JAN'S FRESH REAL NEWS
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                                               © 2001: JAN COX
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November 14, 2001.
 
 
 
 

                 THE MATHEMATICS OF STUPIDTY
                        ____________________
 
 
 
 

There are three types of stupidity:
stupidity about certain things (biology, plumbing);
general stupidity (being genetically a 40 watt bulb when the standard is 100)
and stupidity about yourself;
the first can be cured by instruction; the second only by death,
and trying to cure the third is such an act of stupidity that even talking about it
threatens to insult a normal man’s intelligence... (but we’ll see).
 

People as a rule make no distinction between the first two,
so that a mechanic calls a man stupid who does not know what a spark plug does
while the man may be actually above average in general intelligence,
even an expert in some other area,
but when on-the-verbal-&-mental-run,
humans tend to lump all forms of instantly confronted stupidity together.
 

You cure the first type of specific stupidity by addition:
by adding information regarding the material matter in which you are interested,
but about which you lack knowledge, to your brain’s storage centre;
(and as noted: nothing will cure the overall inherent type of stupidity,
other than waiting it out);
trying to cure the third type of stupidity would seem to involve the same approach as with the first: by adding information about yourself to your brain’s
present collection of data thereabout....(but this is a spook adventure).
 

People who follow the first course are considered educated;
those of the second sort are pitied and tolerated,
and those who engage in (at least mouth wise)
the third activity are deemed to possess superior insight and intention;
all who do not want to appear publicly stupid will affirm in public (if asked)
that knowing about yourself is a far greater thing than knowing about
plumbing, or mechanics or anything else merely material,
but none who pay lip tribute thereto have any notion at all what they are talking about,
and least of all those who seriously believe that they are fruitfully engaged therein…
…(but perhaps that is already so well known to you that
 the matter even being broached approaches an intellectual affront… …
….but we’ll see).
 

Normal, sane people (if prompted) will assert that if they had a
fuller knowledge about themselves, their lives would be improved;
would work better; they would engage in less (or perhaps, no) unprofitable behavior, because:
with sufficient knowledge about oneself, one would know why one does the things
one does (including the stupid ones),
and with such knowledge, be able to then alter said costly behavior.
This is so obviously so that only someone exceptionally stupid would
take exception thereto.
 
 
 
 
 

                       A man had a basket of berries, but wanted more,
                       so the obvious thing to do was put more in his basket.
                       All the berries in the world existed only in his basket. The End.
                       ..........(Oh, did I mention that he never realized it.  The End.
 
 

You can examine a carton until cows start to enter marathons,
but you will never understand a single, meaningful thing about the box
unless you know where it came from and what it is doing in your possession.
Certainly a well drawn cut off line among normal people dividing the sane from the insane would be the question: Can a person know who they are?
Anyone who would defer is clearly out of their mind,
and from the stable table which supports mankind’s total second reality of all things cultural, spiritual, intellectual & otherwise intangible  --  such a view is correct.
A man who would say that he has no knowledge at all of who he is,
and does not believe that such knowledge is possible,
would be rightly seen as insane and completely out of touch with
the plain reality of things in which all normal people live.
And it is a delightful humdinger of a demarcation
for if you find the statement: “You do not have any knowledge of who you are” ridiculous and patently not true
then you are guaranteed: sane, normal, non stupid (in the second category),
and  most likely, ordinary in every respect …(oh, and did I mention:
as ignorant to what is going on all around you as a comatose man in a coffin).

It need be noted howsomever that the statement:
“Men have no knowledge at all of who they are”
is perhaps the stupidest thing a human can say,
for it is without any substance (forget, veracity) --  without any substance whatever,
(and it has no bizness being said...............least in polite company).

Any thing you say about spark plugs has substance, whether it be a correct
or incorrect reflection of what they physically are and do;
whatever you may say about them will have substance because they have substance; whether the statement is deemed true or false
is irrelevant to the comment having its own substance,
but anything a man says about himself  --  not about the rhino (which has substance)  --
but anything the parrot-man-mind says about Itself  --   has no substance.
...(‘Course in the routine world, clinically “sane” people debate whether
the gold that paves the streets of Heaven is 24 carat or not).
 
 

The bur under the saddle blanket of the few is what today’s news coverage
has been about (Surprise!),
but when put into plain words like: “You do not and cannot know who you are”
it can sound as insane to the few as it does to the many;
but rest assured that it is not insane at all --  indeed once you see the reality of it
for yourself, you realize that thinking otherwise is the zenith of absurdity.
To where --  and how --  can the universe step away from itself
to get a good look at itself  --  and thus know who/what it is?! --
and if the universe itself cannot know who it is, what might that suggest about man,
(vis a vis what has above been,  blah, blah, blah, blah, blahed).
 
 

The few have oft been told that what is bothering them is their stupidity of themselves, and that to achieve the desired state of being enlightened from their state of darkness & ignorance, the method is one of: self study and ultimately --  self knowledge;
that when a man knows-who-he-is --  he is fully conscious, awake and free –
--  which is correct --  but with a minor, overlooked pickle.

The enlightening understanding is not contained in your finally, knowing who you are, but in realizing that you do not and cannot know.
You then discover yourself living completely surrounded by creatures who
profess just the opposite,
but now that you know the truth,
you realize the scientific basis for the feeling you always had of
juxtaposition to your fellow rhinos   --   and to your own inner-parrot-self  --
but from which now  --  you are free.

That is the paramount pay off:
the entire human population is irreversibly stupid about a certain matter:
                                thinking they know who they are,
                                          and now you are no longer so deluded:
                                           you’re stupid and you KNOW it.
 
 
 
 

"That was supposed to be the supreme forbidden fruit!     How’d you do it any way?"
         "Duhhh, I dunno...........I jus' kept tryin'."
 
 

                                                                 J