Good news is hardly ever reported. Bad news always makes the front page. And when something bad happens, people always question, what went wrong? Well, here’s my answer: let’s take off the kid gloves. You see, I think the deterioration in society is due to too much cotton-woolling. We’re afraid to do harm to everyone’s psyche. What most people don’t realise is that you can be blunt without being too offensive. We’ve all developed too thin a skin, and take every criticism as negative. I’m not afraid to say it – WE ALL have issues. And it’s time for us to hear that WE ALL ARE STUPID!
A sociology lecturer at university walked into the classroom for our very first lecture and wrote on the board, “Why are people so dumb?” We thought it was a joke. He handed out big long stickers with this phrase on it for us to apply to windows, cars, etc. He said it was to remind us of the lecture. The point of the lecture was that we all do dumb things for dumb reasons. Even the most intelligent of us will succumb to this low point. Though some mistakes may appear to be unreasonable to the majority of us, it may not appear so to the perpetrator of the dumb act at the time of the action. Other times, we are moved to do dumb things out of societal or group pressures.
Perhaps, it is time to remind people that we are all dumb and will do dumb things in our lives. Maybe kids should hear that they are dumb and do dumb things and that they’re likely to do more dumb things in the future. In order to prevent doing these dumb things, they need to stop and think before they act. Maybe that might get them to stop and think more. We live in a society where no one likes to be called “dumb” or “stupid”. Use it to advantage. Tell kids they’re dumb for wanting to have sex at 12, smoking, doing drugs, etc. Stupidity doesn’t just apply to doing bad things at the wrong times, it’s also not doing good things at the right times. Such as, not taking advantage of opportunities when they are given to us. Stupidity results in regrets. Allow kids to make some mistakes, but allow them the opportunity to learn from their own or others’ mistakes. But do not tolerate repeated mistakes.
Dumb kids grow up to be dumb adults. Recent events have highlighted that. But instead of sincere apologies for being dumb, instead of admitting that they did such stupid things for stupid reasons and they cannot understand what they were thinking at the time, the MPs wanted to stick to their defence of “it was within the rules”. “Temporary insanity” is a defence, but not always a useful one. I’d have more respect for an MP if he admitted he was stupid and didn’t reason things out at the time of the offence. After all, I’ve just said we’re all dumb.
You know how you do dumb things to cover up other dumb things and it just compounds your problems? Well, if you can’t change the first dumb thing, just admit that you did a dumb thing because you were dumb. Sir Fred did a dumb thing by allowing RBS to fail. He apologise, but didn’t admit he was dumb. Instead, he compounded his stupidity by taking more money than he deserved.
Now, the party leaders have agreed to some reform measures in the expenses system. Seems fairly straightforward. I can’t see what else will need to change after the review into the expense claims and the expense system is concluded. Seems like a no-brainer job for the independent committee to work on. Makes you wonder how they could not have come up with these same guidelines two weeks ago and avoided the full brunt of the scandal. Oh, yes, it’s because we’re all dumb. We needed lots of time to think these obvious things up. Or, perhaps, we needed to understand public reaction before we could proceed. Years of cotton-woolling within the lifestyles of the rich and famous have made some of us lose touch with reality.
Many of us think “That can’t happen to me”. No one thinks that more often than kids. And as long as they think that, they will do dumb things. Adults are no different. The reality is that anything can happen to anyone. You are dumb if you don’t believe that. Perhaps, if we can all sit back and accept that we are dumb and are prone to do dumb things unless we are very careful, we might be a little more careful with our actions next time. We sure don’t want to appear even more dumb than our neighbours.
