Dec 03 24
It turns out that most people are dumb. By dumb, we mean a person that thinks they’re not dumb. If you know you’re dumb, it doesn’t mean you’re smart — it just means you’re not dumb. As for smart people, we don’t know any (in the mirror or otherwise). We know quite a few people who think they’re smart. Thinking you’re smart might be the worst of all.
We’re all sooooo bias-riddled and weakly cantilevered out on all sorts of translational systems of representation, and just-so emotional understandings — not to mention, being suspended and animated by insanely faceted whirls of unforeseen consequences of constantly colliding complex systems (here we invoke the grey, sticky, specificity-as-cosmic-principal, transcendentally interconnected, Rube Goldberg-ness of Fischli & Weiss’ The Way Things Go).
To feel that one has a read on life, or such and such issue, points more to the need for compressions of convenience and rhythms of obsequious solidarity, than anything like perceptual precision.
All this is said aimed at ourself as much as in any other direction. Also present here is a spirit of sincere positivity; we are inclined to think that the reality of dumbness is a door not a wall. But that’s likely pretty dumb.
Knowing you’re dumb does give one pause. As well, pausing is much less easy to exploit than impulse.
In any case, all thought is idolatrous (whether religious, political, scientific, psychological or what have you) — that is, thought guesses and represents, thought doesn’t know.
A constant attempt at dignified compromise is perhaps best — because you, us, and all the others are dumb.
We’re all sooooo bias-riddled and weakly cantilevered out on all sorts of translational systems of representation, and just-so emotional understandings — not to mention, being suspended and animated by insanely faceted whirls of unforeseen consequences of constantly colliding complex systems (here we invoke the grey, sticky, specificity-as-cosmic-principal, transcendentally interconnected, Rube Goldberg-ness of Fischli & Weiss’ The Way Things Go).
To feel that one has a read on life, or such and such issue, points more to the need for compressions of convenience and rhythms of obsequious solidarity, than anything like perceptual precision.
All this is said aimed at ourself as much as in any other direction. Also present here is a spirit of sincere positivity; we are inclined to think that the reality of dumbness is a door not a wall. But that’s likely pretty dumb.
Knowing you’re dumb does give one pause. As well, pausing is much less easy to exploit than impulse.
In any case, all thought is idolatrous (whether religious, political, scientific, psychological or what have you) — that is, thought guesses and represents, thought doesn’t know.
A constant attempt at dignified compromise is perhaps best — because you, us, and all the others are dumb.