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That's actually an interesting question: whether street smart formally uneducated people are smart or not. Seems there are a lot of dumb-seeming street-smart people who have a very good sense of what is going on and also how to handle things from a street perspective, something a book smart only person would not have.
I'm thinking back to some people I've met who were illiterate or seemed dumb. They were both involved in criminal activity and one had done prison time at a country-club prison in Lompoc, California. The other person (functionally illiterate) had drug-smuggling siblings back in the 1970's. (Yeah, I know!) I think both of those people were actually pretty smart based upon my limited experience of them.
I don't think education or lack thereof determines how smart or stupid you are. To me stupidity is an almost willing denial of plainly apparent facts and information. Street smarts or education are just learning either through experience or study of things that are abstract to the student, of how things really are. Apples fell from the tree WAY before Sir Isaac Newton got bonked on the head by one.
Every thing you learn, every experience you learn from, are because of processes in the physical world. Our spiritual beliefs are abstractions of that which we see around us. We can only function in relation to nature and nature's laws or we perish.
So to me being stupid is a willing denial of what would normally be apparent even to the lowest life-form. Maybe the stupidity is because of our pride or some belief we aren't willing to adapt for reality, but I can't see how one could explain stupidity any other way. Being ignorant of a situation is not the same as being stupid about it. But maybe I am showing my stupidity. There is an essay on the interwebs I found several years ago that woke me up to a lot of things in the way I approached my "problems". (Not talking about personal problems, just things I should have been able to figure out.) This essay is titled "The Power Of Stupidity". Even if you don't agree with the author it is worth a read.
Stupid people think they are smarter than anyone else. They are arrogant and defensive. They like to talk/babble a lot to show off. They never admit their mistakes, and therefore they cannot change or improve themselves or things.
Smart people think before they talk, and listen more than making verbal noise. They are observative, humble and calm. They don't want to show off as arrogant people. These people are considered to be both smart and wise.
Everybody is smart and stupid sometimes. No one can be stupid or smart all the time.
I’ll apologize up front for labeling some people as stupid. Normally that’s not a word I deploy in my every day vocabulary. But it fits for this conversation.
The main difference between smart people and stupid people that I see boils down to temperament and curiosity. I’ve noticed the people in my life who know the least are the ones who do and learn the bare minimum to get by. They hate asking questions, they get flustered and upset easily when something goes wrong or doesn’t work, and they’re fairly stubborn and stuck in their ways. Generally the most open-minded and open-hearted people I know tend to be the smartest and wisest.
Anybody else feel this way?
These scenarios always entail some nuance, but generally I would agree. Curiosity, open-mindedness, and an even-temperament can go a long way in building your wealth of knowledge. It's not to say that there aren't a lot of smart, arrogant, and relatively closed off people though. I think there's a certain type where if the person reaches a level of success in life, they become emboldened and less open-minded (i.e. Elon Musk). I think a lot of these types of people may suffer from underlying personality conditions like narcissism, sociopathy, or even psychopathy. At the end of the day, nobody is truly perfect or unflawed. It's always good practice to regularly remind yourself where you come from, how you come across to others, and about the value of altruism. The universe is much, much bigger than any one of us and there is quite a bit that we still don't understand. But overall, in the long run, it does seem like good ideas and progress tend to overcome.
Well this ones cracking me up.
l've noticed all my life some of the silliest or blindest l meet are actually well or very well educated, not to say all butttt , l have known many. You even see it in forums a lot too they'll write all so nicely but with no true understanding of the post which even with all their fancy you can still just see it all over their reply.
Yet some of the wisest and most just clued in l've even met in life have been just anything, because they just are. And again not all , no way but ln many ways you can't just learn true wisdom or smarts or vision in education if it isn't there naturally too. People either just have it naturally or they're smart enough to just really see it and very quickly, in people and in the world or life or situations. But if you meet somebody that does have that just naturally and that are also very well educated, then you have one very smart clued in cookie.
Funny though, a mate of mine is a professor and even he agrees with me and even laughs at himself and of how clueless he can be outside of his field.
A woman I was friends with through a church died a few months ago. Sixty years old, ovarian cancer, went fast.
She was one of the dumbest people I ever met. It was difficult to have a conversation with her because half of it would remain inside her head. Actual example:
She: "Well, the foundation has been poured."
Me: "What foundation?"
She: "For the addition!"
Me: "Oh, you and John are putting an addition on your house?"
She: "No, my aunt in Florida! My cousin is putting an addition on his house so that she can live there with him."
I realized then what she was talking about. Her mother had recently died and the aunt had lived with her, so now, apparently, the aunt was moving in with her son. But you didn't get that upfront information up front. It just never occurred to her that the LAST sentence should have been the one to start off the conversation with. She spoke like this all the time. It was frustrating as heck to pull information out of her or follow what she was saying
And now that she's dead, this one will forever remain a mystery: We were in a theological study course together, and it was her turn to do a closing prayer of her choice. She used a prayer by Bishop Desmond Tutu. And ended it reading, "And we ask your blessing as we go forth in our Caribbean lives."
Obviously that word was not "Caribbean". We were in New Jersey. She's reading words from a South African Bishop. I wanted to snatch her tablet out of her hand and find out what the hell the word was supposed to be, but the point is that it never even occurred to her that what she just said didn't make sense. I didn't snatch the tablet because I tried hard to pretend to be a better Christian than what I ever was. Being nice does not come naturally to me.
BUT -- it did to her. Despite being as dumb as a rock, she was one of the few genuinely kind, nice, good-hearted people I ever knew. I have to work at being a nice person. She just WAS a nice person without any effort. And I miss her dumb self because of it.
That's an interesting story. At least your church friend was a really good and nice person. I knew someone like that, actually it's a distant relative who I briefly connected with a few years ago. This person was a Christian poser who has no clue how she affects people and if she does have a clue, she doesn't care. Extremely unintelligent, very self-absorbed, never gave out enough information for people to be able to put together what was actually going on. Made it difficult to get information. Never committed to any plan of action, or actually taking action. Spent almost $1K traveling to her state to help her clean out a McMansion pending a divorce, let's just say that was one of the most unproductive $1K's I've ever had the misfortunate to squander. Not to mention all the miles on my vehicle. If everything that took place during those 3-1/2 weeks were detailed... ah, never mind.
On the other hand, another relative is very sweet and a good person but doesn't seem to know what's going on half the time.
I realized then what she was talking about. Her mother had recently died and the aunt had lived with her, so now, apparently, the aunt was moving in with her son. But you didn't get that upfront information up front. It just never occurred to her that the LAST sentence should have been the one to start off the conversation with. She spoke like this all the time. It was frustrating as heck to pull information out of her or follow what she was saying
This describes my aunt exactly. She can't remember details to save her life, so many conversations you have with her are like trying to solve brain teasers. And she gets aggravated that you don't know what she means.
She is also notorious for not noticing that the topic of conversation has changed, and responding as though you're still talking about the previous topic.
I’ll apologize up front for labeling some people as stupid. Normally that’s not a word I deploy in my every day vocabulary. But it fits for this conversation.
The main difference between smart people and stupid people that I see boils down to temperament and curiosity. I’ve noticed the people in my life who know the least are the ones who do and learn the bare minimum to get by. They hate asking questions, they get flustered and upset easily when something goes wrong or doesn’t work, and they’re fairly stubborn and stuck in their ways. Generally the most open-minded and open-hearted people I know tend to be the smartest and wisest.
Anybody else feel this way?
It amazes me sometimes the things people think about.
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