Why is the world stupid?

A very interesting question, indeed, but is it wise?

Is it wise to give such attributes to questions? Has it any sense? A question is a question, no matter what it is like, it has to be answered. Now some people will protest, will bristle at it. Stupid questions should not be answered. But why? For the answer will be stupid, too? No, it's not true.


The answer can be wise. The quality, character, content, level of the answer does not depend on the question. Even the most stupid question can be answered wisely. Even the most preposterous and idiotic question can be answered thoughtfully and sensibly. Like the most logical question can be answered absolutely absurdly.


Once, quite long time ago, during the biology lesson at high school, an experienced teacher nicknamed Plasma by the pupils (nobody knows why – it didn't refer to her body; though rather thick she was not fat and her flesh didn't flow from place to place like pseudopodia; pupils' stupidity seems limitless) asked a very precise, absolutely simple and clear question: What joins the cerebral hemispheres? The answer was to be given by a pupil having luxuriant long red hair, coloured cheeks in the pretty, freckled face, and slightly cow-eyed look. She stood up with hesitation as if doubting she was the chosen one and began to look around with despair grasping the desk strongly not to fall onto the floor knocked down by a mysterious feebleness. But the class mates kept silence threatened by the vigilant teacher. The girl couldn't continue being mute any longer, so in the act of sudden enlightenment that erase the wrinkle of pondering from her forehead, she uttered: Intestines . . . . . . . Or maybe she only murmured? No, no way. I was sitting, as usual, in the end of the desk row and I heard this answer clearly.


So, before we give a stupid or wise, thoughtful or preposterous, or any other answer, we should understand a question really well. The question what joins the cerebral hemispheres? was neither tricky nor trappy (and neither on purpose nor accidentally). The question why is the world stupid? is not that clear and obvious. First of all due to the word why which is not clear. Why indicates both a reason and an aim. Of course, more a reason, no doubt. However a reason contains also an aim (or somehow provokes an aim). If we liked to ask unambiguously for aim, we would ask: What is the world stupid for? or even more directly What is the aim of being stupid? Using the word why we emphasize that we are interested mainly in a reason. What makes the world stupid... because of what the world is stupid... – this is what we want to know.

L
et's focus for a while on aim questions. Such questions seem unambiguous but by nature are ambiguous, they seem simple and obvious while they are complex and tricky, and make things more unclear than clear. For example: What have you switched on the lamp for? To make light (implying and to be able to read). This is simple, isn't it? There are no doubt as for the intentional character of this action. But in case of the question What is the sun shinning for? the doubts are big. Very big, indeed. The sun is not shinning to let me read a book. It is not shinning even to make Earth warm and let plants grow. The sun is shinning and that's all. Sun shinning is not intentional, has no purpose, no aim. Yet it is the reason of many things. Of course, the majority of people (I'm afraid the overwhelming majority) will maintain the sun has purposes, aims, objectives, goals and intentions. Everything must have aims, goals, intentions. They simply can not imagine aimlessness, the lack of purposes and intentions. It is worse than hell. The lack of aim is just death, a horrifying limbo. Everything they do in their lives they do for something. This is what they think. And this is why they think everything and everybody else does everything for something. Or rather they don't think, because if they really thought, if they analysed more carefully what they did, they would find out they did a lot of thing just for nothing... Take it easy. We are not going to focus on aims, goals and intentions, unless the question we are supposed to answer is about aims.


Another word that makes this question not easy and straight is world. It's not clear which world is meant here. A world in general or any specific world? If the latter was the point, for example the human world, then giving it this attribute would have sense. If humans can behave in a stupid way, act stupidly, be stupid, then things, phenomena, processes made and created by them can be stupid. But if whole our planet, or only the biosphere, was the point, then the matter is far more complex. Well, it is supposed it's enough to look through the window – but is it really enough? And if the word world was to mean the whole universe then we have a really big problem. Well, it is supposed it's enough to look up in the starry sky – but is it really enough? It's not enough, for example, to find the sun is stupid because it shines with no intention, because then we would find that the lack of aim (of intention) is stupidity, so the aim (the intention) is wisdom, while quite a lot indicates it's just the other way round.


It is not clear whether stupidity can be a part of wisdom and vice versa, which makes things more complicated. For example: if the human world is stupid and is a part of the terrestrial world (or of Cosmos), can this terrestrial world (or Cosmos) be wise containing human stupidity? Or: is human stupidity a part of universe's wisdom? In the context of universe's vastness the stupid human world is a value so small that can be totally neglected due to its insignificance. It seems so unless we think of a sand grain in a shoe, how disturbing it can be. It's also good to remember that a drop of poison poured into the ocean will have no impact, but the same drop can spoil totally dolphin's blood... It's interesting: the reverse situation, meaning a drop of human wisdom in stupid universe would have exactly the same consequences, though we would expect something opposite. Pluses and minuses would be insignificant.


Again we've gone far away from our question. We must be careful not to be grasped by these treacherous flows.


Let's assume the world (any world) is stupid, and let's try finally to answer the question (not forgetting about the doubts mentioned above).


As we know each system disintegrates. Energy is needed to keep the system going. So, building (constructing / composing) is more expensive than destroying (ruining), because constructing needs much more energy than deconstructing. Everybody knows that. Everybody can see that. Everybody experienced that. No need to discuss that, though a lot of interesting nuances could be found. Wisdom is a system. A construction which has to be built constantly, protected and supported, like any other construction. And energy should be supplied to let it function. Otherwise it will collapse. Decompose. Disintegrate... While there is no need to build stupidity. Stupidity is a ruin. Or a state before building, before constructing, before composing. Certainly, a ruin is also a system. Some sort of system. A system extremely chaotic, of highest entropy. To keep ruin as ruin a very little energy is needed. A ruin does not need to be taken care of. So, wisdom is expansive – stupidity is cheap.


As it was told in the lecture on the origin of stupidity, stupid we are while wise we only become. It's much easier to get stupid than to get wise. The cost of getting stupid is much lower than the cost of getting wise. It means, less energy is needed to get stupid than to get wise.


This is why the world heads towards stupidity than towards wisdom.

We again come back to the problem which world: the world in general or any specific world being a tiny (or quite big) part of the universe ...... Maybe a parallel world? Maybe there are other dimensions, and other worlds in them, for example reverse mirror worlds – then entropy would be a measure of growing order, composing would be cheaper than decomposing, wisdom more profitable than stupidity...

I look through the window. What a beautiful, bit frosty, late autumn morning. The narrow stripe of low mountain range slightly foggy over the dark ribbon of the forest below, everything caught in the net of black, grey and white branches and twigs sharply outlined on the pale blue, absolutely clear sky. So what? In a few hours stupid darkness will come, and the stupid frost will get even more stupid.


Wisdom can be horribly banal. Not like stupidity which never is banal. That's why stupidity is more attractive. Not only because of that. Generally it is more attractive.

Even the opinion above is banal.


Does it mean what is banal is wise, and what is not banal is stupid?

Oh, it would be too simple. Too banal. Banal simply.

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