I know I've missed the last couple weeks. I'd like to say it's because I've been too busy, but to be honest I just haven't felt up for writing anything that I don't absolutely need to write. However, I did a bit of philosophizing in the second-best place for doing so - the bathtub; the first is the toilet - and was thinking about the label 'stupid'. Specifically, what does it mean in a human context, and does that differ from animal contexts?
I decided that it does, because of what society does for stupid people that it does not do for stupid animals. Stupid people have the run of the place. If, or rather when, they screw up, they have their social network, their union, their lawyer, and their government to back them out of it. They can keep on being stupid. Stupid people tend to underestimate risks, and they also tend to underestimate their personal impact on their social and physical environments. A stupid person will do stupid things to make your life difficult that would, in a fairer world, mean at least the end of their viability in the community, if not the end of their life, but instead they get bailed out and may even get monetary compensation depending on the consequences of their own idiocy.
Stupid animals, on the other hand, are harder to nail down, but we can perhaps say there are two sorts: there are the kinds who underestimate risks, and those who overestimate them. We all know animals who are afraid of anything strange, whether it be a guest in your house or a new piece of furniture. We know dogs that bark at everything, and cats who are terrified of random inanimate objects. Not too many animals go the other route; although we of course have sexually liberal critters, for the most part, animals who underestimate risks tend to die. They certainly do in the wild, and given that the same social safety nets that work for humans do not work for the furrier of us, they often end up at least in a more difficult situation than they were before in domesticity. Therefore, most stupid animals that we come into contact with are the skittish ones: the ones who overestimate risks, in contrast to their human counterparts.
Can we make a comparison, then? Of course: someone who overestimates risks is much more reserved, and while they may be a detriment to their own lives, they are not, by definition, affecting the lives of others very much, as for them it's all about avoiding doing. One who underestimates is the opposite: he will continue to do stupid things, as opposed to not do smart things, and these actions, in comparison to nonaction, are more potentially detrimental to the individuals and world around them.
A lot of armchair philosophers say that we should be more like our pets. The realist in us says that we might not, since our pets might be kind of dumb, but if you're going to be an idiot, it's still probably best to at least be an idiotic nonhuman. I would let a stupid animal near a person just about any day, but I would never allow a stupid person near my animals.
Just a little stupid brainstorming. Hopefully I can be more regular with posting in the future, but if you're smart, you'll go by my track record and not my word. Until next weekend - maybe!
