Everyone is an Idiot

I could be an idiot too

Idiots are not unintelligent, in fact a certian type a friend of mine called the "Genius Idiot" is quite common among well-educated people. The Genuis-Idiot is obviously smart in many ways, but overall makes choices that seem characteristic of someone much less aware, what in conventional wisdom is caused by ignorance, as if simply being informed allows one to act in one's most enlightened self-interest. This is not the case. To not be an idiot is to have self-knowledge and self-control to be able to use what information and resources you have to your advantage.

85% of everything is Crap, recursively

There is a cynical maxim attributed to the science fiction writer, Theodore Stergon which says "85% percent of any collection is crap." The law is recursive, meaning that 85% of the remaining 15% is also crap and so on. Of course, the infinite series approaches 100% of everything is crap. Even if this idea is too bleak a view to take on the world, it is useful in pointing out that the real improvements to our lives come from a vanishingly small number of the musings that people have. It also says that most people that ever live waste their lives thinking about things that are "crap", and doing things that are "crap". The effort is either a waste or doesn't amount to anything. Most people who have lived never leave a legacy of themselves except if they reproduce that they get to leave their impact on human evolution. If they get the "Darwin Award" there is quite a small chance that some trace of their remains will get perserved.

Our Consciness is full of the legacy of those who are not Crap

These cases may be idiots. If you were able to look at their lives and imagine how they must have viewed their life from its end they may have poingnetly stated that they were indeed an idiot. There are many people we treasure today who had no fame in life and may have regarded themselves as failures. It is arbritation of lesser folks, idiots, prehaps, which makes their contribution endure. So if such people are not idiots then why do modern people who may be idiots think that they have risen above the level of crap?

In some substancial way these people are remembered at all because the single-minded passion they had and its communication through whatever expression they made was and is still communicated. It is not enough to say that they didn't sell-out because some were "sucessful" in the usual way. But ins spite of the pressures to conform, they excelled in some way unimagined before

Have a Passion in Life

I once said that I would put my fist in the mouth of the next businessman who says to live your passion, whatever that may be, and I still think that is smug advice from people who already seek to please a need that people will pay for. To be truely possessed by a passion in one's life, you can't go looking for venture capital first, in fact if you do, you are an idiot and the scheme is not your passion. Passions most often appear early in life or emerge away from the pragmatic everyday world. Only a few are skilled enough to get funding for their passion. Far more people with passions do not get any help from the world. But, I suspect that none of these people are idiots. Having passion in life is required to not be an idiot.

Know Yourself

Having a passion is one aspect of having self-awareness. Now most people have some measure of self-awreness, but the critical element of what I mean here is the kind of self-awareness that allows one to distinguish what you are and what from and for yourself from what everyone else wants to tell you about yourself. There is an old adage: "If you don't live your life, someone else will", beginning with your family, and later people you meet in your career. Is there anyone who has not felt pegged by someone he has never met face to face because of something he put on is resume on the advice of a theird party he barely knew, a career consuler or resume coach? The adage applies to any relationship in life, there are plenty of people who will try to persuade or bully you if you don't tell them who you are, or assert yourself when they want to control you. It happens all the time.

The things we usually associate with competance follow in turning purpose in life into accomplishment, not simply success, not simply being recognized by others, but in knowing in one self when one is alone that one's efforts have been worthwhile. There is even the chance that no legacy of this effort will survive due to the ill fortune of diaster or just the fact that the idiots in the world cannot recognize your contribution, but that you did your part to the best of your unique abilities and against adversity as well as with good fortune.

America is a land of Idiots

That sounds harsh, but it is a way of emphasizing how we get off on the wrong foot with respect to people being able to find out what they have to offer, express it, and otherwise live high-functioning lives. It is as though there are many people out there that want the majority of their fellows to be idiots.

We raise our Children to be Idiots

We teach them that to have an inner-self and a string sense of uniqueness is wrong, and to be outer-directed and shallow spiritually and emotionally is what you need to compete in the fickle and shallow world. That appearences matter more than substance because everyone has no attention span and doesn't want to have to think and have time to make decisions. This sounds like the kind of marketing fluf world invented for media and advertizing, not the real world of mystery where very little is at it first seems. There is a place for snap judgement intuition, gut reaction, tempered by patience, deliberation, skepticism