The Inalienable Right to Stupidity

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the Rights that we have in this country as human beings and as citizens of this great nation (in fact, more than there usually is after NYC's Mayor Bloomberg decided to try and save New Yorkers from large soft drinks).  Some are worthy, some are even inspiring; but some are tedious and boring, some are simply bogus, and some could even be considered rather far-fetched.

No discussion of Rights in this country of course, is ever possible without first mentioning "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"  (or Property, depending on whether you go with Jefferson's original, or the sanitized version that ended up on parchment) that has come to define the message in the Declaration of Independence. While this was certainly a sound base to build upon, by the time the Founding Fathers had gotten around to writing the Constitution, many of the same people who signed the Declaration had become rather cynical about what would happen to their Rights when having to replace the looser Articles of Confederation with the stronger central government outlined in this new document.  They were wary and distrustful of the amount of power now being place in the hands of that new government.  (Pretty smart guys those Founding Fathers.)  

In spite of the reassurances of some of the finest minds in the nation at the time as to the limits and restraints placed by that Constitution on this new federal government in "The Federalist Papers", they wanted written guarantees as to Rights that would be protected before signing on the dotted line.  A list of twenty such rights was handed back to the nation by James Madison (Jefferson couldn't help, as he was in France at the time), twelve of which were voted on, and ten later passed to became the first ten Amendments to this new Constitution and came to be known as the "Bill of Rights".

With all due respect to the efforts of 'The Father of the Constitution', who I suspect is now whirling like a dervish during his dirt nap when considering some of the feeble attempts put forward masquerading as Rights in this country, I am shocked ... shocked I tell you, by the big one that even he apparently missed.  I'm not sure for example, that 'affordable housing', 'a living wage', or 'free contraception' would have made any list that he would have submitted to Congress (even if it had been available).  Having just gone through a war with the greatest empire of his time over the Rights they believed that they were entitled to 'by their Creator' ... and won it, I doubt that he would have been amused by such mundane concepts, let alone submit them for serious consideration.  In so doing however, he was in fact denying the people of this country the one fundamental Right that even the Declaration's troika failed to list  .... The Right to Stupidity.

Come on now, admit it.  We're all falling back on this Right far more times than any of us would like to admit (and far more than the ten listed in the Constitution).  Have you bungee jumped lately or jumped out of an airplane with nothing between you and certain death but an over-sized handkerchief? How about ordering that triple cheeseburger with the large fries (you know, the kind that makes your cholesterol go up before the first bite)?  Smoke two packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years and still don't think you're setting yourself up for lung cancer?  Drink a quart of vodka every week, but you aren't concerned about the condition of your liver?  Hitting the tanning booth three times a week, but aren't worried about those new freckles that you're getting? How about when you told one of your friends that despite all the warnings, you were still convinced that you'd get your money back out of Social Security?  See, there you go ... Stupidity.

You know, quite a lot of stupidity that we deal with today has to do with government in one way or another.  After all, it's government that tells us that with each new law or regulation, it can protect us from evil banks, greedy corporations, and predatory merchandisers; and we all know that that's just plain stupid.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not objecting if the government wants to check out the hot dog factory from time to time to make sure that it hasn't become a science experiment.  Nor am I upset that if they want to check to make sure that the teddy bear I just gave my grandchild isn't stuffed with material used to clean up hazardous or radioactive waste.  I'm even OK with a few rules for those in the stock market to make sure that they're not lining their pockets with my money while trading off of inside information.  It defies all logic and reason however, for government to think that we're stupid enough to believe that it can protect us from our own stupidity.  (OK, that issue may still be up for grabs...)

The truth of the matter is that if members of this and previous Congresses, along many of the recent occupants of the White House hadn't kept bailing individuals, corporations, and foreign countries from the results of their moronic actions, perhaps there would be less stupidity in the US, if not the world today.  At the very least, making them pay in full for the stupidity of their actions would have resulted in a 'thinning of the herd' that would probably have raised the average and collective IQ in this country considerably.

Of course maybe the real consideration here is that government simply doesn't like having competition.  It doesn't take an Einstein to look at the imbecilic nonsense committed in Washington DC on a daily basis and come to the conclusion that they would prefer a monopoly on stupidity; and that based on their fear of competition they will do all in their power (no matter how stupid it appears) to reduce the number of players in the game.  

The hard truth however, is that with or without government intervention we will remain the constant victims of our own stupidity.  (Are you paying attention Mayor Bloomberg?)  One could even make the case that continued efforts to protect us from our ill-advised behaviors will in fact increase them through a half-witted (though often astonishingly creative) push back against increasing government interference in the exercise of this fundamental Right.

One might even go so far as to say that a government consisting of professional politicians wishing to serve as our elected officials should be wary of tampering with the inalienable right to stupidity, and  should instead be celebrating it.  What other hope do they have in the never-ending quest for a return to their well-paid positions than to count on the stupidity of the American voter.

 
    

Outside The Box

Weekend efforts are normally reserved for complete and utter nonsense at "Just Blowing Smoke", whereas weekday posts are instead retained for the purposes of 'Important Nonsense'.  This one will not be an exception.  With that in mind, I present the following effort for your intellectual entertainment and amusement.

During the days of my youth, I often heard my parents or their friends talking about someone being as 'dumb as a box of rocks'.  Now of course being both inquisitive and a bit of a skeptic, I couldn't help but wonder at the accuracy of a comparison between human intelligence and that of a stone or the relative comprehension of rocks in general for that matter, as studies on the subject seemed rather limited and theoretical.  Beyond that, whether there was an measurable increase in the collective intelligence of such rubble by containerizing it was something I had never seen a proper published academic study on. My own limited experimentation in this area probably lacked proper scientific method and controls (owing no doubt, to a lack of proper federal funding), were unable to provide me with the answers I sought, and were set aside in favor of other youthful pursuits.

Much later in life, I was exposed to friends describing a similar comparative situation, though this time the expression being used was that someone was instead 'dumber than a box of hair'.  Naturally, this recalled to me the experiments of my youth and intrigued me to once again take up my research, but the analysis implied in this comparison presented a number of new variables that would require study.  While the concept of a container appeared to remain consistently essential to the comparative measurement involved, the contents now seemed even to an untrained eye, as a thing altogether different.  I now wondered how dumb either of these materials originally were (and compared to each other) without the container.

Hair after all, was a much more complex substance that carried the genetic code of its owner.  Was animal hair therefore less intelligent than human hair and could this affect the comparison effected?  Was the relative intelligence of the person that the hair was collected from a factor that needed to be considered as well?  What about their level of education?  Would that of the owner of an advanced college degree fare differently than one of a person without a high school diploma?  Would being subjected to public education vs admission to private or parochial education carry weight in analysis?

What about employment?  Would the hair of a doctor or lawyer factor differently than that of a salesman or a politician?  Would gender be a factor, and women's hair be smarter than men's, thus affecting the comparison? (I know that women's hair is smarter, because one told me so.) Does hair color make a difference (after all, many of us have likewise been told over the years that the intelligence level of blondes is not as high as those with other hair colors)? Are the length of the individual strands likewise a factor to be considered in the discussion? Would the level of compaction of this material in the container be something worthy of consideration; and would therefore denseness of the packing affect the measurement of the denseness of the person being compared to it?  

It was then that I was confronted with the daunting realization that in all the thought that I was giving to the two materials used as container contents, that the relative size of the repositories was receiving no consideration.  Could this be yet another of those situations where, regardless of popular myth,  size indeed mattered?  Would there be a measurable difference of containers of equal size but with different shapes?  And what about the material of which the container was constructed?  Would differences appear in a cardboard box versus a wood or plastic one?  Would the potential for electrical conductivity of a box made of metal make a difference?  Would copper serve better than tin?  Would the density of lead rather than steel have an impact affect the comparative density of the human involved?  

In the deceptively complex conundrum that now presented itself, the variables under consideration that began as a simple youthful challenge now expanded to far greater proportions.  As I continued to contemplate what for me now threatened to become and insurmountable lifelong study, I realized that proper scientific scrutiny might in fact never be possible, even if I applied for and was granted sufficient government funding to expand my research.  

Just as I was about to abandon my inquiry all together, I realized that though one had once been living and the other never had, both substances were now inert (like many people I had known over the years).  Perhaps then the nature of the comparison had nothing to do with the substance itself, so long as it was a substance which was currently in an inert state.  The comparison could just as easily been about a box of shrubbery, a box of pudding, or a box containing members of Congress.  So long as whatever it was being used carried the property of 'inertness' when outside the box, it was equally valid for use in the comparison.  In fact, I rather liked the idea of someone being as dumb as a box of pudding or a box shrubbery (I rather liked the Monty Python "Holy Grail" reference.)

(I later found the Congressmen comparison potentially valid, but was still uncomfortable with it.  Further deliberation made it seem perhaps a bit over the top and maybe even overly harsh for someone already apparently burdened with a bad case of stupid.   Understanding the nature of the other substances, the comparison might also in fact be unfair, since rocks, hair, pudding, and shrubbery often seem to act far more intelligently than your average member of Congress.)

What a revelation!  This at last was the prize that I had been looking for; and not only had I answered a dilemma equal to that (at least in my mind) of the 'question of the sphinx', but I had reached this conclusion using facts, logic, and reason (something almost entirely unknown to me under normal circumstances). After many long and arduous years of study, I might now finally put my labors to rest, and perhaps even shred the research grant application for federal funding that while now all but completed, was taking up considerable space; since it was now apparently unneeded. (Well, maybe I'll just hang onto that, you never know when a filled out federal grant application will come in handy.)   It was only then however, in the midst of an almost unparallelled celebration of singular intellectual achievement, that I realized that the profound knowledge that I had gained had only been reached when I abandoned the use of the traditional scientific method and considered the problem instead by thinking "outside of the box".