A dear friend of mine who reads this journal commented - with a careful preface that I'm obviously highly intelligent and interestingly complex - that my observations are quite frequently...
"-stupid?" I supplied.
"Yes. And cynical and judgmental" (that's me paraphrasing, as she's far too tactful to say it).
Well, what can I say? There's not much to say about the stupidity charge. I think I've always said, or at least am saying now, that I don't think intelligence actually exists. Intelligence is like cold. It doesn't really exist except as a word. There is something, like lack of heat, which does exist. There is no such thing as intelligence. There is such a thing as a lack of stupidity. To say that I am rarely lacking is not entirely honest. So I got no problem with that.
I will say that the phrase "judgmental", in the current negative context that it enjoys is a descriptive term, I have no problem with either.
As the ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu once said "A man can no more not judge than a fish can not swim".
The cynicism charge I don't have a problem with either, in that I do indeed proceed from a starting position of taking things at their worst, and then modifying it from there.
It's a good practical stance, as I am rarely disappointed.
But I do get irritated with the implied suggestion that I just reject things out of hand. These qualities, in our modern environment, infer such a cavalier behavior.
Thats' simply not true. I've usually given the matter considerable thought, ruminated on the subjects quite a bit, before finally deciding that such and such a thing (often contrary to popular opinion and conventional wisdom) is utter horseshit.
And I can back it up with a good argument as well (again not the current disparaging coloration, but rather a fairly sound and logical set of reasons).
Yeah, well, back to work.
You may be stupid, cynical and judgmental but you don't do it with malice. I'm OK with stupid, cynical and judgmental. It's malice that I have a problem with. But you are right in most of your suppositions and you are entertaining as hell. at least, you make me laugh. The thing is, people are really stupid. they can also be really smart. Take me for example. I think I am fairly intelligent (not to be confused with 'book learning') and sometimes I will do something that I realize later was really stupid. Mine other is very much like you in that he expects the worst and is therefore not disappointed. I choose just to have no expectations and am therefore never disappointed. I think that if you focus on just one aspect then it's hard to see any other.
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