The Ontogeny of Human Stupidity

James F Welles*

Received: May 11, 2018;   Published: May 16,2018

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2018.04.001077

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Abstract

The wonder of human culture is that anyone manages to grow up with anything like sense and sanity. Consider the fact that most people start life with the handicap of parental love. Of all forms of emotionally induced blindness, this is the blindest, and most of us are lucky enough to get a double dose. As with others who love [1], parents are blind because they want to be, and for nearly two decades, the child is helpless to escape the best efforts of his parents to distort his selfimage and sense of importance [2]. Whatever limitations culture may have, it certainly is efficient at transmitting stupidity from one generation to the next (as well as developing it anew). Children receive a basic lesson from their parents and other adults who gain some peculiar pleasure in denying reality to them. It is quite common to say to a small child, “What a big boy you are” [3]. Statements contrary to the obvious may be more comforting than the truth-”My, what a scrawny little runt you are!”— and have the added advantage of preparing the child for the adult world in which accuracy is too commonly sacrificed to diplomacy.

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