In my native language, Malayalam, there is an idiom like this: 'eliye pedichu illom chuttathu pole' [എലിയെ പേടിച്ചു ഇല്ലം ചുട്ടത് പോലെ] . Literally in English it means 'like burning house fearing the rat'!
Only foolish people will burn their home for killing or evicting a rat that went inside their home as they have high aversion to this rodent.
But foolish or stupid people are very common in our society. So, day in and day out we see similar stupid acts done by stupid people around us.
Each passing generation smiles at the foolish superstitions of its
ancestors while it goes on entertaining those fallacies of thought and worship
which will give cause for further smiling on the part of enlightened posterity.
[The Urantia Book Paper 86:6.5]
ancestors while it goes on entertaining those fallacies of thought and worship
which will give cause for further smiling on the part of enlightened posterity.
[The Urantia Book Paper 86:6.5]
Many of us might have learnt the story of the stupid son of the wood cutter, during our childhood. The story was included in the text books of children for making them understand the forms of foolishness or stupidity among us. In the story, the wood cutter entrusted his son to keep watch while he took a short nap in the jungle after cutting the woods with his axe for some time. While he slept, the watchful son saw a fly disturbing his father by flying around his father's head and occassionally sitting over his nose. The stupid son took the axe and tried to kill the fly sitting over his father's nose! I need not tell the rest of the story because any one not stupid could easily guess what could have happened!
But such stupidities we see every where even now. Some times we also do such acts of stupidity. That is because, we all have some imperfections in our mind capacities that we call as our wisdom. Mind you, wisdom is different from intelligence, though wisdom needs intelligence.
I had an IITian colleague who was extremely good with his mathematical intelligence and problem solving skills. He would solve mathematical problems just like a computer which many of us could not. He also had a sharp memory and could recite or quote several literary works quite easily which too were difficult for many. But if you ask him simple questions about day to day activities he would stumble and most often I had seen him in confused state, incapable of taking a decision. He would even stumple for a decision to enter his room and would occassionally stand still at the door thinking what to do! Such individuals, though geniuses in some areas of intelligence, are dealt as lacking common sense or practically foolish or stupid.
Every one of us, being imperfect, do reflect some of our stupidities at some point of time, if not often. The degree of our stupidity varies from individual to individual and group to group. But when our foolish acts are predominant over shadowing our wise acts then we fall in the class of stupid people in general.
When we are too stupid, we fail to recognize our foolishness and that is a much more serious problem than being stupid at times!
Foolish people generally lack the ability to differentiate between facts and falsehoods. They also lack the ability to differentiate between good and bad. When they are too foolish, they argue a lot to prove what they think as right regardless of the realities.
Unfortunately, when stupid people are in majority, it would be wise for wise people to keep quiet. Perhaps this could be the reason why in India in these times, we hardly see any wise men or women open their mouths to express their views! They are quietly realizing the most difficult thing in their lives!
Stupids in majority make stupid laws and intrepret laws foolishly making the society and nation hellish. When they try to come out of the problems caused by one stupidity, they do ten other stupid acts.
But come whatever may, they never seek wise directions from a few wise men and women here and there to come out of their miseries caused by their own foolish acts.
They can relish on rotten food and enjoy drinking sewage like liquids. They declare such foods and drinks as too good for health even while they suffer from chronic dysentry and stomachaches. But at the same time they accuse the cook who made clean, delicious alternative food for them for years and also kick the cook hard that he is forced to run for his life! They are indeed stupid to realize the causes of their dysentries!
Is it not a situation similar to burning the home for killing the rats?
We have been doing our activities without application of our intelligent minds in several of the instances making our acts effectively stupid. That caused our air, water and land polluted. We now do not have naturally occuring fresh water or fresh air in most parts of our regions. Ofcourse, the wise among us knows to device means ot over come such problems. But we are so stupid in our collective acts that we never allow our learned experts to do the work properly for us. Instead, we create such stupid hue and cries that our engineers shy away from doing any effective work!
The stupids among us know only to shout punish, punish and punish, but do not ever say reward, reward and reward! We still virtually live in the medieval era where the kings and chieftains believed stupidly in the effectiveness of punishment only for getting any work done. Our laws only talk about punishments and nothing about rewards! Our stupid minds recognize only sticks and no carrots!
So we do not mind to burn our homes for punishing that naughty rat that went inside our home with least regard to us! We want the perpetuator killed at whatever be the cost! For that matter we want all perpetuators to be killed, not only the rats! We want our laws to be re-written that way, if ii is not that way now!
Our stupid minds cannot recognize any justice system other than the archaic tooth-for-tooth-and-eye-for-eye laws of the old!
Education has only made us to be masters of formal sciences and arts. Some of us have the highest educational degrees and scores. Unfortunately, our education has failed to remove stupidity from our minds!
So we justify and scientifically prove the usefulness of burning the home for killing the rat! We don't agree that we are stupid fools. We know each and everything and there're nothing on earth that are not known to us, we boldly claim. Are we stupid?
For us what is right is that what the majority endorse. We hardly give any weightage to the opinions of a few here and there even when they are telling the truths. Our media men and media managers know this fully well. They know the art of making the not-so-thinking public to swing in favor of what they think as right! This is cleverness of getting the stupids swing!
Our social media is full of boastful know-it-all individuals who consider all others other than them as stupids. They use all kinds of profanities to bulldoze and intimidate such people whom they consider as stupids! Had there been any chance, they would have considered it a better option to literally bulldoze those who did not agree to their ideas rather than using the verbal threats that they are so used to now.
Eliminate all those whom you do not like, even when it amounts to burning your own home! There is no stupidity in those line of thoughts, they argue!
If history is any indication, collective stupidity destroys civilizations and nations. When stupids are on the rise, the wise start thinking about the imminent fall that is nearing!
The stupids will start burning their own homes out of fear, making the whole nation burn!
Can it be prevented?
If you think this as a stupid question, the time for the rise of stupidity perhaps has begun!
