Are you secretly an idiot?

(Image CC: LauraLewis23)

Are you secretly an idiot?
(Image CC: LauraLewis23)

The universe (I’m told) is a pretty massive place. It’s really big, and a lot of stuff happens in it. So much stuff in fact, that despite the ever-increasing growth of human knowledge, the amount of stuff we know is still infinitely smaller than the amount of stuff we don’t.

In the last century or two, human knowledge has expanded at a faster rate than ever before in our history. There have been huge break-throughs in technology, science and medicine, and yet we’re still pretty ignorant as a species to the mysteries of life, the universe and everything. Nice one humanity.

“I had gained nothing but a growing awareness of my ignorance.” – René Descartes

When Descartes said this, he was referring to his experience with education, but this applies to all our knowledge, doesn’t it? The more we learn, the more we realise we don’t know. Idiots.

For most of my life, I’ve considered myself to be at least reasonably intelligent. But recently I’ve started to wonder if, actually, I’m just a mindless, blithering idiot. After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that I probably am, and I’m afraid to tell you: you are too.

The trouble is, that as much as I know (or think I know), there will always be people that know more than I do, and there will always be more stuff that I don’t know. Everything I learn, is something that humanity as a species has already discovered. I’m not discovering something new or adding to the pool of human knowledge (I’m lazy like that), I’m just catching up with what everyone else already knows. All those bushy eye-browed, grey-haired sciency type blokes are staring down their noses at me and grumbling about the ignorance of today’s youth.

So there you go, I’m an idiot. It’s a painful realisation, and my idiot brain can’t think of a way of changing that, besides having a constantly updating stream of information uploaded into my brain, a bit like how they taught Neo kung-fu in sci-fi classic, The Matrix.

And you, you’re an even bigger idiot, because you’re sitting there, gorpless expression on your face (Seriously, check out the face you make next time you’re inanely browsing the Internet. You look like you’re about to slip into a scrolling-induced coma, and you look ridiculous.), reading an article written by me. As we’ve already deduced, I’m an idiot, so if you’re reading my article… God help you

Albert Einstein allegedly said something along the lines of:

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Einstein. What an idiot.

But sadly, while we might all be clever in our own way, ultimately all of us are just fish trying to climb that bloody tree. Some are just better at it than others.

So there we go, I’m an idiot, you’re an idiot, even Stephen Hawking is an idiot. Have a nice day, idiot.