The Importance of Being Stupid
I have an acquaintance who won't go into Best Buy because it makes them feel stupid. He/She (privacy must be maintained, they are frequent readers of this blog) told me the place makes them feel stupid. This I can understand. Those of us of a certain age are pioneers of gigabytes but have been trampled by the steady progress of exobytes, and yottabytes. It's like some of us "came, saw, and were conquered". I'd like to offer a treatise on the importance of being stupid. Not just about computers but in all things.
This acquaintance is smart in most ways and is a college grad. Now we all know that that isn't necessarily a proof of once brilliance, but it does mean a certain proficiency. He/she has conquered many things but in the area of computer science, they have simply fallen on their sword rather than do battle. I also have a friend I worked with who decided not to engage in computer stuff. And they seem to navigate just fine outside of the internet. me? I can do without. Most of us have online banking, online newspapers, online pharmacy, online boobs, online investments, online encyclopedias, online hate sites, online books, and just about anything else you can think of and probably a world of things I can't, and won't) even imagine.
When I was in college way back when there was a room on second floor of the Science Hall. There were several metal cabinets with lights and knobs and shoe boxes full of rectangular paper cards laying around. My advisor, bless his heart, recommended I take a computer class and being the son-of-a-small-town kind of guy signed up. It ended up being the only class I failed. After a semester I decided this wasn't for me. Brave New World my ass.
I started out at Seaton grade school where they called us back in from recess by a school bell. A goddamn school bell! No loudspeaker system, no bells clanging on the side of the wall. A lady shaking a school bell. And like Pavlovian dogs we'd drop our dodge ball and race back in. Once inside we'd open our hard bound books ands await Mrs. Olson and her newly mimeographed work sheet and the wonderfully unique smell that it after using a mixture of special ingredients to make. Too young to feel stupid by what we didn't know.
I'd like to tell my acquaintance that that feeling of being stupid is precisely what makes us learn. Rather than running from Best Buy, he/she needs to go in and explore, ask questions and read. Frank Harlan, who knew his way around a dodge ball at Seaton Grade school, told me once he did not know his way around the Quad Cities like he should so he went up and drove around all day. The same with the current Mrs. Blythe. When she moved to this disgusting state she drove around, all over, to become accustomed to the area and not be overwhelmed by it.
We all feel stupid by certain things: some guys feel stupid around a quilting bee, women around engines and me in a crowd bigger than 4. Its a signal, though. Nature's way of telling us to get with the program. Simply put, we aren't good at everything, and when we come to a wall you either bulldoze it down, climb it, or start digging.
Remember the Peter Principle referring to organizations and hierarchy's? It went something like: people rise within companies to the level of their incompetence. Having worked within an organization, I can attest to some of its validity. Not all, but some. The PP doesn't just work at our jobs, it also works everyday for some of us, or at least every so often doing ordinary things. Have you seen the videos of people trying to park? Or get gas from a self-serve. We watch these and laugh thinking how could anyone be so stupid, when in reality they have simply approached something that they have no experience in.
My grand kids display the Peter Principle often. They are young and damn near everything is a new learning experience for them. But damn if it doesn't help if I show them how for the first couple tries. Norah loves those little mac and cheese bowls you fix int he microwave. I used to have to fix them every time she showed up. Then I taught her how to do it herself. One new task she has learned - one less thing I have to do.
One more point, if I might. I don't want anyone to be stupid. And while US student test scores compared to the rest of the world may say so, we aren't really stupid, just lagging. Seriously lagging. While it may be our nature to ignore those subjects we feel stupid in, it is precisely that reason why, maybe, we just need to look at it a different way. Let's call it productive stupidity. I'm going to list 5 areas I am stupid in. Not here, stupid. I am then going to research those 5 areas and become not so stupid. This is my challenge to you, too. Everyone do the same. Let's all become productively stupid. Productively stupid means we will no longer pass over those things we are stupid in, but will research and become smarter. Yee haw!! This sounds like fun.
Which brings us all the way back to my acquaintance and Best Buy. I don't know if he/she will ever get to the point where they will skip-to-my-loo into BB with a list of new fangled computer stuff to take home. My guess is not. But I do know that when we close ourselves off from something that baffles us, we've stopped learning.
By the way, I just researched a yottabyte:
A yottabyte is a unit of information equal to one septillion (1024) or strictly, 280 bytes.
See? I'm less stupid.
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