THESE DAYS, people OVERTHINK every decision they make. To compensate, more people need to UNDERTHINK their decisions. Luckily, many people, including this writer, have been doing this automatically for a long time. Like the man who spent months building a nursery for quintuplets, but learned a few days ago that he just had a fat girlfriend. (Paul Servat of Quebec, if you want to look him up on the net.) Or the guy in Australia who recently got lost in his back garden and phoned the police. “I’m lost.” “Where are you?” “In the garden of my house in Darwin.” “Thought you said you were lost?” “It’s a big garden.” A police rescue team found him 300 metres from his back door, NTnews reported. Now I SEE YOU STARTING TO SMILE but it’s really important we DO NOT LAUGH at these people. As Modern Scientific People, we need to consider the positive side of stupidity. *** Exhibit A is the US police force, who rejected an applicant because he scored too high in an intelligence test. The irritated brainy guy, Robert Jordan, sued. His appeal was rejected by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals after police chiefs explained that less intelligent applicants better suited the job and stayed longer. Judges looked at the statistical data and agreed. Stupid was better. The case took place several years ago but has been much discussed recently by researchers. Would-be cop Jordan pleaded at the time that he couldn’t help being smart, having been born that way. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye colour,” he said, according to ABC News. Of course, he should have said: “Me like being brainiac! Woof woof!” *** The good news is that the US police force can bulk-recruit from Asia. Recently, the Delhi police force admitted that it had had missed eight years of on-line corruption tip-offs because no one could remember the email password. When they finally managed to download the messages, they found 600 tips, many referring to people who had already died, moved away or been elected to high office. *** My office is in a university so I actually studied this. Stupidity improves efficiency (Journal of Management Studies), boosts productivity (University of Texas), and increases happiness (University of Edinburgh). I would give more details, but all the studies are full of REALLY big words. *** I personally learned the wisdom of stupidity when I was 13. In London, I walked into a gang of neo-Nazis who said they had a policy of beating up all Pakistanis. A typical bookish Asian kid, I nervously explained: “Er, actually, I was born 1,499 miles from Pakistan, in a country called Sri Lanka, which is as far from the aforementioned country as London is from Russia, you may be surprised to know.” They beat me up. The next time I walked into them, I just talked rubbish. “Yeah! Cool! Manchester United vs Arsenal, right? Right! I like popsicles! Gary Glitter sucks!” They greeted me as a brother. *** So listen to me. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. Consider the wise words of my personal favorite role model, the celebrated thinker known as Homer: “Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.” This is Mr Jam, over and out. Me like being brainiac. Woof woof. *** (Links for items mentioned above can be found at mrjam.org)
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 01:27:33 +0000
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