In Defense of Stupid People

I was talking to a friend today and heard myself make a offhand comment about ‘stupid people’, something in reference to our society  being typically shortsighted and destructive in its consumption of precious resources and production of waste.   As I said it something struck me – the problem isn’t stupid people and blaming society’s ills on ‘stupid people’ is really just a cop out and a way to avoid looking at the real issues.  There are plenty of folks who just plain aren’t that bright who have enough common sense to know you shouldn’t shit where you sleep, a lesson that millions of folks who can boast at least an average IQ score still haven’t learned, as evidenced by their willingness to drive giant cars that polute the air they breathe and purchase products whose production poisons the biosphere we all depend on to survive.  People who lack intelligence aren’t our problem, smart people who refuse to put down their illusions and look at the world the way it really is are the problem.

To clarify, I don’t mean ‘stupid’ like people who vote Republican because they want to be safe from terrorism or Democrat because they think doing so will result in significant concession to Labor or environmental stewardship – that sort of deliberate self-deception goes in a category all its own;  I mean folks who just plain aren’t particularly bright because they were born with any of a range of disabilities that interfere with the development of normal cognitive function but don’t make them any less human or in any way diminish their ability to feel pain from the scorn heaped on them by society .   Think about it – why is it ok to discriminate against people with less then average intelligence?  This is a serious question and it deserves serious examination.

The subject might seem a bit odd at first, especially coming from me.  My entire life I’ve had teachers, relatives, peers, and people in positions of power comment that I’m one of the smartest people they know.  That kind of shit can go to a persons head, especially when you’re a kid, and make a guy feel bigger and more important then he is.   It’s frankly part of the reason I didn’t have a huge number of friends as a child, I was smarter then the other kids and they knew it and resented it.   That didn’t make me better then them, it just made me lonely and miserable.   As a young child I reacted by playing up my own importance and trying to make myself feel superior but it turned out to be a shitty defense mechanism and just made things worse. As a result I spent a lot of recesses on the playground reading books and memorizing rap lyrics instead of swinging on the monkey bars or kicking a ball.  In retrospect I can’t say that that was a totally bad thing, but it would have been nice to have had at least a few good friends.

Somewhere around my freshmen year of high school I finally gave it up and made a conscious effort to re-learn everything I thought I knew about relating to other people and about my own place in the world, something I’ve been doing ever since with varying degrees of success and will probably continue working on for the rest of my life.   It’s been a long process but the starting point was realizing that acting like I think I’m better then 99% of the population just because I happened to score higher on an IQ test then they would is a damn good way to alienate people and sabotage relationships (not that IQ is even a good way to measure intellect in the first place!  but that’s another story).   People don’t like to be around self-important stuck up pricks, no matter how smart they are.  And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly given the culture in which we live, people who wouldn’t have hesitated to knock me down a peg for acting superior to them are more then ready to turn around and act superior to folks who have mental handicaps.

Case in point:  in 2001 I was living in Orange County, California (a terrible place) with my girlfriend at the time who was a student at UC Irvine.  I was taking classes part time but in order to pay rent I needed a job, and since I was in Irvine (where public transit is a sick joke at best and nonexistent at worst) and didn’t own a car my choice of jobs was limited to jobs I could walk too.  I ended up working as a bagger at Albertsons’ grocery, it was the single worst job of my life.  The work itself wasn’t too bad but the customers were frequently condescending and rude and the pay was terrible.  My girlfriend and I shared a two-bedroom apartment with 3 other people (we slept in the living room) and working 40+ hours a week I was barely able to make my share of rent and pay for food.  It was not cool.   Let me just take this opportunity to throw out a big “fuck you” to every rich asshole who thinks people working for minimum wage and struggling to get by are lazy.  But I digress…

One of the guys I worked with, let’s call him Frank,  was in his 40′s and had ended up as a bagger because he had a mental handicap.  It wasn’t Downs syndrome or anything like that, he just plain wasn’t very bright.   He would have long-since been promoted to checker or management otherwise, but management knew that doing so would be inviting disaster.  Because of his handicap Frank would never progress past bagger and he – and everyone else – knew it. Worse yet, it was commonplace for management and co-workers to pawn off the most unpleasant jobs on him, he did far more then his share of toilet cleaning and graffiti removal duty for a start and didn’t get nearly as much time getting carts from the parking lot as other baggers (something that other baggers guarded jealously because as a bagger it’s the only time you get to go outside and breath fresh air or move around without a boss looking right over your shoulder).   Small indignities, little sleights, but significant ones.

I could barely stand the job for 3 months, to imagine a future where that’s all I could look forward to is horrifying in a deep way.  And whether he was a rocket scientist or not Frank knew that he was trapped in a dead end shit job with laughably low pay for life.  Sure he could quit at Albertsons, but where else would he go, Burger King?   You could see it in his face every day at the beginnings and ends of his shift, as he made the rounds to collect trash from the registers or emerged from the bathroom after cleaning up gods know what.  He was never rude, never overtly resentful, but I could see the pain in his eyes at the way he was treated and there was nothing I could do about it other then to do my best to not add to it.

Now obviously I’m not saying that he should have been promoted into a position that he would have been doomed to fail at, but how is it in any way just or fair that a man who works as hard as he can using his faculties to the best of his ability be doomed to a life of subservience?  I’m not asking for the Ritz here, but a little human dignity and a recognition by his peers that he was contributing to the best of his ability would have been nice.  Think about it, to work your whole life and never be able to afford your own place or have any significant degree of freedom (he lived in a very strict group home), to have no significant leisure time, and never be able to save up money,  travel, or even just take a week off because if there’s no paycheck you’re on the street.

Now of course millions of people all over the world, mentally handicapped and otherwise,  live like that.  It’s one of the most basic conditions of capitalism – wealth requires poverty in order to exist.  Otherwise it wouldn’t be wealth, it would just be the same stuff everyone else has.    But this issue is deep because it’s accepted.  Most people at least have a vague understanding that it’s fundamentally wrong that poor people are trapped in horrible dead end jobs, though they may rationalize it away with the myth that capitalism is a meritocracy and the best and brightest will do well regardless of their social origins.*  But why should only be the “best and brightest” who do well.   Why should conditions beyond any individuals control determine their ability to live life to the fullest?   I have no more right to live the high life because of my high IQ – which I did nothing to earn but happened to inherit as an accident of genetics and circumstance -  then Frank or anyone else does.

The fact that we are different, that some are strong while others are weak, does not give the strong license to prey upon the weak, rather the opposite: it confers a responsibility to defend and to protect.  To fight for the people that Jesus (who was a pretty cool guy despite all the carnage that Christians have committed in his name) referred to as “the least of these, my brethren”.  This is where the old socialist credo of  “from each according to ability, to each according to need” really shines as an example of the very best in the human spirit, the drive to reject privilege and power in favor of the recognition that we share a common humanity and have a vested interest in each others welfare.    We are social animals, we need each other in order to be human and the moment we forget that we lose track of everything that is good about humanity.  The very fact that we are not born equal and that some people are smarter or stronger or more socially adept then others demands that we take care of each other.  Our natural inequality is the strongest possible argument for an egalitarian society.

A truly just and equitable society would take care of folks like Frank and folks like me, each of us would be able to do work that is fulfilling and that we are best suited to do well and we would do it in an enviornment of mutual respect and mutual aid.   And Frank would get a standard of living as good as anyone else in recognition of the fact that he works just as hard as anyone and does the best that can be asked of him with what he has.   No one – no matter how intelligent they think they are or what they may or may not have contributed  -  deserves the opulence that is the hallmark of our global ruling class.   And no one – be they brilliant, dumb as a rock, or just average -  deserves to live life trapped in a third-world slum or in a dead end job right here in America.  To be satisfied with anything less then freedom and equality for everyone  is to betray our own humanity and to betray each other.  At the end of the day, all we really deserve is what we give to each other.

*Incidentally it’s a lie – wealthy people are no smarter on average then working class people.  Very poor people do show a statistical dip in intelligence but that’s largely the result of poor nutrition – a result of poverty

Posted: March 27th, 2009 under culture war, economics, personal.
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