by Elizabeth M Young

Created on: August 06, 2010

Stupid people are vulnerable. They simply do not, for various reasons, have the ability to learn, to think critically, to demonstrate curiosity, to seek more answers or to prevent themselves from making the same bad judgments and decisions again and again. As a result, others who form societies are naturally inclined to protect people from the dangers inherent to their intellectual weaknesses.

This is not to say that stupidity is confined to those who have mental, drug or physiological problems that prevent them from being any smarter than they need to be in order to take care of themselves. Sometimes stupidity is from a lack of focus, passion or interest in developing broader knowledge, learning to exercise better judgment or building better thought processes.

Stupid people populate every educational level, every economic class and every other demographic that is used to classify humans and to place them into categories.

Very well educated professionals are capable of being stupid outside of their professions because they may have not had the time, focus, interest or life experience to interact with the world in ways that teach them judgment, decision making or knowledge in more situations.

Sometimes the wealthy have so much service provided to them that they have not learned basic skills of self care and self sufficiency in life. Not knowing these things is often labeled as or identified as stupidity, as when a President does not know the price of a common grocery item because he has not shopped at a grocery store in decades.

Very poorly educated people can be vastly superior in broad areas of wisdom and intellect because they may have had many experiences, have studied on their own or have had informal education or learned ways of adapting for a lack of formal schooling or training. But they can appear to be stupid when they cannot speak or communicate the terms that are used by the formally educated.

A person who has no skills for surviving in the wilderness will get some care and support form those who do know what to do. That is, until a decision must be made to leave them behind and to let them make it on their own for the survival of the rest. A stupid person will not be able to make it because they have not learned what was taught or because they cannot do what they observed others doing.

A person who cannot read or write may be quite brilliant at developing alternative

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