There seems to be a difference between uneducated and willfully stupid. One is correctable and forgivable while the other is a conscious choice on the part of someone unwilling to think. The former are often characterized in Disney films as the hapless sidekick while the latter runs for office waving a party banner depicting a pachyderm.
So too does there seem to be a difference between smart people. There are those who can recite the best fishing lures to use in certain lakes and what it will take to repair your expensive foreign hybrid and THEN there are those who can clearly explain why Obamacare will not work no matter what amendments Congress attaches to it (p.s. I'm willfully hopeful it will work despite the evidence). Yet the people who can bring together seemingly separate ideas into a practical and understandable whole often cannot so much as tie their shoes without being awkward about it.
Then there are others who hide their smarts. I have no idea why anyone would possibly want to hide their intelligence as it is really the only attribute about a person I have any respect for. Pretty is given by heredity and athleticism is over-rated (and damn near useless), but intelligence - real intelligence, the kind that is able to skillfully extrapolate and find new approaches to traditional problems or see connections between disparate concepts; that is praiseworthy.
There is a woman on Blogger who writes Down the Rabbit Hole and is capable of finding these connections. Some of those connections are found with confirmation bias, but connections all the same.
So why is this skill (and I do mean skill as it takes effort to listen, think, and be as aware of everything as much as possible) so rare? One explanation came from a summary of a pop-psychology book I skimmed through using an app for my tablet. Thinking is tiring. It's easier to let the "unconscious" mind make decisions rather than ponder out logical conclusions and consequences to actions. (Note I take issue with the concept of the unconscious mind also.)
This line of questioning leads me back again to personal accountability and the basics of human development and leads me my next post - a question posed by a police dispatcher.
