I can't remember what year it was. I wasn't a psychologist yet. I'm pretty sure I was in school, so it wasn't like, a really, really long time ago. But enough to have affected people who are currently alive. The people who made the tests decided to move the 70 to 79 group up to borderline. Some other people had previously decided, that these folks were mildly retarded. They were classified that for many years.  And just like that. With the stroke of a typewriter key, they weren't retarded anymore.

I can't imagine coming home from school that day.  "Hey mom. Guess what?  I'm not retarded anymore."

 

Crap. I can't remember the figures so I have to find a book that has them. It hopefully won't take long. Especially not for you. It will seem like I never left.

Okay. Boy was that quick. According to the Text Book, The normal curve has the distribution of IQ scores that say that most of the population falls between 84 and 116.  And the best part is that only 16% of the population has scores below 84.

This means that only 16% of people you meet are "duller" than you. So how can so many people and things be so "stupid"?
 
*(D)  The IQ tests are no longer the only thing used to measure intelligence. The numbers are not always correct. Especially if you are from another culture, culturally deprived or maybe have test anxiety. Now, one has to use an adaptive behavior scale as well. These ask about your functioning skills and a lot of people who may not score well with numbers do really well with functioning. So, just a little more food for thought. Which is a really dumb thing, because I have no idea how to "think" food without it being actual food which would make me hungry and I don't want to eat so why would someone even think of saying that? It doesn't mean anything. And yet, there it was, lurking in my brain ready to show up and make me sound like a dummy.  **This was not another digression. I think it was the only one, so therefore, I left out the "A."


    OUR Perceptions dummies.!!   Everyone one of us is stupid according to someone else. Maybe, I think you're stupid. But not if you read my blog. Obviously you have a keen intelligence and high level of curiosity.

The rest of the world however. Not so. If I don't like your politics I think you're stupid. If I don't like your hairdo, I think you're stupid.  If you don't like my ideas, you think I'm stupid. Hell, you may even KNOW I'm stupid. And you might be right.

The reason you can't fix stupid is because, like charity, it should begin at home. Can you fix your own perception of who and what you think of as being stupid? Are you willing to admit that you see things in a way that allows you to see other people in a bad way?  And maybe, just maybe, they aren't stupid. Maybe you just don't like them. Or how they look or how they think. Maybe it's because they are ......pretend I'm whispering......different.

So, should anyone ask. Tell them that Dr. G knows how to fix stupid. Just stop looking for it and it'll go away. Pretty simple. And if they tell you that it's a stupid idea...... I would never say to hit anyone or call them names. Although doody head might be the appropriate place to start.

LET'S ELIMINATE STUPID FROM OUR VOCABULARIES.