Ignore Stupid People
High functioning stupidity
Prepare yourself: Today you will meet difficult people — how should you handle them?
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness — all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil
— Marcus Aurelius
Do you ever feel like people are out to get you? Maybe someone in your life has a pattern of behavior that seems to undermine “the system” and they really get under your skin. You wonder if this person even thinks before they act. They seem clueless and inept…always making a mess wherever they go.
Herodotus says that wisdom (knowledge) is the only real good — and we all know people who appear like the total opposite of wisdom!
Socrates believed that evil stemmed from ignorance. Now, obviously some people are calculating in the terrible things they do. Education is no guarantee of goodness.
But…Let’s examine this further to see what we can learn.
The Greek word used by Socrates was, Amathia.
Roughly translated, amathia means: “intelligently stupid.”
— Not an inability to understand, but an unwillingness to understand.
— Not a lack of intelligence, but a failure of intelligence
Amathia is stupidity at a higher level. Stupidity that’s immune to ration & reason. Stupidity that refuses to accept reality.
Wisdom isn’t simply knowing things, it’s acting properly with what you know. So intelligent people who purposefully act in unintelligent ways are high-functioning idiots!
But let’s be honest — we all exhibit a level of stupidity @ sometime and do things we shouldn’t. But what’s our track record…do we learn, grow, & change? Or do we repeat the same patterns of behavior with no concern for others?
What should we do with these people? Are they really out to get us? Probably not. We have to see them for who they are. We need to stop seeing them as “good” or “bad.” We need to temper our expectations and see them as children. We don’t expect children to be anything else than children — we certainly don’t expect adult behavior from them. So, expect the unexpected from the “amathia’s” in your life, but ignore it personally. Don’t take it to heart.
We might have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but we don’t have to lower ourselves by taking their actions personally. Even if their acts directly impact us, it’s probably just more stupidity.
