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STUPIDITY—ITS
USES & ABUSES
It’s
time to take punitive action against an
insidious and rapidly proliferating menace to
our emotional well being. I’m speaking, of
course, of “service industry” people who are
embracing the dumbing down craze too
enthusiastically and who, doubtless incapable of
even masturbating by themselves any more,
regularly perpetrate nerve-rattling,
mood-curdling, faculty-numbing and
spirit-withering indignities against us.
Let me hasten to say that I value stupidity as
much as the next man. I do. Stupidity is, after
all, the best solution we've come up with to the
mother of all problems itself, the problem of
being mortal. Enabling us to recast the grimmest
of existential givens-- making it possible to
genuinely believe that we've seen the image of
John the Baptist on two separate taco chips and
that our sightings are proof-positive of a
Second Coming and the prospect of salvation and
eternal life--stupidity is, hands-down, the most
effective means available to reduce terror and
panic (the human default condition) to a
relatively tolerable disquietude. So I respect
stupidity. Okay? I think, in fact, that
stupidity has been, since the origin of
consciousness, a marvel of human
resourcefulness. Indeed, as a response to the
human condition, I think that stupidity is
rivaled in its genius only by schizophrenia!
But while my regard for stupidity is equal to
anyone’s, I also think it’s important to
remember that (if for no other reason than
simple decency) the ancient Greek admonition,
“anything in moderation,” has application
even here.
I mean for all of its utility as a buffer
against existential dread, stupidity is an
unruly thing that can have—when it’s
exercised intemperately, when no effort is made
to confine it to its purpose—a very negative
impact on people who are subjected to it. Yes,
it’s crucial to our ability to function at all
that we not always recognize too clearly that
with our demise we will enter oblivion. But if
you’re a bank teller it can pose a major
challenge to your customer’s medication when
you’ve truncated your brain so drastically
that you can’t be certain if it’s Ben
Franklin or Tom Snyder who appears on a
hundred-dollar bill. (Hold this last thought for
just a moment.)
Now to illustrate my point I could discuss the
conduct of innumerable emotional shitheels who,
in just this past month, used stupidity
irresponsibly and, to grievous effect, tracked
their slovenly handling of the problem of living
into my life.
I’m thinking of clerks, counterpeople and
company representatives—AND NONE OF THEM
FOREIGN BORN—who reduced my own circuits to
flakes of carbon when they obliged me to
restrict my vocabulary to the dozen or so
English words they were able to comprehend.
And remaining vivid in my memory are two
cashiers, one of whom insisted that $42 for a
quart of orange juice HAD to be correct because
it was “right there on the register, and the
other who demonstrated an appalling literalness.
In the case of the latter individual: After I
placed some half-dozen items in front of him and
was reaching for my wallet, he asked me
(rhetorically, I assumed) if I was taking them.
When I joked that no, I wasn’t, that I liked
to go into stores and move the stock around, he
became irate, bellowed that I must be “some
kind of weirdo” to do such a thing and
demanded that I leave.
The orange juice jerkoff caused some nasty
chemicals to spill in my brain that still
haven’t stopped flushing through me. The
second bastard triggered a twenty-four-hour
period in which I experienced a profound
reluctance to leave my apartment, answer the
phone or take any kind of nourishment.
No, I didn’t make those people up.
But of all the recklessly moronic lowlifes I
encountered in this brief time frame, the one
that best personified the scourge I’m
addressing was the aforementioned teller, who,
when I asked her to make smaller denominations
of a large bill SHE'D just slid toward ME, took
a long look at it, said, “Wait a minute,
something’s very wrong here.” Then said,
“No, it’s okay.” Then said, “This CAN'T
be right—I don’t think he’s even on the
air anymore.” And then announced that the bill
was counterfeit and that she’d have to
confiscate it—without compensating me.
(Apparently, having touched it, I’d
technically been in possession of the bill—and
no, I SWEAR, I didn’t make this dirtbag up
either.)
Since I’m focusing here on the behavior of a
specific person, I’ll let pass the fact that
no one at this venerable bank—THE SOLE
FUNCTION OF WHICH IS TO HANDLE MONEY!—was able
to prevent blatantly bogus currency from
infiltrating its stock. As disappointed as I was
by this circumstance, I’ll keep to my teller,
who (her immediate triggering of a hideous
psychosomatic rash on my chin, notwithstanding)
had still not committed the most egregious and
damaging of her offenses.
Hardly. When I protested her action and was, for
a solid hour, left to watch her engage in round
upon round of whispered phone conversations and
huddled meetings, she had the temerity to come
back and tell me: “[The bank] has ELECTED
[emphasis mine] to reimburse you.”
Now I‘ll concede that, in the matter of
punitive measures, the antics I’ve described
prior to this point may not justify penalties
more severe than a modest fine and several
weekends of community service. But, in my
judgment, when you add condescension to rampant
imbecility—AND CONCOCT, IN THE PROCESS, AN
ESPECIALLY PERNICIOUS MIX THAT CAN MAKE A
PERSON'S PENIS COMPLETELY DISAPPEAR FOR ALMOST A
WEEK!—you invite the most terrible of
consequences. Working for a great financial
institution, spending her days not just behind a
bulletproof shield but in a hallowed realm of
miracles like compound interest, this teller’s
come to feel invulnerable—she actually
believes that she’s in all ways protected from
harm. To be sure, so neat a self-deception is
worthy of admiration. But given her failure to
curb the arrogance her delusion has engendered
(let alone her excess of witlessness) I think
she should be disabused of said delusion
forthwith. In fact, I don’t think it would be
in the least draconian to lie in wait for her
after work, rip off her face and shove her smug
countenance up her ass.
I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to suggest
that we resort to violence and open ourselves to
a potential penitentiary situation. But if I had
a lapse there, it was due to the cumulative
toxicity of the experiences I’ve reported and
it only makes my argument. Exposure to
undisciplined mindlessness can compromise the
most splendid of nervous systems in a trice, and
people dealing with the public who abuse
stupidity must be discouraged from persisting.
Collected now, ready to take a sensible
approach, I’d say that legislation making
gross stupidity in a public context a quality of
life violation (and gross stupidity aggravated
by a superior attitude a Class A Misdemeanor)
ought to serve the purposes of deterrence and
remedy quite sufficiently.
Of course, should Bill of Rights fetishists
thwart the writing of such statutes, there’s a
step I’ve been pondering that we could take on
our own. Though it might require us to keep a
bottle of Spirit of Ipecac handy (and would
obviously be most effective when we’re sitting
across a desk from phlegm-flecks like that
teller), we could, just suddenly, throw up.
I’m not talking about pinpoint, or
“smart,” vomiting that’s directed at a
specific, limited target, but vomiting which,
fashioned after the carpet bombing techniques
developed in Vietnam, permeates everything in
your immediate vicinity. It may not fix the
problem, but delivering the remnants of the
Chili Surprise you had for lunch to the clothing
and workspace of a creep who’s making your
life a roiling sea of excrement, would at least
return the favor somewhat in kind and figures to
be immensely gratifying.
Plus, you’re not as likely to provoke the
interest of a criminal justice person as you’d
be if you abruptly introduced an Uzi into the
proceedings. Quite the opposite: you could be
reasonably confident that law enforcement
officers would keep their distance. |
