Dividing the Human Race Into Four Parts

One of my favourite sayings (and only slightly tongue in cheek) is that communism is simply fascism for educated people.  Ultimately it all boils down to tyranny by a self appointed elite but only one of them will get the poets and the playwrights on side.  More and more it appears to me that the difference between stupid people and intelligent people is largely a matter of vocabulary.

In an attempt to be helpful I have divided the population of the planet up into four broad groups as follows;

• Stupid Stupid People
• Intelligent Stupid People
• Stupid Intelligent People
• Intelligent Intelligent People

 Stupid stupid people are the kind you see on reality tv programmes.  Dumb as a box of hammers and blissfully unaware of the fact.  These people will lurch from disaster to disaster confidently making a complete pigs breakfast out of their lives and the lives of those unfortunate enough to be associated with them in the sure and certain knowledge that they know what they're doing.  Herd them together, threaten them with punishment and these people can be foot soldiers, or reality tv stars.

Then there are intelligent stupid people.  Not necessarily any smarter than the preceding they differ because of their self awareness.  Aware of their short comings they tend to be cautious, to do what is proven to work and take advice when they're out of their depth.  These people don't necessarily do all the work but they do ensure that the work gets done and to a minimum standard of efficiency.  They are the NCOs of the human race.

After them come the stupid intelligent people.  These people are genuinely bright.  They have good ideas, they are creative, they've frequently acquired an education and done quite well at it.  They are also well aware of this and have difficulty comprehending that there might be smarter people than them or that the less intelligent, less well educated person who has been doing the job for twenty years might have something to teach them.  These people make up the junior and middle rank officers of the human race or, to use a non military term, the intelligentsia.  If nothing goes wrong then they may do quite well in life and die with some genuine achievements to their name or at least what they fondly imagine are genuine achievements.  If something does go wrong they will generally refuse to acknowledge it until its too late, if at all.

Intelligent intelligent people are as smart as the previous group, possibly smarter.  They are aware that they do not know it all and are not afraid to ask the person who does.  They then take that information and use it to their advantage.  They might be our generals but I strongly suspect that they're far too smart to be involved at all.  I'm not sure if I've ever met an intelligent intelligent person.  I certainly wouldn't claim to be one myself (I hover somewhere between stupid stupid and stupid intelligent depending on the situation).

If you think that you're an intelligent intelligent person the only thing I can state with certainty is that you're not an intelligent stupid person.