Goddamn if we aren't some stupid motherfuckers (humanity, that is)...

The fantasy of leaving public schools, heading off to some private university, and blowing off the dumb people of the world has really been hitting me, this weekend...

It's a nice fantasy, isn't it...that you can just get away from all of the stupidity...and find a world of all kinds of smart people to avoid all of it...

The problem is...

It doesn't exist...

We are all dumb, at some level, is the truth...every one of us...me, especially...

What I love about teaching, right now...is that all of the kids...no matter how smart or not they are...are learning to live with and identity with one another, better, no matter where they are situated academically in the classroom...

That matters to me an awful lot, really...

Because I identify with everyone, really...no matter how smart or dumb...

I just get tired of having my efforts limited by people with smaller worldviews...

And I get tired of those same people not taking smart seriously enough...

I just will not settle...no matter how much people fight me...no matter for how long...

I will not settle for a world...

Where some people are smart...

And some people are dumb...

And where there is no expectation that everyone can be smart...

I won't settle for that world...

No matter how much people fight for the freedom to not be accountable to more intelligent standards...

Don't be accountable to higher standards, I say...

Just don't expect to be taken seriously, in the process...

And if you want to be taken seriously...

Then learn to deal honestly and constructively with intelligent criticism to improve your thinking and your efforts...

And...if not...expect to be criticized constructively and intelligently until you do (and you should probably expect, realistically, to be criticized less fairly and less intelligently, as well, just to have some idea of what you'll probably have to deal with in the world, fair or not)...

I just don't understand why less bright people don't see how it's in their interests to be smarter...

And how smarter people don't see that it's in their self-interest to have more people to be smarter...

Instead...we...too often...live in these very different worlds...or hold ourselves and one another to very different standards...

Which is just stupid, really...

Because we all live in the same fuckin' world, for goodness fuckin' sakes...

So it makes no fuckin' sense for us to divy each other up...

Into special education classes and gifted classes and general education classes (except when it serves a specific need, with a view to integrating people into shared educational and social experiences)...

We're all smart, at some level and with something...

And we're all stupid, at some level and with something and, generally, many things...

So we might as well face that and then work to hold each of us to similarly high standards of thought, creativity, and performance...

I identify with a guy like Joe Nye...or Amartya Sen...or Abraham Maslow...or E.O. Wilson...or Milton Friedman...or Ronald Coase...or Stephen Jay Gould...or Stephen Ambrose...or James McPherson...or Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot...or Robert Sternberg...

But I want everyone to identify with a guy like Joe Nye...

And to understand how important his work is...to their lives...as much as to some scholarly community that they feel is disconnected from their lives...

And to understand, better, how intelligence reflects a better understanding of even day-to-day realities...not just the big picture...

Some days...I want to escape...into a world of more intelligent people...who can just take me away from all of the inanity of everyday life...

But then I remember that that world doesn't exist, really...

Because a world of exclusive intellect...

Is an imaginary world...

But it ignores the obvious reality...

To anyone with their eyes open...

That we all have to live with one another...no matter how smart or not we are or aren't...

I do enjoy and prefer to talk with other who care about intellect and ideas like me...like I enjoy and prefer to talk about movies with people who really care enough about movies to develop a critical eye for them...or how I enjoy and prefer to talk about art with people who really care enough about art to develop a critical eye for art...or theater...or whatever...

I would reframe Thoreau's observation that most men live lives of quiet desperation this way, for the twenty-first century...

The world is crawling with people living lives of insignificance...making quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet arguments for why the insignificance of their lives and the way they live them should be ranked as live of deep purpose and significance...

And while those peoples' lives are worthy and important, in and of themselves...

They only rank as significant...if they aspire for significance...

And they can only aspire for significance...if they make an honest effort to contribute something great to the culture...

And in the meantime...smaller priorities are...well...smaller...

And they should be treated as such...

And most people...aspire for very little, really...

And so they don't recognized as lives of deeper significance...

Because they never really tried, really...not really...and because they wouldn't take the critical feedback when they got it...

That doesn't mean that any of us have to be intelligent all the time...noone is smart all the time...everyone is stupid, at some level, some if not much of the time...

But everyone does need to aspire...

Because as long as they don't...they aspire for so little...and their smaller worldviews will constantly interfere with the efforts of those who do aspire for greatness...

The conceit of the average person...that they should be taken more seriously than they deserve...no matter how little they've aspired or deserve such serious attention...

And the conceit of the also-rans...those who have aspired, to some degree, for greatness...but who never really achieved it...

Undermine the efforts of everyone...including those who achieve greatness...

To reach higher...to reach beyond their grasp...

As my friend Matt Toplikar says...it feeds their fantasy...of a life without change...without the need to grow...to challenge yourself...and to be challenged...

It is a stupid and self-defeating notion...

That just keeps everyone stuck...

And undermines efforts to innovate...and to develop new ideas...and to transcend the more serious of the mistakes of the culture of the day...

And it always...always...ultimately fails...no matter how stubborn and persistent peoples' stupidity and recalcitrance is...

Because there is no growth in the culture without it giving way to better ideas...

And ideas...like it not...are what drive the culture...

There is no growth in the culture without new ideas...

And there are no new ideas without greater freedom...

No way around that one...

So that is the only direction that the culture can take...if it is to grow itself...out of all the problems that it has created for itself...

I've got to go take a neighbor to pick up her stuff...

Have a good weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben