Gongol.com Archives: January 2025
January 9, 2025
The denunciation of first and often last resort is to call an opponent "stupid". It is a word that gets applied everywhere from the playground to the bully pulpit, a catch-all for dismissing someone else as being too dense to "get it", whatever point "it" may be. ■ Besides being unoriginal, "stupid" is a pretty faulty ground on which to dismiss anyone. After all, some people may be stupid about many things, but everyone is stupid about some things. That's the inescapable curse of living in a complex world: You may be smart about corporate income tax strategies, but do you know how a small modular reactor works? You might be able to recognize a three-phase Delta transformer from 50 yards away, but do you know what a normal white blood cell count should be? Maybe you speak five languages, but can you explain the CIA triad in cybersecurity? ■ No one can entirely avoid being stupid, at least about some things. And in many cases, an individual has little control over either their innate intelligence or their exposure to a wide range of subjects. Even when we want to know, we often encounter gatekeepers who depend on making their own knowledge seem mysterious. ■ But we could stand to revive a much more useful rebuke: "Unlettered". Unlike "stupid", "unlettered" is a matter of at least some choice. Never before have there been so many things to read on so many subjects, in so many translations, and across so many formats. ■ We can even "read" even when normal reading would be impossible. A phone can translate written text instantaneously and artificial intelligence can convert entire manuscripts to customized reading levels. Where audiobooks are lacking, text-to-speech synthesis can step right in. To read -- in a world where literacy rates have never been higher -- has never been a more accessible act. ■ Yet there is no intelligence so stupid as the one which thinks it knows best by mere instinct and does not need to learn. And that offense -- to be unlettered by choice -- is far more deserving of scorn than to merely be stupid. Stupidity can easily lead us astray, but it is not always a matter of choice. Being literate but deliberately unlettered is. And it's a shame.
